SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/12/2022 10:15 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “I Will Build My Church”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 16:18
Message of the verse: “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.”
We are looking at the third characteristic of the
Church He is building, and that is He alluded to the intimacy of the fellowship
of believers. “It is My church,” is what
Jesus said. Jesus is the Architect,
Builder, Owner, and Lord of His church.
Our Lord assures His followers that they are His personal possession and
eternally have His divine love and care and to me this means very much. The church is His body which was “purchased
with His own blood” (Acts 20:28), and are one with Him in a marvelous, holy
intimacy. Paul writes in 1 Cor. 6:17
“But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” There
is another verse that goes along with this section as I used it in our Sunday
school class yesterday. But as it
is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to
be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them” (Heb.
11:16). Notice the highlighted portion
of verse 16 and put your name in the place where it says “their God” and this
shows that God is not ashamed of anyone who is a true believer in Jesus Christ,
ashamed to be called their God. Hebrews
2:11 also speaks of this “For both He who sanctifies and those who are
sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed
to call them brethren,” The following is
what Jesus said to Saul who would become Paul while he was walking to
Damascus: “Saul, Saul, why are you
persecuting Me?”(Acts 9:4). By
persecuting Christians as seen in Acts 8:3; 9:1-2 Saul had been persecuting
Christ. Now think about all of the
persecuting that has gone on since the church began and each person who is
persecuting the church is persecuting Jesus Christ and in the end if they don’t
turn from their sin and trust Christ as their Lord and Savior then unlike Saul
they will surely end up in hell.
John
MacArthur writes “God has always identified Himself with His people and
jealously guarded them as His own. He
several times referred to His chosen people Israel as the apple, or pupil, of
His eye. Through the prophet Zechariah
He declared to them, ‘He who touches you, touches the apple of His eye” (Zech.
2:8; cf. Deut. 32:10; Ps. 17:8; Prov. 7:2).
The front part of the eye, the cornea, is the most sensitive exposed
part of the human body. God was
therefore saying that to harm Israel was to poke a finger in His own eye. To harm God’s people is to harm God Himself,
and to cause them pain is to cause Him pain.
Lord
willing we will look at the fifth characteristic of the church from the section
we are looking at in Matthew 16. I want
to take one SD for this as I believe what John MacArthur writes then this 4th
characteristic is something that many people may not agree with, but once you
read what he writes there perhaps it will make perfect sense. In my study of Revelation, and towards the
end of that wonderful book there are also some things that I want to dig up and
post in the next SD that I think go along with what we will be looking at.
9/12/2022 10:47 AM
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