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..Three Marvelous Sights, continued…... …...Aaron's sons speak of believers, the Holy Priesthood of I Peter 2, who did not receive the Holy Spirit till after Christ died. (How perfect is God's precious Word) The second of these great events is: II- JOHN THE APOSTLE SAW BLOOD AND WATER FLOW FROM THE PIERCED SIDE OF THE LORD JESUS: JOHN 19:31-35 Here again is something that could happen only to the Lord Jesus. It marked Him out as God. It is known that no human being sheds blood after death. The heart stops beating, the blood ceases to flow, the arteries contract, clots form and the flow of blood is stopped. But John saw, to his utter amazement, blood and water flowing freely from the wound in His side, as the soldier pierced that blessed body. John realizes the incredible thing he is stating, so he assures us that he saw it happen, that he bears record of it, that his record is true, and that he knows what he is saying is true. Men might think that John was not in his right mind, that in his excitement and sorrow or fear, he imagined all this. Therefore John takes care to record this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was foretold that God's Holy One should not see corruption, which the flowing blood bears witness. It tells the story not that Jesus died, already dead, but it tells us who died. All our blessing depends on the One who died for us. My death, your death as a sacrifice could avail nothing, it must be the death of a lamb without spot, without blemish, 'the miracle attests to that'. If God then paid the debt of sin, it is paid. So I accept the evidence, just as I accept a check in payment of a debt. The blood of Christ is the check, the evidence that Christ, the Son of God, paid the debt of sin. The third of these great events is: III- JOHN SAW THE LINEN CLOTHES LYING IN THE TOMB AND HE BELIEVED: JOHN 20:8 What did he believe? Evidently not the fact that Jesus was not there, he could see that. The stone was rolled away from the sepulcher, not to let the Lord out, but to let the disciples in. Lazarus rose from the dead with his grave clothes on, not our Lord. He left those clothes in the tomb to prove that He was not there, RISEN. NOTE: First of all, those clothes proved that the disciples did not steal the Lord's body, as the soldiers had falsely reported. Certainly if the disciples had stolen Him they would not have stopped to take off the grave clothes. "that is unthinkable" Second, it is clear that the Lord left the grave clothes there for a definite purpose. There remains but one conclusion, not the presence of the clothes, but how the clothes were present proved the resurrection of the Lord. The record says that John beholding them, believed. This can only mean that he believed Jesus was risen and that the sight of those clothes served John with the evidence for the miraculous resurrection of the Lord. This is further emphasized in v. 9. As yet they knew not the scriptures that he must rise again from the dead. They saw the proofs of it and thus believed that Christ had risen. NOTE: Here then is the miracle. It was something in the arrangement of the clothes that proved Christ had risen from the dead. The clothes were there in exactly the way they had been wrapped around the body of the Lord, yet He was not in them. He had left them undisturbed, a perfect miracle. Imagine getting an auto tire out of its wrappings without disturbing those wrappings…(don't wrap tires anymore). Our Lord's resurrection was something like that. John saw the linen clothes and noticed that the napkin that had been around His head was lying in a place by itself. OBSERVE: v.5,6,8, chapter 20. Three uses of the verb, see.
Wayside Baptist Church 2002 |
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"How Beautiful".midi playing |