Sunday, October 4, 2020

PT-4 "Love Your Enemies" (Matt. 5:44a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/4/2020 8:10 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                Focus:  PT-4 “Loving Your Enemies”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matthew 5:44a

 

            Message of the verse:  44 “But I say to you, love your enemies,”

           

            It is my desire to finish this section this evening and then we can move onto our next section “Pray For Your Persecutors.”  John MacArthur gives an example of something that happened in the year 1567 in the nation of Spain.  It has to do with a man appointed as governor of the lower part of the nation whose name was Duke and his rule was called the reign of terror, and his council was called the Bloody Council, and the reason was that this man hated protestants and killed as many of them as he could.  The story goes about a Protestant man escaping from his captivity in winter.  A soldier was chastening him when the man came to cross a lake that had thin ice on it.  The escaped man made it across the ice, but the soldier did not make it and so the man went after the soldier who was chastening him and saved his life.  He said that the love or Christ constrained him to do it.  He does not tell what happened to the man after saving the soldier.

 

            The following is another story from MacArthur’s commentary:  “The Scottish Reformer George Wishart, a contemporary and friend of John Knox, was sentenced to die as a heretic.  Because the executioner knew of Wishart’s selfless ministering to hundreds of people who were dying of the plague, he hesitated carrying out the sentence.  When Wishart saw the expression of remorse on the executioner’s face, he went over and kissed him on the cheek, saying, ‘Sir may that be a token that I forgive you” (John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ed. W. Grinton Berry [Grand Rapids:  Baker, 1978, p. 252).

 

            So far living in the United States of America many of the enemies we run into do not want to take our lives, for they may be those people who are mean, impatient, judgmental, self-righteous, and spiteful—or just happen to disagree with us. We have the same thing to do for them and that is love them, a prayerful kind of love. 

 

            I have finally begin to do some of my walking in my office on my treadmill and thus am able to listen to some of the sermons that John MacArthur preached on this chapter of Matthew back in 1978.  I have to admit that I am struggling with the true meaning of loving my enemies and the Lord seems to open my eyes to the meaning of this section of loving my enemies.  It has to come from the life of Jesus Christ as Jesus never got angry except when He cleansed the temple two times.  The reason He got angry then was because people were doing something against His Father by making His Temple a den of thieves.  We can see this in the OT too as we have mentioned it in earlier SD’s.  I know in my heart that God hates abortion and so I am looking at what my reaction to those who are committing this sin against the Lord.  I decided to write a story on Facebook as it surely seemed that the Lord was working in my heart to do so and the bottom line of the story was that all those who are voting for Democrats will have to answer some day to the Lord for being a part of the murder of millions of unborn babies.  There are two parties and one is against abortion and the other is for it so all believers and unbelievers have a choice.  If you don’t vote at all you are still in the same boat.

 

10/4/2020 8:35 PM

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