PT-2 "Intro to Matthew 7:13-14 "Which Way to Heaven"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/31/2021 9:38 PM

 

My Worship Time                         Focus:  PT-2 “Intro to Matt. 7:13-14 “Which Way to Heaven”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                Reference:  Matthew 7:13-14

 

            Message of the verses:  “13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 14 “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

 

            John MacArthur writes “In perfect harmony with His absolute sovereignty, God has always allowed men to choose Him or not, and He has always pleaded with them to decide for Him or face the consequences of a choice against Him.  Since mankind turned their backs on Him in the Fall, God has ben every effort and spared no cost in wooing His creatures back to Himself.  He has provided and shown the way, leaving nothing to man but the choice.  God made His choice by providing the way of redemption.  The choice is no man’s.”

 

            Let us now look at what the Lord instructed Moses to tell the people of Israel while they were in the wilderness:  “19 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, 20 by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them’” (Deut. 30:19-20).

 

            As we move on in the Old Testament we move to when Joshua had led the people to victor in the Promised Land, and at the end of that campaign Joshua tells them “13 ’I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you have lived in them; you are eating of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.’ 14 “Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 "If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD’” (Joshua 24:13-15).  

 

            We keep moving forward in the Old Testament as we look at what Elijah said to the people while on Mt. Carmel “Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people did not answer him a word” (1 Kings 18:21).  One more from the OT, from the book of Jeremiah “"You shall also say to this people, ’Thus says the LORD, "Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death” (Jer. 21:8).

 

            Now we move to the NT as we continue to look at choices from the Word of God:  “66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?" 68 Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. 69 “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God’” (John 6:66-69).

 

            MacArthur concludes “That is the call that God has been making to men since they turned away from Him, and it is the supreme appeal of His Word. 

 

            We conclude this SD with a poem that MacArthur puts in his commentary from the British poet John Oxenham who wrote: 

 

“To every man there openeth

A Way, and Ways, and a Way,

And the High Soul climbs the High Way.

And the Low Soul gropes the Low.

And in between, on the misty flats,

The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth

A His Way and a Low,

And every man decidet

The Way his soul shall go.”

 

1/31/2021 10:03 PM

           

PT-1 "Intro To Matt. 7:13-14 "Which Way to Heaven"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/30/2021 9:18 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                         Focus:  Intro to “Which Way to Heaven?”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                Reference:  Matthew 7:13-14

 

            Message of the verses:  “13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 14 “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

 

            This is the appeal that Jesus gives right after the verse that we call the “Golden Rule.”  This appeal that Jesus is giving is one that He has been moving through the whole sermon.  Here is the call that He gives to decide now about becoming a citizen of God’s kingdom and also inheriting eternal life, or to choose to remain a citizen of this fallen world and receiving damnation. 

 

            This morning I was putting one of my older SD’s onto my other blog.  It was about sexual morality and the point of it that I was trying to make was that God has the right to give His rules and regulations to His people because no matter what you look at around you it was all created by God, nothing in the night skies was not created by God, nothing we see in the day time was not created by God and therefore He has the right to rule over His creation.  One day everything that we view will be gone as God will actually “un-create” everything that He created with the exception of mankind.  Some will go to live with Him in the new heaven and new earth and the new Jerusalem, and some will go into hell, and that is what Jesus is talking about in this section of Scripture that we will look at over the next several days.  People make the mistake that they think that they own something, but like I told a man I used to work with a very long time ago when he was telling me that he had paid off his home and it was his.  I simply asked him whose would it be a hundred years from now?

 

            We will conclude this shorter SD, because it is Saturday, with a quote from MacArthur’s commentary:  “Jesus has been giving God’s standards throughout the sermon, standards that are holy and perfect and that are diametrically opposed to the self-righteous, self-sufficient, and hypocritical standards of man—typified by those of the scribes and Pharisees.  He has shown what His kingdom is like and what its people are like—and are not like.  Now He presents the choice of entering the kingdom or not.  Here the Lord focuses on the inevitable decision that every person must make, the crossroads where he must decide on the ‘gate’ he will enter and the ‘way’ he will go.

