SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/14/2020 8:13 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Promise”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
5:10-12
Message of the verses: “10 “Blessed are
those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you and
persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. 12
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way
they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
We
ended yesterday’s SD by talking about the promised blessings that believers
have on this earth, but we can also say that not every believer is rewarded in
this life with things of this life.
However every believer is rewarded in this life with the comfort,
strength, and joy of his indwelling Lord.
Another thing is he is also blessed with the assurance that no service
or sacrifice that he gives for the service of the Lord will be in vain.
John
MacArthur tells a story in his commentary that comes from a sequel of Don
Richardson’s book “Peace Child” which he entitled “Lords of the Earth.” “He tells the story of Stan Dale, another
missionary to Irian Jaya, Indonesia, who ministered to the Yali tribe in the
Snow Mountains. The Yali had one of the strictest known religions in the
world. For a tribe member even to
question, much less disobey, one f its tenets brought instant death. There could never be any change of modification. The Yali had many sacred spots scattered
throughout their territory. If even a
small child were to crawl onto one of those sacred pieces of ground, he was
considered defiled and cursed. To keep
the whole village from being involved in that curse, the child would be thrown
into the rushing Heluk River to drown and be washed downstream.
“When
Stan Dale came with his wife and four children to the cannibalistic people he
was not long tolerated. He was attacked
one night and miraculously survived being shot with five arrows. After treatment in a hospital he immediately
returned to the Yali. He worked unsuccessfully
for several years, and the resentment and hatred of the tribal priests
increased. One day as he, another
missionary named Phil Masters, and a Dani tribesman named Yemu were facing what
they knew was an imminent attack, the Yali suddenly came upon them. As the
others ran for safety Stan and Yemu remained back, hoping somehow to dissuade
the Yali from their murderous plans. As
Stan confronted his attackers, they shot him with dozens of arrows. As the arrows entered his flesh he would pull
them out and break them in two. Eventually
he no longer had the strength to pull the arrows out, but he remained standing.
“Yemu
ran back to where Phil was standing, and Phil persuaded him to keep
running. With his eyes fixed on Stan,
who was still standing with some fifty arrows in his body, Phil remained where
he was and was himself soon surrounded by warriors. The attack had begun with hilarity, but it
turned to fear and desperation when they saw that Stan did not fall. Their fear increased when it took nearly as
many arrows to down Phil as it had Stan.
They dismembered the bodies and scattered them about the forest in an
attempt to prevent the resurrection of which they had heard the missionaries
speak. But the back of their ‘unbreakable’
pagan system was broken, and though the witness of the two men who were not
afraid to die in order to bring the gospel to this lost and violent people, the
Yali tribe and many others in the surrounding territory came to Jesus
Christ. Even Stan’s fifth child, a baby
at the time of this incident, was saved reading the book about his father.
“Stan
and Phil were not rewarded in this life with the things of this life. But they seem to have been double-blessed
with the comfort, strength, and joy of their indwelling Lord—and the absolute
confidence that their sacrifice for Him would not be in vain.”
We
also spoke of a millennial aspect to the kingdom blessing. When our Lord Jesus Christ establishes His
1000 year reign on earth, we, as believers, will be co-regents with Him over
that wonderful, renewed earth as seen in Revelation 20:4.
As
we have looked closely at the Beatitudes we can see that they begin and also
end with the promise of “the kingdom of heaven.” “3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
MacArthur writes that “The major promise of the Beatitudes is that in
Christ we become kingdom citizens now and forever. No matter what the world does to us, it
cannot affect our possession of Christ’s kingdom.”
6/14/2020 8:40 AM
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