SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/1/2020
10:24 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Merit of Peace: Eternal Sonship in the Kingdom”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:9
Message of the
verse: “Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”
I
stated in our last SD that we would be looking at the end of this verse in
conclusion to this section on “Happy is the Peacemaker.” MacArthur writes “shall be called’ is in a continuous
future passive tense. Throughout eternity peacemakers will go by the name ‘children
of God.’ The passive form indicates that
all heaven will call peacemakers ‘sons of God,’ because God Himself has
declared them to be His children.” I
have to admit that when it comes to the different forms of verbs that I totally
have to rely on John MacArthur, a man who can speak English, Greek, Hebrew, and
German.
I
believe that any parent worth their salt will love their children more than
their own life, as we can see from the way that Jacob loved Benjamin in Genesis
44:30 “"Now, therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad
is not with us, since his life is bound up in the lad’s life.” Today God loves His children as He loved
Israel of old, that is they were the “apple of the eye” as seen in Zechariah
2:8; and we can also compare Psalm 17:8 too.
The Hebrew expression “apple of the eye, referred to the cornea, which
is the most exposed and sensitive part of the eye, the part we are to most careful
to protect. This is what God’s children
are to Him the ones that He is most sensitive about and most desires to
protect. To attack God’s children is
what we could say is to poke a finger in God’s eye. The offense against Christians is offense
against God, and the reason is because they are His very own children. I am now thinking about what Saul of Tarsus
did to some of God’s children and yet in the end God used him to spread the
gospel around the known world at that time.
I say this because there is always hope for those who hurt the children
of God if repentance comes to those who have done this. There are other stories like this as there
have been missionaries killed for the cause of Christ and their killers have
come to know Christ and are forgiven.
However those who do harm to the children of God and do not repent and
perhaps they actually like doing it will one day face God’s wrath and that
wrath they face will be final.
I
want to look at Psalm 66:8 at this point “Ps 56:8 You have taken account of my wanderings; Put
my tears in Your bottle.
Are they not in Your book?” This
is a picture of reflecting the Hebrew custom of placing into a bottle the tears
shed over a loved one. MacArthur writes
that “God cares for us so much that He stores up His remembrances of our
sorrows and affrications. God ‘s
children matter greatly to Him, and it is no little thing that we can call Him
Father.”
We
who are God’s peacemakers will certainly not always have peace in the world for
Jesus has made this clear by the last beatitude, as persecution follows
peacemaking. Now remember in Christ that
we have forsaken the false peace of the world, and so consequently we often
will not have peace with the world. But
because we are God’s children we must always have peace even while we are in
the world, having the peace of God which those in the world cannot give and the
world cannot take away from believers.
This is a wonderful promise from the pen of the apostle Paul. “6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of
God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds
in Christ Jesus.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Having peace in a very troubled world is
certainly a gift from God that I must have in order to be able to follow His
path.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to have joy as I study His Word and
as I do His will.
6/1/2020 11:08 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment