SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/22/2020 10:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Liberty”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 5:41
Message of the
verse: “And whoever shall force you
to go one mile, go with him two.”
I have mentioned in earlier SD’s that the Sermon on the
Mount speaks of what the Kingdom life will be like, and also mentioned that we
as believers are living in what is sometimes called the invisible kingdom with
our King ruling from His seat in Heaven beside His Father. In the past few SD’s we have been looking at
things that believers will be willing to give up as a part of the kingdom life
things like indignity, security, liberty, (one we will look at today), and then
the last one which Lord willing, we will look at tomorrow which is property from
Matthew 5:42. So our focus for today is
giving up liberty, the third right the Lord indicates kingdom citizens are to
be willing to sacrifice as part of the kingdom.
I believe that the Bible teaches that God’s original intention was for
everyone made in His image to live in freedom, and as we can see that sin
certainly has prevented that to happen.
We see human bondage and slavery are consequences of the Fall and have
no part in God’s original plan for His creation. As we look throughout history we can see that
the best human governments have always tried to protect the freedom of their
citizens, and sometimes even of foreigners.
In light of God’s will and also proper human justice, men have the right
to certain freedoms. However like other
rights, freedom is not to be cherished and protected at the expense of
righteousness or even of faithful witness.
If we look back at the Roman law it gave a soldier the
right to force a civilian to carry his pack for a (million), a Roman mile, which was slightly shorter than our modern
mile. That law, designed to relieve the
soldier, not only caused great inconvenience to citizens but was made even more
despicable by the fact that the opposed were made to carry the equipment and
weapons of their oppressors. This
probably was the most hated thing that the Roman soldiers did outside of being
in combat.
MacArthur concludes this section: “Yet even so despised a burden should be
carried willingly, Jesus says—not only willingly but with magnanimity. When we are forced to go ‘one mile,’ we
should willingly go ‘two.’ When we are
robbed of some of our cherished liberty, we should surrender even more of it
rather than retaliate. In so doing we
are obedient to our Lord and testify to His righteousness, knowing that in Him
we have a dearer freedom that the world cannot take from us.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I have to admit
that the things that we have been studying lately are very difficult for me to
comprehend, and I suppose the reason for this is because of living in a free
country all of my life and have become spoiled.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to live my life in this country the
way that the Lord desires me to live as I am a part of the indivisible kingdom
of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
9/22/2020 10:21 AM
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