Saturday, March 7, 2020

PT-2 "Preaching" (Matt. 4:23b)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/7/2020 8:09 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                    Focus:  PT-2 “Preaching”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                         Reference:  Matt. 4:23b

            Message of the verse:  and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”

            Jesus comes proclaiming the “gospel of the kingdom” to the Jews in Galilee, but the Jews had a big problem that goes all the way back to what is written in 1 Samuel 12:12 “"When you saw that Nahash the king of the sons of Ammon came against you, you said to me, ’No, but a king shall reign over us,’ although the LORD your God was your king.”  Samuel was very upset about this because he knew that the nation of Israel did not want God to rule over them but wanted a man, a king to rule over them.  As we move to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the Jews again said that they did not want this man to rule over them, and so a second time they rejected God’s leadership, and this caused them to miss the kingdom at that time, for if they would have wanted Jesus, the Son of God to rule over them, then the kingdom would have been ushered in.  After the Jews went into captivity and then returned from Captivity they were under the rule of first Babylon while in captivity, then the Medes and Persians after they came out of captivity followed by the Greeks, and finally the Romans.  The Romans allowed them to pretty much rule themselves with the exception of they were not allowed to put a person to death, and this was the reason they took Jesus to Pilate to have Him sentenced to death.

            Much of Jesus’ preaching was to tell the Jews that He had come to be their King and to bring in God’s perfect kingdom.  They would not listen as noted above, and so up until May of 1948 the Jews never possessed the Promised Land again. 

            John MacArthur writes “Jesus spoke powerful words, eternal words, words like no man before had every spoken.  Even the people in His hometown of Nazareth ‘were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were failing from His lips’ (Luke 4:22).  When He went down to Capernaum, ‘they were amazed at His teaching, for His message was with authority’ (v. 32).  Jesus’ cleverest enemies could never trap Him in His words, or confuse Him or confound Him or find any error in what He said.  His teaching and His preaching about the kingdom were the divine credentials of His words.”  So ends our comments on Jesus’ preaching and Lord willing we will begin to look at His healing ministry in our next SD.

3/7/2020 8:27 AM

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