SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/22/2017
8:55 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Strong in
Heart
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
2:2a
Message of the
verses: “that their hearts may be
encouraged,”
We do a lot of looking up Greek words in our Bible study
time and we have another one to look up that should be familiar with most
people and the word is “encouraged” and the Greek word is parakaleo, a word that the Holy Spirit is called, and the reason
that the Holy Spirit is called by this name is because the word means “to call
alongside.” I remember listening to a
series of tapes, and yes I mean tapes that were sermons by Dr. David Jeremiah
and it was on encouragement and he stated that if a person is encouraging
someone he is pouring courage into them.
John MacArthur writes on this word “Because a person can
be called alongside for many purposes, the word has a wide range of
meanings. They include to entreat,
appeal to, summon, comfort, exhort, or encourage. In the present context, however, it could be
translated ‘strengthen’ because the Colossians were beset by false teachers and
needed strengthening rather than comfort.
“Commentator William Barclay cites an example of parakaleo from classical Greek that
parallels its usage here.
‘There was a Greek regiment
which had lost heart and was utterly dejected.
The general sent a leader to talk to it to such purpose that courage was
reborn and a body of dispirited men became fit again for heroic action. That is what [parakaleo] means here. It is
Paul’s prayer that the Church may be filled with that courage which can cope
with any situation.’”
In
this partial verse we see that Paul desires that their hearts may be encouraged
and we could also replace “strengthen” with the word encouraged. MacArthur writes “The biblical writers
associated the emotions with what the King James Version picturesquely calls
the ‘bowels’ (cf. Ps. 22:14; Song of Sol. 5:4; Lam. 2:11; 1 John 3:17).” Let us take a look at Psalm 22:14 “14 I am
poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax;
it is melted in the middle of my bowels (KJV).” Now
Song of Solomon 5:4 “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my
bowels were moved for him (KJV).” Ok
that is enough to make the point I want to make and that when we see this word “bowel”
we are looking at the seat of emotions, which some think is the heart, but the
heart is the seat of thinking or brains.
I had to laugh when I was listening to the sermon on this subject and
MacArthur brought up Song of Solomon 5:4 and was describing the verse so that
his listeners could understand it. He
was stating that when her beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door or
the door handle that she became excited in a number of different ways
specifically we could say that she was aroused but it would be hard to
understand it when we look at this word “bowels” unless we knew that this
speaks of the seat of emotions.
We will pick up from here
in our next SD.
2/22/2017 09:30 PM
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