SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/19/2020 10:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Presupposition: Corruption and Darkness”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
5:13-16
Message of the verses: “13 "You are
the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made
salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out
and trampled under foot by men. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set
on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it
under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the
house. 16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your
good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
It
is important for us to understand where we are going as look at salt and light
as described in these verses. These
figures of salt and light emphasize different characteristics of influence,
however their basic purpose is the same.
MacArthur tells us that these “will both be studied from the aspects of
the presupposition of the world’s corruption and darkness, the plan for
believers’ godly dominion in the world, the problem of the danger of failure,
and the purpose of glorifying God.”
Notice again that they will be studied together in these different categories
as we begin with the first one in today’s SD.
As
we look at salt and light we realize that the world needs both, salt because
the world is corrupt, and light because it is dark. I quote from G. Campbell Morgan who said, “Jesus,
looking out over the multitudes of His day, saw the corruption, the
disintegration of life at every point, its breakup, its spoliation; and because
of His love of the multitudes, He knew the thing that they needed most was salt
in order that the corruption should be arrested. He saw them also wrapped in gloom, sitting in
darkness, groping amid mists and fogs.
He knew that they needed, above everything else,…light.” After looking at our world today I see it has
not changed, except perhaps it got progressively worse as technology grew. “But evil men and impostors will proceed from
bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).
It
seems to me that John MacArthur agrees with me as he writes “The world cannot
do anything but get worse, because it has no inherent goodness to build on, no
inherent spiritual and moral life in which it can grow. Year after year the system of evil
accumulates a deeper darkness.”
A
student was told by his college professor that because man is evolving that
marriage was failing and that we don’t need marriage any more. He stated that “Marriage was falling off just
as his prehensile tail had done millions of years ago.” Anyone who has read many of my Spiritual
Diaries knows what I think about evolution, and it is not good for sure. All one has to do is look back in the history
of mankind for 150 years and ask the question “are we better now or are we
worse now? The answer is that we are
worse off now and one reason is technology, the more man learns the more evil
he becomes. Why then is technology a bad
thing? Well technology can certainly be
used in good was as I use technology to post my Spiritual Diaries onto my two
blogs each day and there have been almost 187,000 of them read. However bad things can be used in the new
technology and the reason for that is because man has not changed since he fell
in the garden of Eden, as his nature is evil and always will be without coming
to Christ for salvation in order to be born-again, to have a new nature, a new
life.
I
will end with a quote from John MacArthur and then, Lord willing we will finish
this section in our next SD. “Many
philosophers, poets, and religious leaders at the end of the last century had
great optimism about man’s having come of age, abut his inevitable moral and
social improvement. They believed that
Utopia was around the corner and that man was getting better and better in
every way. The golden age of mankind was
near. Wars would be a bad memory, crime
and violence would disappear, ignorance would be gone, and disease would be
eradicated. Peace and brotherhood would
reign completely and universally. Few
people today hold to such blind unrealistic ideas.” The sermons that were used to help write this
commentary was sometime in the 1970’s so he must be referring to the 1900’s as
being this wonderful age.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I can learn from this section that even
though things are not looking good, and they are not, that God is still in
control and I do not need to be fearful, but faithful, trusting the Lord to see
me through the difficult times we are now living in.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I want to remember that the Lord is doing a
work that I believe and hope that He is about to have His Son return from
heaven in the clouds to take His bride to heaven with Him, and shortly after
that the last seven years of history as we know it will begin.
6/19/2020 10:41 AM
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