 

            “Our lives are filled with decisions—what to wear, what to eat, where to go, what to do, what to say, what to buy, whom to marry, what career to follow, and on and on.  Many decisions are trivial and insignificant, and some are essential and life-changing.  The most critical of all is our decision about Jesus Christ and His kingdom.  That is the ultimate choice that determines our eternal destiny.  It is that decision that Jesus here calls men to make.”   

 

            I totally agree with this quotation, and it is one of the purposes of the time that I spend each day trying to get the Word out so people who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ will come to know Him, and people who do know Him will continue to grow in Him.  There is nothing more important than that.

 

1/30/2021 9:55 AM

PT-2 "God's Purpose For His Children Demands It" (Matt. 7:12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/29/2021 11:50 AM

 

My Worship Time                            Focus:  PT-2 “God’s Purpose For His Children Demands It”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 7:12

 

            Message of the verses:  “12 "In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

 

            We have been talking about how in most, if not all, religious systems what we call the “Golden Rule” is basically selfish, as the expressions that these systems have can go only as far as sinful men can take them.  MacArthur adds “The motivation is basically selfish—refraining from harming others in order that they will have not harm us.  Those negative forms of the rule are not golden, but they are primarily utilitarian and motivated by fear and self-preservation.  As Scripture repeatedly tells us of fall mankind, ‘There is not who does good, there is not even one’ (Romans 3:12; cf. Ps 14:3) ‘each of us has turned to his own way (Isa. 53:6).”

 

            After looking at this first paragraph which was just written one can come to the conclusion that man’s basic problem is preoccupation with self.  Man is innately beset with what is called “Narcissism,” which is a condition named after the Greek mythological Narcissus, who spent his life admiring his reflection in a pool of water. This does not seem like much of a life to me, but that is what he did.  As we look at the final analysis, we can see that ever sin results from preoccupation with self.  I for one am very thankful that Jesus Christ did not live this kind of life when He came to earth as He was always doing what would please His Father, and in pleasing His Father He provided salvation for those who call upon His name and repent of their sins and invite Him into their lives to rule and reign in their lives so that they too can live a life that is not selfish like His life was.  MacArthur adds “Unregenerate man can never come up to the standard of selfless love—the love that loves others as oneself and that treats others in the same way that one wants to be treated.”

 

            It is only Jesus who can give the fullness of the truth, which encompasses both the positive and the negative.  And also only Jesus can give the power to live by that full truth.  MacArthur writes “The dynamic for living this supreme ethic must come from outside our fallen nature.  It can come only from the indwelling Holy Spirit, whose first fruit is love (Gal. 5:22).  In Jesus Christ, ‘the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us’ (Rom. 5:5).  Only Christ’s own Spirit can impower us to love each other as He loves us (John 13:34).  We can only love in a divine way because God Himself has first loved us divinely (1 John 4:19).”

 

            Remember that selfless love does not serve in order to prevent its own harm or to insure its own welfare.  So one may ask “then how does it serve?”  Well it serves for the sake of the one being served, and serves in the way it likes being served—whether it ever receives such service or not.  That is truly what Agape love is all about, the kind of love that God loves us with.  He does for us what we need and yet He does even though we may not love Him back for it, but the only way we can love Him back is through the power of His Holy Spirit.  God’s children are the ones, the only ones, who can have right relations with others, because they possess the motivation and the resources to refrain from self-righteously condemning others and tolove in an utterly selfless way.

 

1/29/2021 12:18 PM

 

             

PT-1 "God's Purpose For His Children Demands It" (Matt. 7:12)

 

SPIIRTUAL DIARY FOR 1/28/2021 11:28 AM

 

My Worship Time                             Focus: PT-1 “God’s Purpose For His Children Demands It”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 7:12

 

            Message of the verse:  “12 "In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

 

            We can see that the implication of verses 7-11 is made plain in verse 12, as the perfect love of our heavenly Father is most reflected in His children when they treat others as they themselves have a desire to be treated.

