SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/4/2020
11:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The
Motive”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 3:2b
Message of the verse: “2 “Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
In
our last SD we only looked at the word “repent” which was John’s message, and
not in today’s SD we look at the motive for his message of repent, and that is “for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The
reason for the people to repent is that after 400 years of God not speaking to
the people of Israel they now receive the message by John that there is coming
a King and it was his job to make sure that the people were ready to receive
their King. Unfortunately that would not
be the case for they would rather kill their King than to serve their King, and
also it is unfortunate that this is still the case of many people living today.
I
have mentioned in many other SD’s that if the people were really on the ball in
their study of Scripture they would have known that it was close for their
Messiah to come. Daniel’s ninth chapter
tells of how this would take place as in verses 24-27 we see the most wonderful
prophecy ever written. The prophecy is
best understood as looking at a giant time clock with actually 490 years on
it. The prophecy begins in the 2nd
chapter of Nehemiah, which is where the time clock is started. It will actually end, that is the first 483
years will end in the middle of the 19th chapter of the book of Luke
where we see Jesus offering Himself as their king, but according to the
prophecy He will be killed, but “not for Himself.” So between what is written in Nehemiah
chapter two and what is written in Luke 19 the Messiah would have had to come
and I have a pretty good Candidate in the Carpenter from Nazareth. By the way the last 7 years of this prophecy
will usher in the last seven years on this earth as we know it today, and to
kick off that part of the prophecy we will see the Antichrist sign a treaty
with the state of Israel, and then at the end of that seven years we will see
the Lord Jesus Christ return to planet earth as the conquering King as
described in the middle to the end of Revelation chapter 19.
We
will quote two paragraphs from John MacArthur’s commentary as we close this
rather short SD: “But John’s message was
God’s message, and he would not compromise it or clutter it with the popular
misconceptions and delusions of his own day and his own people. He had no word but God’s word, and he
proclaimed no kingdom but God’s kingdom and no preparation but God’s preparation. That preparation was repentance. God’s standard would not change, even if
every Jew was excluded and every Gentile saved.
God knew that some Jews would be saved, but none apart from personal
repentance and conversion.
Although
the precise phrase is not found there, ‘the kingdom of heaven’ is basically an
Old Testament concept. David declares
that ‘the Lord is King forever and ever’ (Ps. 10:16; cf. 29:10), that His
kingdom is everlasting, and that His dominion ‘endures throughout all
generations’ (Ps. 145:13). Daniel speaks
of ‘the God of heaven [who] will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed’
(Dan. 2:44; cf. Ezek. 37:25), a ‘kingdom [that] is an everlasting kingdom’
(Dan. 4:3). The God of heaven is the
King of heaven, and the heavenly kingdom is God’s kingdom.”
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”
is David Jeremiah’s short comments from our last Scriptural passages, from
yesterday’s SD.
“There are times when the only way to
find the encouragement we need is to get alone with God.” Truer words were never spoken as far as I am
concerned.
We
only have one more section in this little book by David Jeremiah and as of yet
I really don’t have anything to put into this section of my Spiritual Diaries
after we are done with this last section.
1/4/2020 11:54 AM
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