SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/30/2021 10:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro
to “Jesus Power over Sin”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
9:1-8
Message of the verses: “1 Getting into a
boat, Jesus crossed over the sea and came to His own city. 2 And they
brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to
the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven." 3 And
some of the scribes said to themselves, "This fellow
blasphemes." 4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, "Why are you
thinking evil in your hearts? 5 “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are
forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’? 6 “But so that you may know that the
Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" — then He said
to the paralytic, "Get up, pick up your bed and go home." 7 And he
got up and went home. 8 But when the crowds saw this, they were
awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.”
The
Bible begins with perfection, a perfect earth in a perfect universe, and
finally perfect people as God created man out of the earth, and the woman out
of the rib of man, and all was perfect, that is until we get to the 3rd
chapter of the very first book in the Word of God, the book of Genesis. From that point on the biggest problem for
mankind is the need to have forgiveness of sin, and as we look at this section
from Matthew’s Gospel we see that Jesus says that He has the authority on earth
to forgive sin and this is the greatest message for sinful man that they will
ever hear in their entire life. Sin is
not much of a topic in our world today as man is too consumed with his life,
how to make money, how to get a bigger and better house, how to send the kids
to the best schools, and how to live comfortably in a world that as some have
said is going to hell in a hand basket, and to be honest I don’t know where
that saying came from and why it is repeated.
MacArthur
writes “Matthew has been focusing on various miracles of the Lord, all of which
are meant to demonstrate Jesus’ divinity.
Even more specifically, they precisely and completely fulfilled the Old
Testament prophecies of the Messiah’s kingdom work. The miracles recorded by Matthew under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit therefore have a uniquely Jewish and Old Testament character
and significance.” One of the things
that God is teaching me through this Gospel of Matthew and also through the
Gospel of John which I am teaching through in a Bible Study, it to see that the
different writers of the Gospels have a theme, each one different and the
stories and the miracles that they tell in their books about Jesus go along
with that theme. John uses seven
miracles which he calls signs to show that Jesus Christ in indeed God come in
the flesh, for towards the end of John’s Gospel we read “He who has seen Me has
seen the Father.” Matthew portrays Jesus
as the King and so the King must have a kingdom, and that Kingdom on earth will
take place after what is called the “Tribulation Period” and is called the Millennial
Kingdom, meaning a 1000 year reign of Jesus Christ on this earth as King. In order to show that Jesus is King Matthew
goes over different miracles that Jesus did to show that as King He has the
power and the authority to be this King.
We have seen that He has the power over nature and then the power over
Satan, and now we are seeing that He has the authority and the power to forgive
sin as we begin looking at chapter nine.
John
MacArthur goes into more details about what I have been talking about and we
will finish by looking at the following paragraph from his commentary. “Concerning the natural realm, the Old
Testament prophesied that the Messiah would have power over the curse in the
physical world. Isaiah predicted there
would be in His reign an abundance of rain and crops not known since the fall
(Isa. 30:23-24) and that one day even the wilderness would blossom profusely,
as waters break forth and scorched land and thirsty ground become pools and
springs of water (34: 1-2; cf. 41:17-18; 51:3; 55:13; Ezek. 36:29-38; Joel
3:18). Animals that had been natural
enemies of man and of other animals would no longer destroy or devour, and
human longevity would increase so that a person who died at a hundred years of
age would be considered to have died young.
By the stilling of the storm (Matt. 8:23-27), Jesus gave a foretaste of
His eventual taming of the entire natural world.” There is more to this kind of things which,
Lord willing, we will continue to look at in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Learning more about how the Gospel writers
used the different things in the life of Jesus has helped me to better
understand these different gospels.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust the Lord that He will grant to me
wisdom as I study His Word, and that He will give me great Joy as I study His
Word each day.
4/30/2021 10:32 AM
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