 

            The truth is that there is no capacity within an unbeliever to love in the way that Jesus commands here.  I’m not saying that unbelievers can do many things that are ethical, and it happens every once in a while they might even approach the level of this highest of ethical standards.  However they can’t sustain such selflessness and the reason is that they do not have the divine resources necessary for regular, habitual living on that plane.

 

            John MacArthur writes “However you want people to treat you’ sums up the sermon to this point, and ‘so treat them’ is a summary of ‘the Law and the Prophets.’  It is also a paraphrase of the second great commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Matt. 22:39; cf. Lev. 19:18).  The golden rule instructs us as to how we are to love other people, ‘especially,’ as Paul points out, ‘those of the household of faith’ (Gal. 6:10).  And ‘he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law’ (Rom. 13:8; cf. V 10; Gal. 5:14).

 

            “How we treat others is not to be determined by how we except them to treat us or by how we think they should treat us, but by how we want them to treat us.  Herein is the heart of the principle, an aspect of the general truth that is not found in similar expressions in other religious and philosophies.”

 

            MacArthur tells a true story about the advancement of the musical instrument which is known as a harpsichord.  It was made first to have its keys when depressed to strike a string, something like a person with a pick strikes a guitar.  As you can imagine the tones were not always pure, but during the last quarter of the 18^th century during Beethoven’s lifetime there was an unknown musician who made some modifications to the harpsichord so that the keys activated hammers that struck, rather than plucked the strings.  With that minor change, a major improvement was made that would henceforth radically enhance the entire musical world, giving a grandeur and breadth that was never before known. 

 

            The point of that story is to see that sort of revolutionary change Jesus gives in the golden rule.  When we look at every other form of this basic principle it was given in negative terms, and is found in the literature of almost every major religion and philosophical system.  An example of this comes from Rabbi Hillel who says “What is hateful to yourself do not to someone else.”  Here is another example and this time it comes from Confucius who taught “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”  There are more examples that we could give but I don’t think it is necessary as we see that all of these examples stated have a negative connotation, and the reason is that they go only as far as sinful man can go, and are basically expressions not of live but of self-interest.  What they are is just looking out for one’s self and not really caring for the other person in love as Jesus is teaching in verse 12.  Lord willing we will continue to look at this in our next SD.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Selfless love is a miracle that comes from the Spirit of God, and certainly not from the old nature or flesh of a believer.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  To continue to seek revival in my life and in the lives of those that I love.

 

1/28/2021 12:47 PM

PT-2 "God's Pattern For His Children Demands It" (Matt. 7:7-11)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/27/2021 10:19 AM

 

My Worship Time                              Focus:  PT-2 “God’s Pattern For His Children Demands It”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 7:9-11

 

            Message of the verses:  “9 “Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10 “Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11 "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

 

            We want to begin this SD by focusing on verse eleven.  “If you then, being evil—speaking of sinful fathers—“ know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”  What Jesus is talking about here is one of the many specific scriptural teachings of man’s fallen, evil nature.  Jesus is not speaking of any specific fathers who are especially cruel and who are wicked.  He is talking of human fathers in general, all of whom are sinful by nature.  In other words He is talking about all of us as fathers because we were all born wrong.

 

            The key here is that the ones who are not true believers have no divine source to whom they can turn with assurance of in trust.  In the pagan world of Jesus day, and for that matter still true for today even though it may be a bit different, those pagan gods were actually only larger than life images of the men who made and worshiped them.  Paul speaks of this in his letter to the Corinthians as he states that there are no gods, as the men who worship these so called gods are actually worshiping demons.  John MacArthur writes “Greek mythology tells of Aurora, the goddess of dawn, who fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal youth.  When Zeus, the king of gods, promised to grant her any gift she chose for her lover, she asked that Tithonus might live forever.  But she had forgotten to ask that he also remain forever young.  Therefore when Zeus granted the request, Tithonus was doomed to an eternity of perpetual aging…Such are the capricious ways of the gods men make.”

