SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/27/2017 10:18 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 The Might
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Acts 1:4-5, 8a
Message of the verses: “4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, "Which," He said, "you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;”
Now that the apostles have received the message from the
Lord they may have been tempted to set out on their own to begin to spread the
message, but the Lord tells them that they should “not to leave
Jerusalem.” Let us look at a similar
verse from Luke 24:49 “49 "And behold, I am sending forth the promise of
My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with
power from on high." Jesus tells
them to wait in the city of Jerusalem and that waiting things are difficult for
some people, me included. I suppose that
being a male I want to go out and solve problems right away. I suppose that the Lord has been working in
my heart about waiting for Him, and also to make sure that what I am doing is
in His will, what He wants me to do to bring glory to His name. When one goes out and does things on their
own they become proud, and pride is a great sin before the Lord. If one can do things on their own without the
help and strength and “might” of the Holy Spirit of God then they will become
proud, but as I have mentioned in earlier Spiritual Diaries believers are like
a hose that the water flows through.
When you water your flowers it is all about the water getting to the
flowers to make them grow that counts, not really about the hose that the water
flows through. We have to be willing
hoses that allow the “spiritual water flow through” in order to bring glory to
the Lord. John MacArthur writes the
following “To the apostles, who were no doubt fired with enthusiasm and eager
to begin, that must have seemed a strange command. Yet, it illustrates an important point: All the preparation and training that
knowledge and experience can bring are useless without the proper might. Power had to accompany truth.”
Next we look at the phrase “to wait for what the Father
had promised.” We mentioned that the
apostles were no doubt motivated but they also need to be supernaturally
empowered for their mission which is what our quote is speaking about “what the
Father had promised.” The promise that
Jesus is talking about has been seen in different places in the gospels and
that is the promise of the Holy Spirit.
We have talked about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and
how it was different in different dispensations as in the Old Testament the
Spirit could leave a person like He left Saul and then in the verses that
follow we read that the Holy Spirit came upon David. After his sin with Bathsheba and her husband
David prays in Psalm 51:11 “Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not
take Your Holy Spirit from me.” In the
New Testament we learn that once a person becomes a born-again believer that
the Holy Spirit comes into their life and there are different functions that
the Spirit does in the life of a believer beginning with giving that person an
effectual call in order for them to become a believer. Paul tells us that we are to be constantly
filled with the Holy Spirit. The promise
of the work of the Holy Spirit was given in the Old Testament “25 "Then I
will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you
from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 “Moreover, I will give you
a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of
stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 “I will put My Spirit within you
and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My
ordinances (Ezekiel 36:25-27).”
MacArthur adds “There was to come a fullness of the Spirit in some way
unique to the New Covenant and for all believers. But there was also a special anointing for
the apostles.” The apostles were the
first to receive this anointing from the Holy Spirit and it was special for
them, but all believers receive the Holy Spirit.
We can compare what happened to Jesus after His baptism where we learned that the Holy Spirit came upon Him as “heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove (Luke 3:21-22).” Notice it says like a dove a simile as the Holy Spirit came upon our Lord in a similar way that a dove flutters down to land, very slowly. Then in Luke chapter 4:1 we read “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness.” Next we read from Luke while Jesus was teaching in the Nazareth synagogue “18 “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, 19 TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD."” When you see all caps in the NASB it is because it is a quote from the Old Testament. One more quote from the book of Luke that has to do with the suggestion that the Lord’s healing power came from the Holy Spirit “17 One day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing (Luke 5:17).” Another reason we believe that it was through the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus did His miracles had to do with what we call the unpardonable sin where the Pharisees said that Jesus was doing miracles in the power of Satan, and Jesus then says to them: “"Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven (Matthew 12:31).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Paul speaking of
the Holy Spirit’s power writes “Do not quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians
5:19).” I never want to do that.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Keep my life clean so that the Holy Spirit
can work through me to bring glory to my Lord.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Abraham” (Genesis 22:8).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where did Micah say the
Messiah would be born?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/27/2017 11:09 AM
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