SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/19/2022 10:06 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Insurrection”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
12:14
Message of the
verse: “14
But the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as to
how they might destroy Him.”
In our last SD I mentioned that the Pharisees had
all the evidence that they needed to understand that Jesus was their Messiah,
but refused to look at that as they were blinded by their false religion.
What do people do when they cannot
disprove the truth? Well they do what
the Pharisees did “the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as
to how they might destroy Him.” This
was true to their nature of their spiritual father, who is the Devil (“"You
are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your
father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth
because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his
own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.) MacArthur writes “The Pharisees sought to
destroy what they could not subvert.”
I have mentioned in past SD’s that
everything that Jesus did while here on earth was planned before time began,
and so the truth is that when the Pharisees tried to destroy Him, and they
would have killed Him on the spot, that they could not do that because they
were not in control; Jesus was, and He was in control all the way to the point
of dying on the cross for the sins of the world.
Mark’s gospel adds from 3:6 “The
Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians
against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.” The Pharisees were getting some help in their
plot to kill Jesus from the Herodians.
MacArthur writes “The Herodians were the antithesis of the Pharisees in
almost every way, and the fact that the Pharisees sought to join forces with
them reveals how desperate they were to do away with Jesus. The religious legalists joined forces with
the secular libertarians to destroy and enemy they considered to be even more
dangerous than each other.”
So
we see that despite their differences these two groups had a common interest in
killing our Lord as they both rejected their Messiah and their mutual unwitting
allegiance was to Satan, but they probably did not realize that. We have seen earlier that Satan is the
spiritual leader of the present world system when we quoted John 8:44. So neither the Gentile world nor the Jewish
nation recognized or would receive the divine Visitor who had made them and had
come to redeem them (“10 He was in the world, and the world was made through
Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were
His own did not receive Him” (John 1:10-11).
John MacArthur quotes Donald Grey Barnhouse as he
observed “It is at this point in history that Israel’s clock stopped.” Because Israel, God’s chosen and specially
blessed people, rejected her Messiah, God placed her on the shelf as a nation ‘until
the fulness of the Gentiles has come in’ (Rom. 11:25; cf. Acts 15:14-18).”
I
want to now quote a most interesting two paragraphs from the end of John MacArthur’s
commentary on this section and on his 26th chapter. “Legalism is the implacable enemy of grace. Even the Mosaic law, demanding as it was, was
a reflection of God’s grace, a means of guiding men toward Jesus Christ, the
one true and only hope of coming to God.
As Paul explains, the law was a ‘tutor to led us to Christ, that we may
be justified by faith’ (Gal. 3:24). If
God’s own law was only a shadow, how much less spiritual substance does human
tradition have? If even divine law
cannot save, of how much less value is human tradition?
“Just
as trust in tradition and good works is a barrier to salvation, it is also a
barrier to faithful living after salvation.
‘Having begun by the Spirit, are you not being perfected by the flesh?’
Paul asked Galatian believers who were misled by the legalistic Judaizers (Gal.
3:3). ‘Does He then, who provides you
with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or
by hearing with faith?...Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having
become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a
tree’—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessings of Abraham might come to the
Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith’
(vv. 5, 13-14).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I think that there are times when I have been
trying to follow the Law under my own strength, but this cannot happen as Paul
wrote to the Galatians in the verses we have just looked at. It is the Holy Spirit who has to be the One
who guides me in doing the things that God the Father has planned for me to do
in eternity past as seen in Eph. 2:10).
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust the Lord that He will get me through
the sorrow of having to have our dog of 16 years down yesterday, as she was a
part of our family and will be missed.
1/19/2022 10:39 AM
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