 

            We as believers know that this is not true with our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we saw in the previous chapter, Jesus uses the phrase “much more” to describe God’s love for His children (6:30).  Our wonderful divine, loving, merciful, and gracious Father who is in heaven has no limits on His treasure neither bonds to goodness that He is willing to bestow on those His children who ask Him as seen in verse eleven.  As we think for a moment of being, especially Christian parents, we would be willing to sacrifice most anything, including dying for our children, and yet the greatest human parental love cannot compare with our wonderful, loving Heavenly Father.

 

            MacArthur writes “There is no limit to what our heavenly Father will give to us when we ask in obedience and according to His will.  Again we get additional truth from the parallel passage in Luke, which tells us, ‘How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?’ (11:13).”

 

            Here is the bottom line here as Jesus is saying that if imperfect and sinful human fathers so willingly and freely give their children the basic of life, God will infinitely outdo them in measure and in benefit.  That is why the children of God are so blessed with every spiritual blessing as seen in Ephesians 1:3.  They are offered this by “the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us (vv. 7-8).  So if we want God to treat us with loving generosity as His children, we should so treat others, because we are those who bear His image.

 

            Lord willing we will conclude this section as we look at verse 12 which is commonly known as “The Golden Rule.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I surely desire to understand how much God loves me and wants to provide for the things that I pray about, but too many times my humanness gets in the way as I think of God like those people thought of the human gods that they made.  I know for a fact that God loves me for the sure evidence is sending His Son to take my place on the cross.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Continue to pray for revival in my life, my family’s lives and also the lives of our Sunday school class and our churches lives.

 

1/27/2021 10:51 AM

 

PT-1 "God's Pattern For His Children Demands It" Matt. 7:9-11)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/26/2021 9:53 AM

 

My Worship Time                             Focus:  PT-1 “God’s Pattern For His Children Demands It.”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matt. 7:9-11

 

            Message of the verses:  “9 “Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10 “Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11 "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

 

            Now as we look at these three verses they continue to point to and to illustrate the golden rule of verse twelve.  As believer in Jesus Christ who are a part of the kingdom of God here on earth we are to love others as we love ourselves because that is a part of God life here for His kingdom citizens, this is what we are to do.  Paul writes about this to the Ephesian believers in 5:1-2 “1Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

 

            Those of us who claim to be born-again believers in Jesus Christ we should have God’s nature in us as we reflect His life.  Think of it this way by looking at the sun and think of Jesus Christ being the Sun, and then the sun reflects onto the moon.  In this illustration we as believers would be the moon as His light reflects off of us so people in the night will have light to see.  We are the light of the world as the world is in darkness so we as believers should shine in the darkness so others will be able to hear and understand the gospel and be saved.  Now as we move on to look at our verses today we will see that Jesus is giving several illustrations from family relationships by asking two rhetorical questions.

 

            MacArthur writes “What man…among you,’ that is to say, what loving father, ‘when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone?’  The obvious answer is no man, no loving father.  The crudest of fathers would hardly deceive his own son by giving him a stone to eat that looked like bread.  Even if the son discovered the deception before breaking a tooth, his heart would be broken by his father’s cruelty.”

 

            The same thing is true in the next illustration when Jesus uses a fish and his father gives him a snake.  The idea is not that the snake would be alive or poisonous, and therefore would bring harm to his son.  The suggestion is that the snake would be cooked in order to look like ordinary meant would, unlike the stone, would meet his physical need.  According to Lev. 11:12 snakes were unclean animals.  According to Wikipedia “The earthworm, the snake, the scorpion, the beetle, the centipede, and all the creatures that crawl on the ground are not kosher. Worms, snails and most invertebrate animals are not kosher. All reptiles, all amphibians and insects with the exception of four types of locust are not kosher.”  MacArthur adds “A loving, Jewish father would not deceive and defile his son into dishonoring the Word of God by tricking him into eating ceremonially unclean food.  Our Lord is simply showing that it is not natural for a father to ignore either the physical or the spiritual needs of his son.”

