SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/26/2017 8:02 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-1
The Death of Christ
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 2:23
Message of the verse: “23 this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”
As I look at this verse one of the first things that came
to my mind was that I was wondering how many people who were listening to Peter
preach this very first sermon of the Church age were the ones yelling for
Christ to be crucified. There may have
been many there who were yelling for the crucifixion of Christ listening and
being convicted of their sin and later on saved. While studying the book of Philemon which I
finished a few days ago I read a story at the end of John MacArthur’s commentary
about a man who was the leader of those that bombed Pearl Harbor. The article made me want to read his book and
so I purchased it and read it in a couple of days as it was short, but the book
speaks of forgiveness just as Paul’s letter to Philemon speaks of forgiveness,
and just as Peter’s sermon speaks of forgiveness. The man who was the leader and the first to
bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 eventually became a believer in Jesus
Christ and worked for a missionary organization that eventually became
worldwide that used by the Lord to save many people both in Japan and the
United States. John MacArthur writes in
his commentary that “we
are never more like God than when we forgive,” and I think that
statement has a world of meaning in it.
Now if there people who had been yelling for the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ in Peter’s audience and became saved, that shows the wonderful grace,
mercy and the forgiveness of our God.
Peter begins this verse with the words “this Man,” to let
his audience know to whom he was speaking of, that is their Messiah, the One
who was delivered up by those in the audience to be nailed to the cross. There is a stark contrast between the
hearers’ evaluation of Jesus and God’s.
Perhaps a question on the hearts of those who were
listening to Peter was “if Jesus was the Messiah, why was He a victim?” Why did Jesus not use His power to avoid the
cross? The answer is that Jesus was no
victim. “17 “For this reason the Father
loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 “No one
has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have
authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment
I received from My Father’ (John 10:17-18).”
“10 So Pilate said to Him, "You do not speak to me? Do You not know
that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify
You?" 11 Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me, unless
it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you
has the greater sin’ (John 19:10-11).”
John MacArthur writes “Ekdotos (‘delivered up’) appears only here in the New
Testament. It describes those
surrendered to their enemies, or betrayed.
God gave His Son to
be the Savior of the world, which entailed delivering Him to His enemies. By the design of God, Jesus was betrayed by
Judas into the hands of the Jewish leaders, who handed Him over to the Romans
for execution.
“Predetermined’ is from horizo, from which we get our English word ‘horizon.’ It means ‘to mark out with a boundary,’ or
‘to determine.’ ‘Plan’ is from boulomai and refers to God’s will,
design, or purpose. Taken together they
indicate that Jesus Christ was delivered to death because God planned and
ordained it (Acts 4:27-28; 13:27-29) from all eternity (2 Tim. 1:9; Rev. 13:8).
“Foreknowledge’ translates prognosis, an important and often misunderstood New Testament
word. It means far more than knowing
beforehand what will happen.
Significantly, the word appears here in the instrumental dative
case. That shows that it was the means
by which Christ’s deliverance to His enemies took place. Yet, mere knowledge cannot perform such an
act. Foreordination can act, however, and that is the
New Testament meaning of prognosis:
‘Proginoskein and prognosis
in the New Testament… do not denote simple intellectual foresight or
prescience, the mere talking knowledge of something beforehand, but rather a
selective knowledge which regards one with favor and makes one an object of
love, and thus approaches the idea of foreordination, Acts 2:23 (comp. 4:28; Romans
8:29); 11:2; 1 Peter 1:2. These passages
simply lose their meaning, if the words be taken in the sense of simply taking
knowledge of one in advance, for God foreknows all men in that sense. Even Arminians feel constrained to give the
words more determinative meaning, namely, to foreknow one with absolute
assurance in a certain state or condition.
This includes the absolute certainty of that future state, and for that
very reason comes very close to the idea of predestination. (L. Berkhof, Systematic
Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976], 112).’”
I have had many people talk to me about election, which
goes along with what we are talking about here who say that they believe that
God knows who will be saved, but that God could not have chosen people for
salvation in eternity past. It kind of
bothers me to hear people say that God cannot do something, for after all God
can do whatever He wants to do as long as it does not go against His character
or attributes. God is a lot larger than
many people think He is and God does things that we as humans cannot
understand. ““The LORD our God has
secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our
children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we
may obey all the terms of these instructions (Deut. 29:29 (NLT).”
I have to say that
there are more things to look at in this section that I think we will leave
until tomorrow as this is pretty heavy stuff to look at.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I trust that the
Lord will help me make better sense of what I am studying in this very
important verse found in the book of Acts.
My Steps of Faith for Today: “Trust the Lord will help me with this verse.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “God” (Genesis 2:18).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where did Isaiah live?”
Answer in our next SD.
7/26/2017 9:02 AM
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