August 24 - The Water and the Blood

 Read today’s texts first: Jeremiah 33,34; Psalms 74; 1 John 5

MAXIMize YOUR DAY 

Believing the virgin birth of Jesus is key to
believing He is the Messiah, the Christ. 

Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the one who came by water and blood - Jesus Christ (5:5,6). What is John, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, talking about? I believe he is again referring to the undeniable proof that Jesus was and is the Messiah, the promised Saviour of the world.

In our readings in Jeremiah today, God is promising through His prophet that there will be a Righteous Branch sprout from David’s line who will fulfill God’s covenant to restore His people (33:14,15). The same God who fixed the laws of heaven and earth will deliver on His promises (33:25).

As mentioned in the journal entry yesterday, John has made it clear how we must view Jesus if we are to be part of God’s family. If He is in fact the Son of God then His virgin birth is a foundational doctrine. It proves that He was born physically a man through Mary (came by water - see John’s conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:3-5). It also proves He was born spiritually from God’s seed, not Joseph’s. The blood that He shed on Calvary for us represented a life that was fully God and fully man. Like the first Adam, Jesus, the second Adam, was the only other person born on earth directly from God, uncontaminated by sin. He alone could battle Satan, the god of this world, and redeem what the first Adam lost.

John even wrote about the water and the blood that flowed from Jesus when He was pierced by the soldier’s spear (John 19:33-35). Dr. Stroud explained in his masterful book On the Physiological Cause of the Death of Christ how that physiological phenomenon proved Jesus died of a ruptured heart. But it also symbolized the spiritual heart of God breaking for us, and proved again that Jesus was the Son of God.

“Lord, my prayer today is in song:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure.”