 

            If one looks at the account of this in the gospel of Luke, Luke records Jesus as talking about giving a scorpion in the substitute for an egg.  In this instance the father would do great harm to his son as in the Middle East scorpions can actually look like an egg when they are curled up, so this could give great danger and even an agonizing death.

 

            It looks like we will try to complete this section in our next SD.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is important for me to continue to realize that as a believer I am living in the kingdom of God and should act like a citizen of the kingdom of God.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Continue to trust the Lord to bring revival into my life, into my family’s life, into our Sunday school’s lives and into our churches life.

 

This past Sunday my wife and I were waiting to eat at a Cracker Barrel restaurant and I came across a book by Billy Graham which had daily prayers in it, one for each day of the year.  I opened up the book to January 24^th and read the following:  “John Know prayed, and the results caused Queen Mary to say that she feared the prayers of John Knox more that she feared the armies of Scotland.  John Wesley prayed, and revival came to England, sparing that nation the horrors of the French Revolution.  Jonathan Edwards prayed, and revival spread throughout the American colonies.  History has been changed time after time because of prayer.  I tell you, history could be changed again if people went to their knees in believing prayer.  Even when times are bleak and the world scorns God, He still works through the prayers of His people.  Pray today for revival in your nation, and around the world.”  “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” James 5:16.    

 

 

 

 

A Big Reason Why Our Country and the World Are in Trouble (1 Thess. 4:3-8)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/8/2014 10:59 PM

My Worship Time                  Focus:  How The Lie of Evolution has affected Sexual Morality

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  1 Thessalonians 4:3-8

            Message of the verses:  “3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. 7 For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. 8 So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.”

            I think that it was in 2011 when I first became serious in studying about creation, creation that the Bible talks about.  I read and then lead a Bible Study on a book that John MacArthur wrote entitled “The Battle for the Beginning.”  One of the statements from that book that I hope that I never forget is that evolution is impossible, it cannot happen.  MacArthur even said that God could not make evolution work, and I believe this statement.

            I have to say that this SD will be a bit different than most of the ones that I write because I am not really following a set amount of verses from the Bible even though this subject fits in well with our study of 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, which is why I quoted them at the beginning of this SD.

            One may wonder why I would say that evolution effects sexual morality when evolution is a theory about the origins of the earth.  I believe that this “theory of evolution” came straight from Satan, and Satan has a lot of time to develop the things he wants to develop many years before they actually become a problem, and in this case they are a great problem.  I am not too familiar with a trial that took place many years ago that had to do with the teaching of evolution, but I am sure that there is plenty to say about that trial on the internet. This was the beginning of the downfall of teaching in schools in our country.  When I was in the eighth grade I was first introduced to evolution and it was at that time that I told my parents that did not want to attend church anymore because I believed in evolution, and this is one of the purposes of this lie, to make people think that there is no God, and God did not create the world’s as Genesis describes it.  If there is no God and if things just happened by some kind of accident then we are not accountable to God.  While attending our Church service this evening I listened to a missionary who ministers in downtown Chicago.  He stated that he was told that by someone who did not want to hear the teachings of the Scriptures that “we are past that kind of thing because we know that there is no God who created us.”  This is a very dangerous teaching that will cause people not to believe in God and then because of their unbelief they will spend eternity in hell.

            Perhaps you can begin to see why it is not hard to understand why evolution can produce sexual immorality for if man is now the highest chain on the evolution rung then all sex is, is something only for pleasure with whom every you desire to have it with.  This too will get a person into trouble.  Now I want to quote from John MacArthur’s sermon on this subject in conclusion to this SD.  I will have to break into the middle of his sermon but once we see the whole quote it will be understood.

