SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/1/2019
8:40 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Intro to Eph. 6:1-4”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:1-4
Message of the verses: “1 Children, obey
your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER
(which is the first commandment with a promise), 3 SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH
YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH. 4 Fathers, do not provoke your
children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the
Lord.”
John
MacArthur entitles the 24th chapter in his commentary on Ephesians “The
Responsibilities of Children and Parents.”
As seen it covers the first four verses of chapter six in the book of
Ephesians. As in many of his introductions he has written several pages on this
section which will probably take us several days to go over.
I
suppose that most everyone has heard about putting a frog in cool water inside
a pot and slowly increase the heat until the frog is killed as the water begins
to boil. When we look at the family in
our country in the day and age we live in we can see this same kind of thing
happening. Sorry to say that this kind
of things is also happening to the Christian family in our country. A number of years ago, actually perhaps 30
years ago when we watched most of our TV by the use of an Antenna we only got a
few channels and as the programs on our TV’s continued to get more morally worse
and worse we would turn to the new stations, and the station in our area was 43
and so I made the statement that the families were watching the new 43 were
getting better moral programs than the other main stations. Today you can watch about what you want to on
cable and as stated it was like the frog in the pot not realizing the water was
going to kill him in the end as it began to boil.
In
the Christian world today we actually see the divorce rate very close to the
divorce rate of those who are non believers, which helps us to understand the
decline of the family in our country.
John MacArthur states “It is high time we leave the evil system that is
engulfing and destroying us and reestablish ourselves in God’s revealed
standards of fidelity and moral purity.
We have long lost the luxury of living in a society that gives some
nominal support to the church and to Christian values.”
I
have to say that my wife and I have been too many Christian marriage seminars
and have heard some wonderful truths at them, but it seems that most everyone
who attends them will do better for a while and then fall into the same old
ways they were in before they came. The
best way for families to get better is to read and understand the Word of God,
to have times of prayer to seek the Lord for help and one of the things that I
know that I need to do is to read more and watch less TV. I can also say that I am not convinced that
psychology books can help in the raising of our children. When I was a child the families in our
country were mostly made up of a husband who worked, and a wife who stayed home
to care for her 2-4 children. Today in
most families both parents work and the children are many times sent to the
daycare centers. Not good!
I
will conclude this SD with another quote from John MacArthur’s commentary.
“When God called the Hebrews
to be His chosen people, He destined them to be the people through whom ‘all
the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Gen. 12:3). At Sinai He commissioned them to be ‘a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Ex. 19:6). Israel was to be a witnessing nation, a
witnessing people, for God. They were
not called to be simply a repository of God’s truth and blessing but to be a
channel for His truth and blessing to be shared with the whole world.
The heart of God’s truth is
about God Himself. The central truth of
Old Testament revelation is: ‘The Lord
is our God, the Lord is one!’ (Deut. 6:4).
The corollary truth is about man’s response to God: ‘And you shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you
today, shall be on your heart’ (vv. 5-6).
That message Israel was to take for herself and then pass on to the
world.”
Lord willing, we will continue on this
path in our next SD.
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action:” “In the New Testament, the theme of
encouragement is everywhere, especially in Paul’s writings. When Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus, he
reminded those young pastors of the critical importance of using God’s Word as
a tool for encouragement.”
9/1/2019 9:12 PM
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