SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/6/2022 11:25 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Intro
to Matthew 16:18-20”
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.”
I want to begin by talking about the fact that God
created the universe, and as we see in the book of Genesis that when God
created man he was created in God’s image in order to bring glory to the
Lord. Paul writes the following in
Colossians 1:16 “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
authorities — all
things have been created through Him and for Him.” This is the reason for human existence. MacArthur adds “And if the ultimate purpose
of mankind is to glorify God, it should not seem strange that God is collecting
for Himself a redeemed assembly of people who will forever be the praise of His
glory (see Eph. 1:6; 3:21). That is the
theme of redemptive history. Because He
is a worthy God and deserving of glory, the Lord has made men who are able to
give glory and who will reflect eternally the majesty and splendor of His
glorious being. From out of the rebels
who now populate the world, God is calling a redeemed church that will forever
be privileged to render Him glory (see Rev. 4:6-11; 5:9-14). To be a part of that is to fulfill man’s
reason for existence.”
The
Bible teaches us that God is both the Maker and Redeemer of mankind, as Jesus
Christ is the supreme and sovereign architect (engineer) of History. The rest of what we could be called notables
of history, whether righteous and godly or wicked and rebellious, are no more
than players in the great drama that Christ has written and now directs. We can say that history is His story.
I
want to say something about the way that we will continue looking at this
section of Scripture, and that is I suppose that when I put down something for
the “focus” which I have been calling the “intro” to these verses will not stay
that way as we will just be looking at the different verses as we move through
them.
Right
now I want to look at the background of Jesus’ teaching in this present
passage. The background was not cynical Greek or Roman philosophy but it was
the God-given Jewish religion that had been humanly perverted. The people that Jesus was speaking to were
those who from their earliest years had been taught to anticipate the coming of
the Lord’s anointed who is the Messiah, and in the Greek the Christ. However their expectations, were
partly scriptural, were distorted by the traditional interpretations of the
rabbis and the scribes over the previous several centuries. I have mentioned that because of the sin of
Judah that the Lord had called the Babylonians to defeat them and take them
into Babylon for 70 years. After the 70
years were over some of them went back to the Promised Land. While in Babylon there were several books
written to help the Jewish people better understand the Old Testament Covenant,
and it was during this time that the true Jewish faith was turned into a works
type of “religion.” It was during this
time that the teaching about the Messiah who was to come only focused on the
political Messiah who would take them out from the “arm” of Rome, therefore
when the real Messiah came, Jesus Christ, the majority of them did not believe
He was the Messiah, but if they would have just done a better study of their
Old Testament they would have found out that first there would come a suffering
Messiah in order to pay for their sins, and then if they would have accepted
Him the conquering Messiah would have taken care of Rome and would have sat on
the throne of David ruling as their Leader.
We know that this did not happen, but we also know that it will
happen. However the disciples of Jesus
were still a little bit confused, especially Judas, and so it was difficult for
them to understand that Jesus was truly their Messiah, up until this point as
we see in these verses.
I want to say a big thank you to my
sister who reads my SD’s each day and will text me of any things that I have
not spelled right or something else is wrong with them so that I can correct
them. Happy Birthday to my sister whose birthday
is tomorrow and the card I sent will be a bit late.
Thanks for your continued help.
9/6/2022 12:05 PM
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