SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/1/2019
2:17 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Spiritual
Alienation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
2:12-13
Message of the verses: “12 remember
that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth
of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and
without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far
off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
We
move from “Social Alienation” to “Spiritual Alienation” in today’s SD and we will
be looking at five different sub-sections from this section, “Separate from
Christ;” “Excluded from the commonwealth of Israel;” “Strangers to the
covenants of Promise;” “Hopeless, Having no Hope;” fifth and most important “The
Gentiles were without God.” Needless to
say this will take some time to go through these different sub-sections.
I think it best to quote the first paragraph of John
MacArthur’s commentary on this section to help us see where we will be
going: “A much more important Gentile
alienation was spiritual: ‘remember that
you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of
Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without
God in the world.’ Although there was no
moral difference between Jew and Gentile (as vv. 1-10 show), there was a
difference in God’s dealing with them as men.
Before Christ came, the Jews were the people of promise from God, but
the Gentiles as a people were cut off from God in five different ways.” As mentioned this is what we will be looking
at for a while.
The Gentiles were Christless (“Separate from Christ).
As
we can now read of how our Savior came to planet earth, and how we believe that
He will return to the clouds to take His bride with Him, and then how He will
come back to planet earth to end the war of Armageddon, and then set up His
kingdom, this gives us hope. However
before Christ came to planet earth, the Gentiles had no hope of any
Messiah. MacArthur adds “The popular
Stoic philosophers taught that history repeated itself in three-thousand-year
cycles. At the end of each cycle the
universe is burned up and then reborn to repeat the same futile pattern.”
When
we think of the goddess Diana, or Atremis which were the gods that the
Ephesians worshipped as seen in the book of Acts we can say that these pagan
deities were but extensions of men’s own weakness and sins. Some may get the idea that Diana was a
beautiful looking goddess, but that would not be the truth. This goddess was an ugly beast, with nipples
hanging down on which her brood of little beasts suckled. (From MacArthur’s
Commentary and from pictures that I looked at.)
We
will continue looking at the next sub-section in our next SD, Lord willing.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Looking back from how I was alienated spiritual from the Lord is a good
thing to see.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I really don’t make New Years resolutions so
to say, but I do have goals that I would like to do better at for 2019, and the
first one comes from Romans 12:3 which I will publish here “For through the
grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of
himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as
God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”
There is one more thing that I have added to my prayer list for me and
that is that I will do a better job in looking at truth as opposed to emotions.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “1 Corinthians 13.”
Today’s Bible question: “How old was Joseph when he interpreted Pharaoh’s
dream?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/1/2019 2:46 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment