SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/14/2021 9:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Intro
to Matt. 8:23-27
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 8:23-27
Message of the verses: “23 When He got
into the boat, His disciples followed Him. 24 And behold, there arose a great
storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus
Himself was asleep. 25 And they came to Him and woke Him, saying,
"Save us, Lord; we are perishing!" 26 He said to them,
"Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?" Then He got up and
rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. 27 The men were amazed,
and said, "What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea
obey Him?’”
While
I was taking part of my daily walk yesterday I listened to the sermon that John
MacArthur was preaching about these verses in Matthew that we will be looking
at for a while, and I thought that it would be good to quote a part of that
sermon in order to actually get more out of it than what he put into his
commentary. As you read over the parts
about God’s power think about what a powerful God that we worship.
Let
me give you some background to our thinking this morning. When God created man,
God ordained that man was to be the king of the earth. That man was to be the
monarch. The book of Genesis says that God gave man dominion, or sovereignty,
or rule, or kingship over the earth.
And
then when man fell into sin, he was dethroned as the king. He lost his
sovereignty; he lost his right to rule; he lost the majesty and the wonder of
the glory of an innocent earth, the kingdom that God had given him. The earth
was immediately cursed by God. And as a result of that curse, the control of
the earth fell into the hands of the usurper Satan, who is called the prince of
this world, the god of this age.
And
so, man lost his dominion, and the earth lost its glory. What was the result of
this? Let me just give you some of them: sickness, pain, death, difficulty in
human relationships, war, sorrow, injustice, falsehood, famine, natural
disaster, and demonic activities. These are the things that result from sin.
And the earth endures all of these things constantly. But the Bible unfolds for
us a great and glorious redemptive plan in which God is not only redeeming man,
but redeeming man’s environment, redeeming man’s earth, redeeming man’s
universe, reversing the curse.
Now,
according to God’s plan, in order to do this, God would come to earth twice.
The first time he would come to redeem the earth and the universe. And so, we
see in the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, that He went to the cross and
rose from the grave for the redemption of man. The second time He comes in
blazing glory, establishes a thousand-year millennial kingdom, and then a new
heaven and a new earth throughout eternity, thus redeeming the whole of
creation.
Now,
that is the plan. And Christ was the one to carry out the plan. The ultimate
design then is a universe with no sorrow, no tears, no pain, no sickness, no
death, no disease, no difficulties, no disasters, no demons. All righteous, all
holy, all lovely, all beautiful, all glorious forever. That is the coming
kingdom of God.
Its
first phase is the thousand-year millennium, when the Lord reverses the curse
in the earth itself. The second phase is in the eternal state, when He creates
a new heaven and a new earth, unlike the one we have now. Everything is going
to change in the future. Everything we know of as a curse, everything that
blights man’s existence, everything that breaks man’s heart, everything that
steals man’s joy, everything that takes away from him the dominion and
dominance that God intended him to have - the sovereignty that God designed -
will be reversed. And the Bible says that we will reign forever and ever with
Christ in His throne. That’s the redemption of the universe.
Things
aren’t always going to be the way they are. But now, as we look at redeeming
the earth and the universe, as we look at the glorious coming kingdom of God,
it becomes patently obvious to us that man can’t effect that change. We can’t
change anything in our environment. We can try to deal with some of the
problems, but we can’t eliminate them. We don’t have the power.
Now,
we can shoot off little rockets into space, but all we do is pollute space. We
can build all kinds of machinery and equipment, but all we do is pollute the
environment around where we’re building and using those things.
As
a medical doctor told me, for everything in medicine that we solve, we create
six other problems that must be solved. So, the hurrieder we go, the behinder
we get. The greater our advancement, the more severe the complications. Man
cannot bring about a renewed earth. Man cannot eliminate the curse. He doesn’t
have the power. As powerful as our rockets, as clever as we are in dealing with
energy source, as well as we have been able to develop nuclear power and so
forth, we still cannot apply those things to changing our environment, changing
our universe.
Now,
if the earth is going to be changed, and if the environment is going to be
altered, and if there is to be a new heaven and a new earth, it’s going to have
to be done by somebody far superior to any man. In fact, it is not only a power
beyond man, it is a power that is inconceivable to man. We can’t even imagine
the kind of power it will take to reverse the curse, to create a new heaven and
a new earth any more than we can imagine the kind of power that it takes for
God to create in the beginning and to uphold creation. In Psalms 62, the Bible says,
“Power belongs to God.”
In Job 26:14,
it says, “The thunder of His power who can understand?” In Psalm 79:11,
it says, “The greatness of Thy power.” In Nahum 1, it says, “The Lord is great
in power.” In Isaiah
26:4, it says, “The Lord God is everlasting power.”
In Psalms
65:6 I read this morning, it says, “Who by
strength establishes the mountains; being girded with power.”
No
wonder David said in Psalm 63, “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.
My soul thirsted for Thee; my flesh longeth for thee to see Thy power.” What
kind of power does God have? It’s visible to us.
Romans
1. “The things around us reveal to us the power of God,” says Romans 1:20.
What kind of power is it? The longer we look at the universe, the more shocking
it becomes to see the power that is exhibited there. Puny little man, if he
wants to run a 450 horsepower bulldozer for one day has to use a hundred
gallons of diesel fuel just to putt that thing around to move dirt. What kind
of power does it take to move the universe? Beyond our imagination.
Our
little telescopes can take us out 4 billion light years, or 25 sextillion miles
– or if that doesn’t help, try 7 times 10 with 67 zeroes. We can look out
there, and we know we haven’t even come close to the edge of space. And
everywhere we look, we find power, movement of heavenly bodies energized with
incredible power. We live on a ball 25,000 miles in circumference, 8,000 miles
in diameter. And the earth weighs six septillion, five hundred sextillion tons.
And it hangs on nothing.”
I think it best to finish this
introduction in our next SD as it may be a bit too long for one reading.
4/14/2021
9:46 AM
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