SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/17/2019
12:22 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Intro
to Eph. 5:25-33”
Bible Reading & Mediation Reference: Ephesians
5:25-33
Message of the verses: “25 Husbands, love
your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26
so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory,
having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and
blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own
flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as
Christ also does the church, 30
because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS
FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE
FLESH. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and
the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own
wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her
husband.”
To
kind of pick up from our last SD I want to look at 2 Timothy 3:1-5 & 13 “1 But
realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of
money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful,
unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable,
malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of
pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they
have denied its power; Avoid such men as these…13 But evil men and impostors
will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” I can’t help but think as I read these verses
that we are living in times just as Paul wrote to Timothy about, and one must
also remember that 2 Timothy is the very last letter that Paul wrote that is
contained in the Word of God.
John
MacArthur writes “In that awesome list of sins there are several—such as
disobedience to parents, lack of love (the Greek term, astorgos, refers to lack of natural affection for one’s family),
and brutality—that are directly undermining the home today. But every sin that weakens the individual
also weakens the home to some extent; every
aspect of ungodliness weakens the relationships between husband and wife,
parents and children, and brothers and sisters.
The home has become fair game for every deceiver, every sexual pervert,
every exploiter, as Satan mounts his great attack on the foundation stone of
society.”
We
will have one more quote from MacArthur on this important subject of the family
and then we will continue this subject in our next SD, Lord willing.
Because
of the curse on marriage at the Fall and the inclinations of man’s fallen
nature and of the world to oppose God’s way, the family has always had
difficulty. In the western culture of
our day, however, it is under an onslaught seemingly unlike any other in this
society’s history. There is less chance
than before of a family’s living together in harmony, love, and mutual respect
apart from God’s justify it. And those
who persist in flouting God’s way are destined, as Paul prophesied, to go from
bad to worse. Marriage, along with every
other institution and design of God, will be more and more debased, as men go
deeper into sexual perversion and selfishness.”
As mentioned in our last SD this commentary on Ephesians by John
MacArthur is close to 40 years old, and the messages that he used to help write
this commentary are closer to 50 years old, so things have gotten considerably worse
since then.
In today’s SD we will be looking at the
very last quotation from the series that I have from Dr. David Jeremiah, and
this one comes from Brother Lawrence: “We
ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards
not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”
8/17/2019 12:45 PM
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