SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/15/2020
10:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro to
Matt. 5:5
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:5
Message of the verses: “5 Blessed are
the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” (AV)
I
mentioned yesterday that it was my plan to listen to a sermon from John
MacArthur yesterday on this verse. It
was a very long sermon, over an hour, and the first part where he gave his
introduction took up about 15-20 minutes as he was speaking about how much of a
shock that this verse in particular would have been a shock to those Jews as
they listened to Jesus, a shock because they thought that meekness was weakness
and it was their desire to have their Messiah bring them out from the
oppression of Rome.
Instead
of taking a few days to develop this introduction I think that I will quote
different parts of MacArthur’s sermon on this verse so we can better understand
it and then not take a long time going over his introduction.
“Let me set the scene for you.
A little over a half century before Jesus was born in 63 BC, Pompey had annexed
Palestine for Rome. And thus Jewish independence came to an end.
And by the way, that independence had been gained in a blood bath revolution called
the Maccabean Revolution. And they had fought to be free from
Greece. And it wasn’t very long that they knew that freedom until they
were under the bondage of the imperial power of Rome.
“From then on, from 63 BC on, the
land was ruled partly through Herodian kings. The Herodians were a
family. It’s like a last name. They were a family of kings
appointed by Caesar. And in addition to the Herodian kings - and he gave
the people in Palestine kings because they were big on kings, but in addition
to that - he gave them procurators or governors, the most famous of whom is, to
us, Pilate.
“And so they were all this time
under Roman domination of these puppet kings, and the Herod family, and these
procurators, and governors. At the same time, virtually all other land
with which the New Testament is concerned was also under the subjection of
Rome.
“And this was an oppressive, sad day
for Jewish people. They literally despised this Roman oppression.
In fact, to be honest with you, they wouldn’t even admit it. When Jesus
was talking to them in John 8, talking to the Jewish leaders, it was amazing,
because he said to them, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you
free.” And they answered, “We are Abraham’s seed and were never in bondage
to any man.” Pretty stupid statement. They wouldn’t even admit it
that they were slaves to Rome. “We’ve never been in bondage to anybody,”
they said. They wouldn’t even acknowledge it. They were
proud. They despised the Roman yoke.
“The whole story of Jesus then, you
see, falls within the framework of a nation in bondage to Rome. The
shadow of Caesar literally dulls all of the light that scatters itself over the
New Testament. You see Caesar on every page. And at the same time -
now watch this - there was a movement in the hearts of the Jews to believe that
the Messiah was coming. There were some people who wouldn’t experience
death until he came. Remember Simeon and Anna? There was the
feeling that there was something about to happen. The Messiah was about
to come. The kingdom of God would be established and the Old Testament
was clear on this and there was this feeling that it was going to happen.
And then this individual called Jesus Christ arrived on the scene and he opened
his mouth in Mark chapter 1 and look what Mark tells us he said.
“Mark 1:14. “Now after John
was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom
of God and saying - ” watch “ - the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is
at hand. Repent and believe the gospel of the good news.” And man,
they got excited. They had known this Roman domination and this Roman
oppression. And now all of a sudden here came a wonder worker, a miracle
worker, a man who spoke like never another man spoke, a man who did things like
never another man did. Maybe this is the Messiah. And when he had
fed the multitude on the side of the hill, they were ready to believe it and
they wanted to grab him and make him a king and begin a political military
revolution that would throw off the yoke of Rome.
“They were excited about it.
They were looking for a Messiah to overthrow Rome. They were looking for
a great general who could set up a Jewish revolution that would bring about
independence by military action. Now watch this. Primarily
the military overthrow, the military concept of Messiah belonged to a group of
Jews called the Zealots. There were four basic parties in Judaism:
Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and Essenes. The Essenes were the mystics
who lived out in Qumran where we found the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were
the ones who copied those.
“The Zealots were the political
activists who weren’t too concerned about religion. They were really
concerned about politics. The Pharisees were the religious conservatives
and the Sadducees were the religious liberals. But the Zealots really
wanted the Messiah to come and they believed that he would be a great General
who would come and build a military power that would overthrow Rome. So
theirs was a military kingdom.
“On the other hand, the Pharisees
were equally anxious to overthrow Rome, only they weren’t looking for a
military kingdom, they were looking for a holy commonwealth. They were
looking for a restoration of the Old Testament theocracy. They were
looking for Messiah to rule in religious fashion. And so you might look
at it this way, the Zealots looked for a military Messiah and the Pharisees
looked for a miraculous Messiah.
“The Zealots probably believed that
the Messiah would make a military action and the Pharisees probably believed
that the Messiah would do something miraculous and just throw Rome off by a
great supernatural divine miracle. While both were waiting for
catastrophic intervention of God and the coming of the Messiah, they knew what
Daniel said in 7:13-14. They knew the Messiah would come in clouds and
great glory and they didn’t know how it would happen, but they each had their
own ideas.
“And even the apostles, the twelve
apostles, expected it. In Acts 1:6, they said, “Lord, wilt
thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” “When are you
going to do it? When are we going to see either the military or the
miraculous?” But this was not Jesus’ purpose. And that’s why in
John Chapter 18, when Jesus was talking to Pilate and Pilate was trying to
figure out what kind of a king it is that doesn’t have a kingdom, what kind of
a king it is that doesn’t have a throne, what kind of a king it is that doesn’t
have a crown. And so he was talking to Jesus about whether he was a king
or not. And he said to Him, “Are you a king?” And he said, “My
kingdom is not of this world.”
“You don’t understand what kind of
king I am. It isn’t my approach to function militarily. And I’m not
even about to pull off a miraculous coup and overthrow Rome. That’s not
my purpose.” He said, if he wanted to, he could have called legions of
angels, legions of them, thousands of them. And by the way, if one angel
can slay 185,000 Assyrians in one shot, a legion of angels could handle
anybody.”
I don’t want to put too much on one
SD and so we will continue this introduction from MacArthur’s sermon in our
next SD.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I trust
that the Lord will use this rather long introduction to set the stage for the
importance of what this verse means.
My Steps
of Faith for Today: I continue to desire
to learn and grow in the Lord as I study these different beatitudes from the
Sermon on the Mount by asking to Lord to use them to teach me contentment,
humility and then to give me great joy as I study His Word.
4/15/2020
11:08 AM
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