            “The church has literally imbibed [consuming] this. And when you go back and look at the roots of it all, you really could start with Charles Darwin. Once the thinking of Charles Darwin, which I believe was certainly spawned by Satan, invaded the world and said, "We are not the creatures of God, we are simply the products of chance," then all morality was questionable. If we are nothing but the result of a collection of atoms that occurred sometime in the past or something that crawled out of some primeval ooze somewhere, then there is no real morality. Charles Darwin influenced people like Karl Marx who took Darwinian evolution to its logical extreme politically and he influenced people like Sigmund Freud who took Darwinian evolution to its extreme in terms of psychology and personal behavior. They influenced people like Friedrich Nietzsche who decided that really there was no God, God was dead, family life was unimportant. All that was important was pleasure and fulfillment.

           

“The influence philosophers like Bertrand Russell who mocked all Christian values and along came people influenced by them. Margaret Sanger who founded Planned Parenthood, Ernest Hemingway, probably the most classically famous Hedonist in western culture. Havlok(?) Ellis (?), Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Hugh Hefner, and they all flow out of that same basic line of philosophical thinking. What you have is a sexual revolution produced by atheistic, hedonistic, pleasure mad, anti family, homosexual, pornographic, perverted people. It starts, as it were, supposedly in the environs of science and philosophy, it ends up in behavior. And mix that kind of behavior with alcohol and drugs and you have the American culture. And what is so frightening about it is that the church doesn't seem to be aware of what's happening and it jumps on the self-fulfilling, feeling good bandwagon, unwittingly capitulating to the philosophy of atheists and evolutionists.

           

“And I guess we would have to say that in Paul's time the kind of behavior that existed there would have been as bad, and as I said earlier maybe worse, there was no shame attached to immoral behavior at all in Paul's time. No shame attached to any sexual conduct at all. There was in that society a plethora of prostitutes, concubines, mistresses, homosexuals, pedophiles, transvestites, temple harlots, adulterers and adulteresses and they abounded in that culture. In fact, it was from that very mass of people that the churches were plucked. Paul says to the Corinthians, "And such were some of you." What? "Fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, effeminates."”

 

There are a couple of things that upset me when I think about evolution.  First of all it is a lie, second this is partially the reason that our country is in the trouble that it is in.  Thirdly it is believed by many born-again believers because they are too lazy to dig into the truth of Scripture to find out it is a lie.  Lastly it can undermine other doctrines found in the Bible, for if they tear this one apart, then what will stop them from tearing others apart.

 

Answer to our last Bible question:  “To Egypt” (Genesis 12:10).

 

Today’s Bible question:  “Who were the first persons, other than Joseph and Mary, to hear that Jesus had been born?”

 

Answer in our next SD.

6/8/2014 11:33 PM

 

PT-3 "God's Promise to His Children Demands It" (Matt. 7:7-8)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/25/2021 11:39 AM

 

My Worship Time                              Focus:  PT-3 “God’s Promise to His Children Demands It”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matt. 7:7-8

 

            Message of the verses:  “7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

 

            I mentioned in our last SD that we had two more points to look at that John MacArthur brought up in his commentary on this section of Matthew.  He writes “Second, the one who claims this promise must be living in obedience to his Father.  ‘Whatever we ask we receive from Him,’ John says, ‘because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight’ (1 John 3:22).

 

            “Third, our motive in asking must be right.  ‘You ask and do not receive,’ explains James, ‘because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures’ (James 4:3).  God does not obligate Himself to answer selfish, carnal requests from His children.

 

            “Finally, we must be submissive to His will.  If we are trying to serve both God and mammon (Matt. 6:24), we cannot claim this promise.  ‘For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways’ (James 1:7-8).  As John makes clear, ‘This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us’ (1 John 5:14).  To have confidence in answered prayer on any other basis is to have a false and presumptuous confidence that the Lord makes no promise to honor.”

