SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/25/2015
9:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Jesus Christ, The Correspondent
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
3:14c
Message of the
verses: “The Amen, the faithful and
true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:”
The first thing I want to do is to quote from my Spiritual
Diary from 3/23/2005 on what I wrote on the word “Amen,” and then I will be
adding more to that quote on what this word means. ““The word "amen" is a most remarkable word. It was
transliterated directly from the Hebrew into the Greek of the New Testament,
then into Latin and into English and many other languages, so that it is
practically a universal word. It has been called the best known word in human
speech. The word is directly related—in fact, almost identical—to the Hebrew
word for "believe" (amam), or faithful. Thus, it came to mean
"sure" or "truly", an expression of absolute trust and
confidence.” (HMM)”
We noted when looking at the church at Philadelphia that
Christ did not use a quotation from the vision that John saw in chapter one,
and the same is true with this letter to Laodicea.
As quoted from my older Spiritual Diary the first words
that Christ uses to describe Himself is “The Amen,” and we want to look further
into the meaning of this word at this time.
We must note that this is the only time in the entire Word of God that
this word is used to describe Christ and it reminds the reader of what is
written in Isaiah 65:16 “"Because he who is blessed in the earth Will be
blessed by the God of truth; And he who swears in the earth Will swear by the
God of truth; Because the former troubles are forgotten, And because they are
hidden from My sight!” The word “truth”
is the Hebrew word “amen.” So we are
looking at the God of amen or as it says the God of Truth. Every word that God has ever spoken is truth
and we know that the Lord Jesus Christ is seen in John Gospel as the Word of
God. Now through the Word of God the
word amen is used to affirm truth. Let
us look at a couple from the OT “and this water that brings a curse shall go
into your stomach, and make your abdomen swell and your thigh waste away."
And the woman shall say, "Amen. Amen." (Num. 5:22).” Then Ezra blessed the LORD the great God. And
all the people answered, "Amen, Amen!" while lifting up their hands;
then they bowed low and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground (Neh.
8:6).” Now a couple from the New
Testament “’And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [[For
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]]’ (Matt.
6:13).” to the only wise God, through
Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen (Rom. 16:27).” John MacArthur writes “where the underlying
Greek amen us rendered ‘verily’ in
the KJV and ‘truly’ in the NASB.” Now he
wrote this statement after listing a number of verses in the Bible in which
some of them are quoted in the sentences before this quote. He then goes on to write “Whatever God says
in true and certain; therefore, He is the God of truth.”
So we have learned that Christ is the God of truth, but
there is more to this word than that.
Let us look at 2 Corinthians 1:20 “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him
they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God
through us.” What we can see from this
statement is that “It is through the person and work of Christ that all God’s
promises and covenants are fulfilled and guaranteed. All the Old Testament promises of forgiveness,
mercy, lovingkindness, grace, hope, and eternal life are bound up in Jesus Christ’s
life, death and resurrection. He is the “Amen”
because He is the One who confirmed all of God’s promises.” (John MacArthur’s Commentary on Revelation)
The church at Laodicea should have no problem in
understanding that what Christ is about to write to them is not going to be
truthful, for He is truth “Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me (John 14:6).”
We have one more thing to look at in the description that
Christ gives of Himself and that is He calls Himself the Beginning of the
creation of God.” As I was listening to
the sermon from John MacArthur this morning while walking to nowhere on my
treadmill he stated that when you look at how this statement is translated into
the English it seems like it is saying that Christ was a created begin, but we
know that this is not truth. Now it is
true that the humanity of Christ came into existence when He was formed in the
womb of Mary, but Christ as always existed, and in fact He is the One who
created the world, and that is what this means.
MacArthur says that the English is ambiguous and misleading. He then goes on to write that “there is no
ambiguity in the Greek text, however. Arche (Beginning) does not mean that
Christ was the first person God created, but rather that Christ Himself is the
source or origin of creation (cf. Rev. 22:13).
Through His power everything was created (John 1:3; Heb. 1:2).”
MacArthur then goes on to write that the church at
Colossae, the letter that Paul wrote to them has similar things in it as they
too had a problem with Christ’s deity, just as the church at Laodicea did, in
fact when Paul penned his letter to the Colossian church he told them to read
it to the church in Laodicea and to have their letter written to them. That letter could well have been the letter
he wrote to the Ephesian church for that letter was a “circuit” letter that was
supposed to circulate to the different churches in the area. The letter of Ephesians that Paul wrote tells
it readers how the church is to operate, and from the looks of things both
Colossae and Laodicea needed to read it.
MacArthur finishes by writing “Firstborn’ (prototokos) is not limited to the first
one born chronologically, but refers to the supreme or preeminent one, the one
receiving the highest honor (c. Ps. 89:27).
Christ is thus (rche) of the
creation, the supreme person (prototokos)
in it.”
It was because of this damning heresy of not believing
that Christ is truly God was why this church was dead and also why many
churches are dead in the world today.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: My testimony of
how I became a believer in Jesus Christ took a different route than many, and I
will not go into it at this time, but I do want to say that when I first came
to Christ I had some bad thoughts of who Christ was and if not for the grace of
God I could have gone down the wrong road believing like the church at Laodicea
went, but my conversion was true and since I am one of God’s true children He
would not allow me to believe an error like that. For that I am truly thankful and have been
truly blessed.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to love the Lord with all of my
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and better understand and live in the love He
has for me.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Solomon.”
Today’s Bible question: “How long was Joash hidden before becoming
king of Judah?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/25/2015 10:41 AM
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