SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/1/2020 10:28 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Perspective of Jesus Christ”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
5:44-48
Message of the verses: “44 “But I say to
you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate
you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 “that you
may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and
on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 “For if you love
those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the
same? 47 “And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than
others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48 “Therefore you shall be
perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
As
we begin this SD I want to say that as we move through these verses that we
will be looking at a very short introduction, and then we will be going through
five sub-titles of which we will begin the first this morning, but will not
finish it. John MacArthur writes this
very short introduction as he begins this last section from the fifth chapter
of Matthew.
“In
five ascending statements Jesus proclaims the kind of love that God has always
required of His people that must characterize everyone who goes by the name of
the Lord.” It is these five ascending
statements that are the five sub-sections that we will be following. I think that perhaps we will need our
steel-toed shoes on as we go through these sections as perhaps we are about to
get our toes stepped on. With that said
I believe we will need a great deal of God’s grace.
PT-1 “Love Your Enemies”
Matthew 5:44a “44 “But I
say to you, love your enemies,”
As
we begin to look at this section we will be looking, according to John
MacArthur, “the most powerful teaching in Scripture about the meaning of love. The love that God commands of His people is ‘love’
so great that it even embraces ‘enemies.’”
Now we will look at a quotation from William Hendriksen who comments:
“All around him were those
walls and fences. He came for the very
purpose of bursting those barriers, so that love—pure, warm, divine, infinite—would
be able to flow straight down from the heart of God, hence from his own
marvelous heart, into the hearts of men.
His love overleaped all the boundaries of race, nationality, party, age,
sex…
“When he said, ‘I love you, love your enemies,’ he must
have startled his audience, for he was saying something that probably never
before had been said so succinctly, positively, and forcefully.” (The Gospel of
Matthew [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973], p.
313)
We
have written a lot about the scribes and the Pharisees as we have made our way
through this fifth chapter of Matthew stating that they were proud, prejudiced,
judgmental, spiteful, hateful, vengeful men who masqueraded as the custodians
of God’s law and the spiritual leaders of Israel. As we go through these descriptions of the
scribes and the Pharisees it becomes very clear why Jesus said that in order to
get into the kingdom of God one’s righteousness must be more or better than the
scribes and the Pharisees. I suppose
those scribes and Pharisees were feeling very naïve and foolish after hearing
what Jesus had to say about loving their enemies. After all is that not what Jesus was doing as
we are all enemies of God until we come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and
Savior. The scribes and Pharisees not
only felt they had the right but the duty to hate their enemies. Not to hate those who obviously deserve to be
hated would be a breach of righteousness.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: As mentioned before love your enemies, but
hate their sin.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to work on my heart as I go
through this last section from the 5th chapter of Matthew.
10/1/2020 10:52 AM
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