 

            I think that we can understand that this is not a kind of blank check that are in these verses.  We are told in this passage to ask, seek, and then to knock and the idea is that of continuance and constancy as it should probably read “keep on asking; keep on seeking; keep on knocking.”  Be consistent with your prayer requests to the Lord.  I might add another thing here and that is you seem to be doing all the right things in praying for something and still not getting an answer then fasting could be something that you do in order to have the Lord answer your prayers.  If your request is so important then fasting should be something that you desire to do.  Look at the following passage from the 58^th chapter of Isaiah:  “3 ’Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’ Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, And drive hard all your workers. 4 “Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high. 5 “Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the LORD?” (Isaiah 58:3-5).  Isaiah speaks of the wrong motivation for fasting and then in verses 6-7 he gives nine proper ways to fast.  “6 “Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke? 7 “Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”

 

            MacArthur writes about these three words ask, knock, and seek:  “We also see a progression of intensity in the three verbs, from simple asking to the more aggressive seeking to the still more aggressive knocking.  Yet none of the figures is complicated or obscure.  The youngest child knows what is is to ask, seek, and knock.”

 

            He continues in the final paragraph:  “The progression in intensity also suggests that our sincere requests to the Lord are not to be passive.  Whatever of His will we know to do we should be doing.  If we are asking the Lord to help us find a job, we should be looking for a job ourselves while we await His guidance and provision.  If we are out of food, we should be trying to earn money to buy it if we can.  If we want help in confronting a brother about a sin, we should be trying to find out all we can about him and his situation and all we can about what God’s Word says on the subject involved.  It is not faith but presumption to ask the Lord to provide more when we are not faithfully using what He has already given.”

 

            In conclusion I believe that prayer is lining up God’s will with my will and so as I continue in my own life to pray for revival in my life, in my family’s life, in my Sunday school’s life, our country and our world I must believe that this is what the Lord desires me to do, and I am coming to the conclusion that fasting has to be involved in this process too.

 

1/25/2021 12:16 PM   

PT-2 "God's Promise to His Children Demands It) (Matt. 7:7-8)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/24/2021 8:56 PM

 

My Worship Time                              Focus:  PT-2 “God’s Promise to His Children Demands It”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 7:7-8

 

            Message of the verses:  “We are talking about the fact that Jesus gives three reasons for obeying the command to love others as ourselves, and we are continuing to look at the first reason in today’s SD.

 

            As we look through the Scriptures we will see that God gives us many principles, but He does not give specific methods or rules for every conceivable situation.  One thing is that situations keep changing and vary greatly from age to age and also from person to person.  If there were given specific rules for every circumstance it would require a giant library of volumes.  More importantly that this is God’s desire that we rely on Him directly.  God wants us more to be in His Word, and without being in His Word we cannot pray wisely or rightly.

 

            There is more that He desires beyond being in His Word as He wants us to be in fellowship with Him as our Father.  God’s Word is perfect and infallible, but we also need His Spirit to interpret and illumine in order to encourage and to strengthen us.  God does not want us to have all the answers in our hip pocket.  The Bible is a limitless store of divine truth, which a lifetime of the most faithful and diligent study will not exhaust.  Apart for God Himself we cannot even start to fathom its depths or even mine its riches.  In God’s Word He gives enough truth for us to be responsible, but enough mystery for us to be dependent.  He gives us His Word not only to direct our lives but to also draw our lives to Him.

 

            MacArthur writes “Here Jesus says, in effect, ‘If you want wisdom to know how to help a sinning brother and how to discern falsehood and apostasy, go to your heavenly Father.  ‘Ask, seek,’ and ‘knock’ at the doors of heaven, and you will receive, find and have the door opened.”

