SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/10/2019
4:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “Magi
from the East”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
2:1-2
Message of the
verses: “1
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king,
behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 2 "Where is He
who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have
come to worship Him.’”
As I was listening to MacArthur’s
sermon on the subject of the Magi from the East he was talking about that
during this time that there was a lot of widespread expectation of the coming
of a great king. I don’t see the need to
go into details about this but if you check out yesterday’s SD you will find
that I wrote about Daniel’s prophecy found in the ninth chapter that he
actually wrote about when the Messiah would come and would die.
It is actually unknown as to how the
God of revelation caused the magi to know that the King of the Jews had already
been born, but as stated they had Daniel’s prophecy to aid them in this. The star is mentioned in the last part of
verse two and so they saw the star in the east, but the Bible does not say that
they followed that star to Jerusalem.
There is much speculation as to what this star was.
John MacArthur writes “Since the
Bible does not identify or explain the star, we cannot be dogmatic, but it may
have been the glory of the Lord—the same glory that shone around the shepherds
where Jesus’ birth was announced to them by the angel (Luke 2:9). Throughout the Old Testament we are told of
God’s glory being manifested as light, God radiating His presence (Shekinah) in
the form of ineffable light. The Lord
guided the children of Israel through the wilderness by ‘a pillar of cloud by
day…and in a pillar of fire by night’ (Ex. 12:21). When Moses went up on the Mount Sinai, ‘to
the eyes of the sons of Israel the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like
a consuming fire on the mountaintop’ (Ex. 24:17). On a
latter occasion, after Moses had inscribed the Ten Commandments on stone
tablets, his face still glowed with the light of God’s glory when he returned
to the people (Ex. 34:30.”
These are OT sightings of the glory
of the Lord, which is great light, and now we want to talk about some NT
examples beginning with the transfiguration of our Lord as seen in Matthew
17:2. “And He was transfigured before
them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as
light.” Another example is seen in Acts
9 when the future apostle Paul, before his conversion saw the glory of the Lord
in a light so bright that it actually caused him not to see for three
days. Let us look at Revelation 1:16 “In
His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged
sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength.” This is similar to what Daniel saw too. MacArthur adds “In his vision of the New
Jerusalem, the future heavenly dwelling of all believers, he reports that ‘the
city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God
has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb’ (Rev. 21:23).”
In our SD for tomorrow, Lord
willing, we will look at the definitions of both the Hebrew and Greek worst for
stars.
Our quotation
from “Love in Action” we will look at David Jeremiah’s comments on Luke 10:9.
“ON the first
Easter afternoon, as the sky darkened toward dusk, Jesus appeared to two men
who were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus.
They were with the Eleven (the Twelve minus Judas), to whom Mary
Magdalene and the other women came with the incredible news that Jesus had
risen from the dead. They had heard the
witness of the women, yet they held onto their doubt and sadness.”
12/10/2019 4:49
PM
No comments:
Post a Comment