SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/18/2018
10:28 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The
Commencement of Paul’s Testimony”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 26:1-18
Message of the verses: I hope to finish this part from Acts 26 today
as we have returned from our vacation and I have all of the things I need to
work on my SD’s a little bit easier. In
our last SD we were talking about what Paul’s intentions were all along and
that was to witness to King Agrippa and also all who were in the room where he
was speaking. We have spoken of the fact
that Paul is giving his testimony to Agrippa on what had happened to him when
the Lord Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus at the time when the Lord
saved him. The Lord was talking to Paul
as he tells him “get up and stand on your feet; for
this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness
not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I
will appear to you (verse 16).” I think
that we have also mentioned that this was not the only time when Paul gives his
testimony in the book of Acts. Jesus
goes on to tell Paul “17 rescuing you from the Jewish people and from
the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you.”
Jesus is telling Paul that things will not be easy, and as we have read through
the last part of the book of Acts we see that Paul had a really tough time as
he faithfully gave out the gospel. Tough
time, yes, but it was worthwhile as Paul began many churches and saw many
people come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
John
MacArthur writes “As an apostle, Paul was called to proclaim the good news of
salvation from judgment through the work of Jesus Christ. That life-giving message would first open people’s
eyes. Jesus characterized unbelievers as
blind, led by blind leaders (Matt. 15:14), of whom 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, “The
god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving.’ The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to open
the eyes of the spiritually blind, Jesus taught, by [convicting] ‘the world
concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they
do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father,
and you no longer behold Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this
world has been judged.’ (John 16:8-11)
“Genuine
conviction will result in transformation of life, as those convicted ‘turn from
darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God.’ The Bible teaches that unbelievers live in
spiritual darkness. Paul describes them
as ‘being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God,
because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their
heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to
sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. (Eph.
4:18-19).”
Let
us look at verse eighteen of Acts 26 “18 to open their eyes so that they may
turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they
may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been
sanctified by faith in Me.’” This verse is also spoken from our Lord as he
spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus, and in this verse we see the words light
and darkness. The Bible often uses these
terms to talk about salvation as people who are in the light are saved, and
those in the darkness are lost. While on
our vacation we kind of took a detour from the way we wanted to come home to a
different way because of hurricane Florence and as we were traveling this
different route I asked my wife if she wanted to go and see Mammoth Cave, which
is in Kentucky. The cave system is
somewhere around 700 miles plus and it is actually a national park. My wife had been there when she was very
small and then again later when we were coming home from another vacation, but
I had never been in the cave before. We
got tickets to see a portion of the cave where we had to ride on a bus from the
visitor center to the entrance of the cave and we along with a bus load of
people walked into the cave. After getting
to the portion of the cave that was our destination the lady ranger said that
she was going to turn the lights out and wanted us to put our had in front of
our eyes after the light was out to see if we could see our hand. We of course could not see our hand because
it was the kind of darkness that you could actually feel. I had a light in my pocket and if I would
have decided to turn it on then every person in that portion of the cave could
have seen the light. Light always overcomes
darkness and even a small light in that cave would have been enough light for
every person to see their hand in front of their eyes. Jesus Christ is the light of the world and He
can overcome and has overcome all darkness if people will be willing to look at
Him and be saved.
Another
interesting thing that happened was that this young lady who was leading the
tour went on to tell us what she had been taught and that was that this cave
was over a million years old to which I blustered out “that’s a bunch of
garbage,” to which my wife grabbed a hold of my arm to keep me quiet. I said it before I could stop myself, and I
said it because it was true. The people
in front of us began to laugh. It was a
couple of days later we went to see “The Ark Encounter” which is a full size replicate
of Noah’s Ark, also found in Kentucky.
The ark is one and a half football fields long and at the one end is ten
stories long and is the largest wooden structure found on earth. The next day we went to the Creation Museum a
few miles away and in that you take a tour of what is called the seven “C’s”
which I don’t remember what they all were.
The first one was creation and I believe the last one was Christ. At any rate there was a “C” which spoke of
when God flooded the earth totally in what is called Noah’s flood. It was during this time, some 4300 years ago
that the earth was changed to what it is today, and it was during this time
when Mammoth Cave was formed because of the flood waters. Many other things happened at this time as
the earth was tropical before the flood, and now only a small portion of it is
tropical. People lived longer before the
flood because of the water vapor being above the earth which kept out harmful
rays. The point of all of this is that
once you are in the light, once you have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and
Lord you begin to understand things that you never would understand while in the
darkness and Paul was spreading the light of the glorious gospel in that room
where he was witnessing to King Herod Agrippa and others who were there.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Elisha” (2 Kings 2:15).
Today’s Bible question: “Which book of the Bible tells about a man
who was covered with boils?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/18/2018 11:15 AM
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