SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/27/2021 10:57 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Revelation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 11:27
Message of the verses: “27 "All things have been handed over to Me
by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know
the Father except the Son, and
anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
We can look at these words of our
Lord as a commentary on verse 25 which says “25
At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have
revealed them to infants.” These words of Jesus in verse 27 expand on
the truth that God has chosen to reveal His will to “babes or infants,” this as
we have stated are the spiritually humble and helpless, rather than to those
who are proud and self-reliant. John MacArthur
writes “A genuine invitation to salvation must consider God’s revelation,
because no person, even the most determined or sincere, could know the way to
Him unless the Lord had already made it known.
The way of salvation is disclosed only through the sovereign revelation of
God.” I can say that this statement is
true, for as I look back at the time when I became a believer in Jesus Christ
it was the furthest thing from my mind, although there were times before when
the Lord was working on my heart. As I
moved along in my walk with the Lord and began to seek things from His Word I
learned that what is found out in verse 27 made perfect sense to me. The Lord saved me because He had chosen me
before the foundation of the world, and so when the Holy Spirit of God gave me
an effectual call to salvation, a call that I could not say no to I accepted
that call and thus became a believer in Jesus Christ for the salvation that He
offered when He died in my place on the cross almost 2000 years ago. As stated this took a while in my walk with
the Lord to understand this truth, but it is the only way that makes any sense
to me, for before I became a believer I was spiritually dead, thus could not
make any spiritual decisions. I have
told the story before about an undertaker who asked a dead man which tie he
wanted, but of course got no answer. He
was physically dead and could not answer and all people are born spiritually
dead and thus for them to become a believer they need the miracle of the effectual
call to receive forgiveness from their sins.
John
MacArthur writes: “The first important
truth of this verse is not so much taught as taken for granted. Jesus unequivocally equates Himself with God,
call Him ‘My Father’ in a way that Jews would never do except when referring to
His corporate fatherhood of Israel. Here
is one of Jesus’ clearest statements of His deity, disclosing the intimate and
absolutely unique relationship of the ‘Father’ and the ‘Son.’ In essence they are one and are inseparable.”
I
realize that I may have got the cart before the horse in talking about the
effectual call, but there are times in my writing of these Spiritual Diaries
that I have to talk about salvation as that is one of the most important
reasons that I spend time in front of my computer each day writing things about
the Word of God.
We
continue along the lines of the deity of Jesus Christ as everyone who becomes a
believer in Jesus Christ must realize that He is God come in the flesh in order
to show to Israel, and to the world who God really is. Jesus told His disciples that “if You see Me
you have seen the Father.”
We
conclude with this first truth from this verse as John MacArthur explains “That
Jesus is Himself God is the heart of the gospel, because apart from His deity
He could not save a single soul. No
heresy so corrupts the gospel and robs it of its power as the teaching that
Jesus is not God. Apart from His deity,
there is no gospel and no salvation.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I praise the Lord that on the 26th
of January, 1974 that my eyes were opened to the truth that Jesus Christ is God
and that He came to save me, and all those who will accept this truth.
My Steps of Faith for Today: For the last several weeks a dear friend of
mine has been in the hospital, and a week ago we thought that he was getting
better, but learned that was not the case so when you read about praying
without ceasing that is what is what I have been doing for my friend and his
family.
12/27/2021 11:31 AM
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