SPIRITUAL DIAR FOR 5/20/2022 8:24 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “Leaving
Capernaum”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 13:53
Message of the
verse: “53
And it came about that when Jesus had finished these parables, He departed from
there.”
We can look at Matthew 4:13 and 8:5 to see that
Jesus had been ministering in and around Capernaum for about a year as He was
using it as His home base. There is some
speculation that he may have been living with Simon Peter while there. Jesus will actually curse the majority of the
people who live there because the majority who lived there did not realize who
He was even though He did many great miracles there. Perhaps they just seemed to get use to having
the Son of Man living among them and did not pay much attention to Him. What a tragedy! Now because of the people’s rejection, His
last teaching there was done in parables, in order that “while seeing they
[would] not see, and while hearing they [would] not hear, nor…understand”
(Matt. 13:13). After Jesus finished the
parables as seen in verse 53, the parables on the kingdom, He departed from
there.
It was in Matthew 11:23 that Jesus
said the following about Capernaum “"And you, Capernaum, will not be
exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had
occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.”
John MacArthur ends this short
section by writing “Jesus had, in effect, pronounced a curse on Capernaum, and
when He departed from there, the city’s doom was imminent. Jesus never went there again except as He
passed through to minister elsewhere. He
had come into the city and demonstrated power that could only have been from
God. Yet the people would not have Him
as Lord. Many marveled and some
criticized, but few believed. Now
Capernaum’s opportunity was passed, and she entered a decline into oblivion
from which she never recovered. Today
the city is in virtually the same state of ruin—without houses or people—that it
was a few centuries after Jesus was there.
Apparently the town and the synagogue enjoyed a period of worldly
prosperity for a while, but archeological excavations show increasing pagan
influence on the Jews there. The last
synagogue built in Capernaum, erected over the floor of the one where Jesus
taught, was decorated with various animals and mythological figures. Having rejected the true God, the people were
at the mercy of false ones.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: It was a
very sad situation that we have just studied and one wonders if that is going
to be the case of our country. Since
Roe-V-Wade there have been in excess of 60 million babies killed in our
country. It was the desire of Planned
Parenthood to kill as many black babies as they could, and many abortion
clinics are in the inner city where it is mostly populated by black
people. Abortion could be called birth
control by some, as people who have sexual relations, mostly out of wedlock use
it to kill their unborn babies as a convenience. As a country we have had great successes and
I believe it was because of the religious freedom that we have which was sought
by the first settlers who came here from Europe. As I look at the curse that Jesus pronounced
on Capernaum I wonder how long ago that His curse was on our country. Was it when our country made it legal to kill
innocent babies saying it was the right of a mother to kill her own
offspring?
My Steps of Faith for Today: Pray for our
country that God’s grace will allow better leadership to be put in place, and
by that I mean leadership who have the right relationship with our Lord Jesus
Christ.
5/20/2022 8:51
AM
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