SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/27/2022 8:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “Communication the Message”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 12:18c
Message of the verse: “and He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles.”
We are still in the section of Matthew 12 that comes
from the book of Isaiah, as he is prophesying about the Messiah, and in this
last part of verse 18 Isaiah is prophesying that the Lord’s beloved Servant
would proclaim a message of truth and justice to the Gentiles, which is exactly
what Jesus did. This certainly goes
against the thinking of the Jews in that day and probably the Jews of our day
too, that is that the Messiah would also redeem Gentiles around the entire
world, and not just Israel. MacArthur
adds “Israel was, in fact, to be the channel of God’s grace to the rest of the
world. In His first great promise to
Abraham, God declared, ‘And in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed’ (Gen. 12:3). Israel was called
to be God’s agency for reaching the world for Himself; and when the Jews as a
nation rejected God, He had to raise up a new agent, the church, to accomplish
that purpose.” Israel was certainly blessed
by God in bringing them into existence, but Israel became selfish with their
God, and did not want the Gentiles to have any part of their God. This is still going on today as in one of the
sermons on the book of Hebrews I heard of a Rabbi who said we have 14 million
Jews and we are not looking to add any more.
He was talking about Gentile proselytes.
I think that it was interesting that the first person
that Jesus told that He was the Messiah was a woman who was a Samaritan, that is
half Jew and half Gentile. Both women
and Samaritans were people that the Jews of Jesus’ day hated. It was early in His ministry that He had
Gentile followers from Idumea, the Trans-Jordan, and the region around Tyre and
Sidon as seen in Mark 3:8. Jesus healed
the servant of a Gentile centurion which is seen in Matthew 8:10, and Jesus
talked about this man’s great faith.
As we read through the gospels we see that the Jews of
His day certainly hated any attention that Jesus gave to the Gentiles, and
especially His treating them equally with the Jewish people. They certainly did not even want to think
about “their” Messiah coming to redeem Gentiles, but that is exactly what their
prophet Isaiah wrote about. There is a
story in the 22nd chapter of the book of Acts where we find Paul
being arrested and almost killed by a mob.
Paul was able to talk to the crowd as the Roman soldiers came and had
thing under control. The Jewish crowd
listened to Paul about his vision that he had when God saved him, but when he
told them that God called him to go to the Gentiles they again wanted to kill
him. MacArthur concludes “Almost no
truth of the gospel was as hard for Jews to accept as the truth that salvation
and fellowship with God were for Gentiles as well as Jews. The notion was utterly inconceivable to them,
and, as clear from the account just mentioned, (the account from Acts 22), they
considered it a form of blasphemy.
“But
God’s plan for redemption had always included the Gentiles, and to them the
Messiah was to proclaim justice and deliverance from sin just as to the Jews.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I realize that
there is no way that I deserve God’s grace, and also there is no way that I
could ever in my own strength earn my way to having a relationship with God,
and that is why I am so very thankful that through the wonderful grace of God
that He sent His Messiah in order to save me.
I am beginning my 49th year of serving the Lord and I desire
to continue that as long as God allows me to do so, hopefully until He comes at
the Rapture of the church, hopefully very soon!
My Steps of Faith for Today: By God’s grace and the empowering of His Holy
Spirit to fight the good fight.
1/27/2022 9:27 AM
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