SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/22/2017 7:42 AM
Bible Reading & Meditation Focus: The Message
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 1:1-2
Message of the
verses: 1 The first account I
composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when He was taken up to heaven,
after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had
chosen.”
Let us begin with a quote from the last paragraph of John
MacArthur’s commentary on the book of Acts in order for us to be able to see
where we will be going. “The Apostles
themselves obliviously lacked the understanding and spiritual power to complete
Jesus unfinished ministry of evangelism and edification. However, in these last words to him before His
ascension, the Lord Jesus Christ reiterates (cf. John 20:22) the promise of the
Spirit. He will empower the apostles
(and all subsequent believers) with these resources necessary to finish the
Saviors unfinished work. The needed the
correct message, magnification, mystery, mission, and motive.” Now in today’s SD we will begin looking at
the “Message.”
When we look at the words “first account” we can
understand that would have been the gospel of Luke and the man that he wrote it
to and also this information too was Theophilus, and when we looked at the
introduction we talked about who Theophilus was and also what his name means
(friend of God). The book of Luke was
written about Jesus life from His birth to His resurrection as we see from the
end of verse one. It was during His
earthly life that He spent much time with His disciples teaching them so that
once He left to go back to heaven that the Holy Spirit would come into their
lives so that they could be the ones teaching, teaching how a person can become
a born-again believer through Jesus Christ.
The information that the apostles received was vital to the success of
not only getting the church off the ground, but in keeping it alive and well as
the infant church began. The apostles of
Jesus Christ had a lot of responsibility and they would need the Spirit’s power
along with protection from the Father, and prayers from the Lord Jesus Christ
from heaven.
Paul was so concerned about this truth too and wrote
about it in Ephesians 1:18-19a “18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be
enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are
the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the
surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.” Paul also wrote the following to the
Philippians “9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more
in real knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things
that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of
Christ (Phil. 1:9-10).”
In our next SD we will look at some more verses that go
along with these we already quoted.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Moab” (Numbers 22:4-5)
Today’s Bible
question: “What man lost all of his
possessions and his health but remained true to God?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/22/2017 8:15 AM
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