SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/16/2018
7:49 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-5 “Salvation is From Sin”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
2:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2 in which you formerly walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we
too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh
and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
1 You were spiritually dead through your sins and
failures, 2 all the time that you followed this world’s ideas of living, and
obeyed the evil ruler of the spiritual realm—who is indeed fully operative today in those who disobey
God. 3 We all lived like that in the past, and followed the desires and
imaginings of our lower nature, being in fact under the wrath of God by nature,
like everyone else (Phillips).”
In
verse two Paul is speaking about the world system, which is headed up by Satan,
“the prince of the power of the air.”
This world system has probably many things in common, can one of them is
that they do not believe in God, but they do believe in Satan, even though they
do not realize that they do believe in him.
Now when we look at “the power of the air,” this is probably talking
about Satan’s hosts, those demons who followed him as soon as he fell into sin
as seen in Isaiah 14, and Ezekiel 28. I
want to look at a verse in the gospel of John which will show us that one day
when the Lord casts him out “"Now judgment is upon this world; now the
ruler of this world will be cast out (John 12:31).” This happened when Christ died on the cross,
which has thus made Satan doomed even though he still has power. Now I want to go back to give a verse which
actually goes will with what we have just been talking about and that is the
prince of the power of the air: “12 For
our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers,
against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces
of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).” Here Paul is
talking about the order that is seen in the demon world, and this world is our
enemy. John MacArthur writes “During the
present age he and his demon host dominate, pressure, and control every person
who is unsaved. He is the
personification of the spiritual death because he is the personification of
rebellion against God—and so is the system he designed.”
There are three elements that most
characterize our present world system, and they are humanism, materialism, and illicit
sex. If we take a look at TV commercials
we can see the truth here in these three elements. How come you have to have a beautiful half
dressed woman to sell most anything that is advertized on TV? Because sex sells
that is why. Humanism places man above
all else. Man is the measure and the end
of all things. I think this is why
people but so easily into the impossible theory of evolution, for evolution
causes God not to exist as everything we see that God actually created to the
evolutionist is just a big accident.
Once God is out of the way then man takes over as each man is his own
boss. Materialism places a high value in
the physical things, and money seems to top the list, and the reason is because
money is the means of acquiring all the things man desires. MacArthur writes “Sexual perversion dominates
modern western society as it has no other societies since the lowest periods of
ancient Greece and Rome. Along with the
humanistic appeal to self-interest and the materialistic appeal to
self-aggrandizement, sexual vice is used to promote and persuade in virtually
every field of marketing, pandering to self-pleasure. That triumvirate represents the spirit of our
age, the current course of this world.” I have to say that the sermons that were
used to write this commentary were preached in the year 1978, and I have to say
that in the forty years since these words were written that things in all
elements we are discussing have gotten much, much worse.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “John the Baptist” (Luke
7:19-20).
Today’s Bible question: “Which book records a man using a stone for a
pillow?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/16/2018 8:23 PM
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