SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/21/2020
9:25 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The
Consolation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
3:11-12
Message of the verses: “11 "As for
me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is
mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 "And His winnowing fork is in His hand,
and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat
into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’”
We
have been talking about repentance, actually we have been talking about
repentance for five days, and not it is time to move onto the good news that
John is going to be talking about in these two verses the Messiah and what He
will do for those who truly repent, and that is eternal life.
In
verse eleven John talks about the difference between the baptism of repentance
that he offers and the baptism of the Messiah.
John states “I baptize you with water for repentance.” Now we have already talking about the only
baptism that the Jews gave and that happened to what we call apostolates, those
Gentiles who desired to come into the Jewish faith, and what John is doing must
be similar to the Jewish baptism for Gentiles, but in fact the Jewish people
needed it too, and we stated that perhaps this was upsetting the Jewish
religious leaders. I suppose that it
would be better to say that John’s baptism reflected the Jewish baptism but was
not exactly the same. Paul explains John’s
baptism in Acts 19:4 “Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of
repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that
is, in Jesus.’”
Now
as we continue in these verses we see a second baptism that John speaks
of. This baptism comes after John and he
states it “is mightier than I.” John
says that he is not fit to take off the sandals of the Messiah, and a slave who
has that job of removing ones sandals is the lowest of all slaves. However we see in John 13:5-15 that Jesus did
this for His disciples on the night before He was crucified.
One
of the ways that the Messiah would be mightier than John was that He would baptize
with the Holy Spirit, and we can see that this happened on the Day of
Pentecost. Jesus promised that the “Helper”
(The Holy Spirit) would come and as stated that happened on the Day of
Pentecost as seen in the second chapter of the book of Acts. When that happened to the disciples it put
them into the body of Christ, the church, the universal church. All true believers have this happen to them
as soon as they become a born-again believer.
Perhaps
the faith Jews who heard this were thinking about what Joel said “"It will come about after this That I
will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will
prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions’”
(Joel 2:28).
Now
we want to look at the third baptism John mentions and that is of “fire.” MacArthur writes “Many interpreters take this
to be a part of the Holy Spirit baptism, which began at Pentecost and which in
that instance was accompanied by ‘tongues of fire’ (Acts 2:3). But the Acts account says that those tongues ‘appeared
to them’ (that is, the waiting disciples) ‘as of fire.’ They were not fire, but looked like licks of
fire. In his last promise of the
soon-coming baptism with the Holy Spirit, Jesus said nothing about actual fire
being a part of the experience (Acts 1:5).
And when, a short time later, Cornelius and his household were baptized
with the Holy Spirit, no fire was present (Acts 10:44; 11:16; cf. 8:17; 19:6).”
There
are other possible interpretations of this baptism, but none worth mentioning
at this time. MacArthur goes on to write
“Consequently, it seems best to consider ‘fire’ as representing God’s coming
judgment, which, as we have seen, is so frequently in Scripture symbolized by
fire. In both the preceding and
following verses (10, 12) John clearly uses fire to represent judgment and
punishment. It is impossible that the
middle reference to fire would concern and entirely different subject. Both of the adjoining verses contrast the
fates of believers and unbelievers, those who bear good fruit and those who do
not (v. 10) and the valuable wheat and the worthless chaff (v. 12). It therefore seems logical and natural to
take verse 11 also as a contrast between believers (those baptized ‘with the
Holy Spirit) and unbelievers (those baptized with the ‘fire’ of God’s
judgment).”
What
we see in 12 goes along with what we saw in the preceding two verses and that
is John again gives consolation to believers however he gives warnings to
unbelievers as he states “"And His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He
will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into
the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’”
I
believe we have talked about threshing floors in earlier SD’s. However what happened in the threshing floors
was that grain was harvested there. At
the end of the process of harvesting grain the farmer would take his winnowing
fork and throw the grain and chaff up into the air and the chaff being lighter
would blow away from the grain. Once the
grain was gathered then the chaff would be gathered and burned up with fire. Jesus also spoke of this and in the 25th
chapter of Matthew we see that prophetically at the end of the tribulation
period when Christ returns that He will separate the sheep, being believers
from the goats, being unbelievers and the “sheep” will go into the Millennial
Kingdom and the goats into judgment where there will be fire.
MacArthur
concludes this section and this 6th chapter by writing “John’s
introduction to the person and ministry of the Messiah prepared the people for
the arrival of their King.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is good to understand what John the
Baptist spoke about and how he did what he was called to do and that was to
prepare people for the coming of the Lord, the first time He came. It is my desire, especially through these
Spiritual Diaries that go onto the blogs to, in a small way, help prepare
people for what I hope will be the soon coming of our Lord in what we call the
rapture of the church.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To continue to find joy in the Word of God,
to continue to grow in the Lord Jesus Christ as I fight the good fight. 1/21/2020 10:30 AM
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