Dear Explorer,
Read Matthew 27:35
And
Read Mark 15:24
And
Read Luke 23:34
And
Read John 19:23-24
Yes, Jesus was crucified naked. It was a further humiliation done to the victims.
Why is He always shown covered with a loincloth?
Just out of respect. But know that there was no respect given to Him that day.
Now, don't misread this. The soldiers didn't divide Jesus clothes in the way that they did BECAUSE they knew the Old Testament prophecy – remember these are Roman soldiers! They divided Jesus' clothes because that's what they chose to do!
So, let's talk again about this phrase "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled."
You see way back - about a 1000 years earlier -- King David wrote Psalm 22 and you read it yesterday. I think King David was writing a lament about how bad his day was going. But what he wrote was partly about himself and mostly about the suffering and pain of our Lord Jesus on the cross. How can that be?
2 Timothy 3:16 NASB says, "All Scripture is inspired by God...." This word "inspired" is the same word as we use for breathing. God breathed all Scripture into the hearts of human writers.
Some writers took what God taught them and put it into their own words. You'll see this a lot in the books of history in the Old Testament and the New Testament books of Instruction written by Paul and others. The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are also examples of this kind of inspiration.
Some writers saw visions and wrote what they saw the best they could with human limitations to describe supernatural things. You see this in books of prophecy like Ezekiel and Daniel and Revelation.
Finally, there is the inspiration of God where God just filled the writer with words that even the writer himself did not understand. We see this in the writings of Isaiah and Daniel and others and here in the writings of King David.
I don't know how King David came about writing Psalm 22. My opinion was that as he was writing about his own problems and pain, his writing simply began to describe a pain much, much larger. And without any effort on his part, the words just began forming on the page as he described the agony of our Lord Jesus. Maybe God was showing him a vision of Jesus' death, or maybe He was just giving him the words to write. The “how” is not important. The fact that God knew ahead of time IS!
We looked at the description of crucifixion found in Psalm 22 yesterday. Psalm 22:18 ESV says, “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots."
This was indeed a supernatural prophecy of Jesus' death 1000 years before it happened.
So, back to Jesus' death. Were the soldiers "forced" by God to carry out what had been written? Or did God already know what would happen and simply described it accurately, in detail, 1000 years before it happened?
We've talked about God's Omnipresence and His Omniscience not being limited to the present. Once again, I believe that this is an example of God's foreknowledge of what would actually happen on that day. He's the Only One who can do that! Everyone else can only guess!
The God we serve is so much bigger and wiser than we are -- that He can see the future as clearly as He sees the past.
God's foreknowledge does nothing to impact your freedom of choice. It simply means that we serve an amazingly Mighty God who knows all about our future before it happens. He doesn't cause it to happen – He simply knows it before we do! Psalm 139:16 NASB says, "Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them."
I find it very reassuring and comforting to put my trust in a God like that. I can trust Him completely to lead me and guide me through today.
In His service, dale
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