 

            There are some people who believe that verses 7 and 8 are not a blank check for just anyone to present to God.  The first thing is that the promises are addressed only to believers.  A large mass of unbelievers, which includes some of the scribes and Pharisees, no doubt were in the multitude on the side of the mountain that day.  Now as we been going through the sermon we have seen that when the scribes and Pharisees were talked about by our Lord they were called hypocrites, false prophets, insincere followers, and all other unbelievers in the third person—as if none of them were the direct target of His words. One other occasion as in Matthew 23 the Lord addresses such persons directly; but during this message all of His references to them are indirect.  He gives this sermon to His disciples as seen in 5:1-2, with the crowd listening in.  Kind of like the old party lines of the telephone where you could listen to your neighbors talk to their friends.  As stated Jesus would call the scribes and the Pharisees out for what they were, as they certainly were not believers but though they were.

 

            We conclude this SD with another quotation from John MacArthur as this has been a very long day for me, but it was my desire to do this SD.

 

            “Everyone’ refers to those who belong to the heavenly Father.  Those who are not God’s children cannot come to Him as their Father.  The two overriding relationships focused on in the book of Matthew are those of God’s kingdom and God’s family.  The kingdom concept deals with rule, and the family concept deals with relationship.  In the Sermon on the Mount the primary focus is on God’s family, and we see repeated references to God as heavenly Father (v. 11; cf. 5:16, 45, 48; 6:4, 8-9, 26, 32) and to fellow believers as brothers (5:22-24; 7:3-5).

            “The two greatest realities of Christian truth are that God is our Father and Christians are our brothers.  Believers are the family of God.  Paul speaks of the church as the ‘household of the faith’ (Gal. 6:10) and as ‘God’s household’ (Eph. 2:19).  John repeatedly speaks of God as our Father (1 John 1:2-3, 2:1, 13; 3:1; 4:14; etc.) and of believers as His children (1 John 3:10, 5:2) and as each other’s brothers (1 John 2:9-11; 3:10-12; 4:20; etc.).”  There are more points to be made here but Lord willing, we will cover them tomorrow.

 

1/24/2021 9:30 PM

PT-1 "God's Promise to His Children Demands It" (Matt. &:7-8)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/23/2021 11:27 AM

 

My Worship Time                              Focus: PT-1 “God’s Promise to His Children Demands It”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 7:7-8

 

            Message of the verses:  “7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

 

            We are beginning to look at the first reason for obeying the command to love others as ourselves.  Once again I want to remind you that The Sermon on the Mount talks about kingdom living, and all true believers are in God’s kingdom as our King now reigns from heaven and after the tribulation period is over He will rule for 1000 years from David’s throne in Jerusalem.

 

            We see in these two verses a promise that we can feel free to fully love others and totally sacrifice for others, and the reason is because our heavenly Father sets the example in His generosity to us and He also promises that we have access to His eternal and His unlimited treasure to meet our own needs as well as theirs.  As verse twelve says, which The Golden Rule is, we can do for others what we would want done for ourselves without any fear of depleting the divine resources and having nothing left, for God’s supplies to us are limitless.

 

            John MacArthur writes “Verses 7-11 make a perfect bridge between the negative teaching about a critical spirit and the positive teaching of the golden rule.  Even when we have been cleansed of our own sin—had the ‘log’ removed from our eye—we need divine wisdom to know how to help a brother remove the ‘speck’ from his eye (v. 5).  And without God’s help we cannot be sure of who are ‘dogs’ or ‘swine’—who are the false prophets and apostates to whom we should not offer the holy and precious things of God’s Word (v. 6).  These considerations drive us to call on the Lord.”

 

            One of the many things that we should ask, seek, and knock, God’s wisdom is among our greatest needs.  We cannot be able to discern and discriminating without divine counsel that can only come from our heavenly Father, and so the primary means for achieving this great wisdom is petitioning prayer.  We can see this from James 1:5, a verse that we will conclude this short SD with.  “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

 

1/23/2021 11:45 AM