SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/10/2022 9:41 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Jesus
said “I will build my Church”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:18-20
Message of the verses: “18 "And I
also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. 19 “I will give you the keys of
the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 20
Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the
Christ.
Today we are going to look at the second feature or
characteristic of the church that He is building which is “I will build my
Church.” We have recently learned of the
confession that Peter made that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living
God. This certainly is a true statement
and because of who He is He cannot lie about anything, and since He says “I
will build my Church” we can believe that this is just what He will do.
Now
comes a quote from John MacArthur that may be new to some who are reading
this: “In using the future tense, Jesus
was not saying, as some contend, that He had not build His church in the
past. The idea is that He would continue
to build His church just as He had always done.
As will be discussed below, church is used here in a general,
nontechnical sense and does not indicate the distinct body of believers that
first came into existence at Pentecost.
“Jesus
was not emphasizing the time of His building but its certainty. No matter how liberal, fanatical,
ritualistic, apathetic, or apostate its outward adherents my be, and not matter
how decadent the rest of the world may be, Christ will build His church. Therefore, no matter how oppressive and
hopeless their outward circumstances may appear from a human perspective, God’s
people belong to a cause that cannot fail.”
The
point that we must learn from this truth is that it is Jesus Christ who will
build His church. Believers are
certainly a part of what the Lord uses to build His church as they are the ones
who give out the gospel to others and the Spirit of God is the One who convicts
people of their sin and then their need to repent and accept the Son of God
into their hearts so that they will be saved, and at that time will become the
part of a universal Church, and should then seek out a local church where they
can fellowship with like-minded believers.
I have mentioned many times in my blogs that I did not get saved at a
church service, but I would have to say it was in a restaurant that was famous
for hotdogs and beer. I was given the
four spiritual laws in order for me to understand the gospel and the Spirit of
God who had been doing a work in my heart after listening to sermons by Hal
Lindsey on the end times brought me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ on
the 26th of January 1974.
Like I said earlier it was Jesus Christ using the Spirit of God giving
me an effectual call to salvation to which I could not say no to, and thus
became a part of the Church that Jesus is building.
John
MacArthur writes “By human reason, persuasiveness, and diligence it is possible
to win converts to an organization, a cause, a personality, and to many other
things. But it is totally impossible to
win a convert to the spiritual church of Jesus Christ apart from the sovereign
God’s own Word and Spirit. Human effort
can produce only human results. God
alone can produce divine results.” I
guess that he may have been looking at my testimony as it is just like these
words that he wrote.
MacArthur
goes on “when he studies and is obedient to the Word, and when he walks in the
Spirit and produces the fruit of the Spirit, a believer can be sure he is
living where Christ is building His church.
It is not faithful believers who build Christ’s church, but Christ who
builds His church through faithful believers.
Wherever His people are committed to His kingdom and His righteousness
the Lord builds His church. If believers
in one place become cold or disobedient, Christ does not stop building but
simply starts work somewhere else. His
true church is always ‘under construction.’”
There
is a little bit more to this section of Christ building His church, but I want
to save it for tomorrow morning as my Sunday SD’s are usually shorter.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am thankful to the Lord for what He did for
me in saving my soul back in 1974, for the Holy Spirit giving me an effectual
call that I could not say no to and for then giving to me a wife who came to
the Lord in salvation, for two children, and then their spouses, and then for
seven grand-children who came to know the Lord.
God is truly Good!
9/10/2022 10:19 AM
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