SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/16/2022 10:04 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-7 “I will Build My Church”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 16:20
Message of the verse: “20 Then He warned
the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.”
I
mentioned in our last SD that this one for today will be very short, but I did
not want to add it to yesterday’s SD because all of these in this section are
very important to understand. One of the
things that I am doing in my other blog is putting messages from older SD’s
from the book of Acts and I happen to be looking at the second chapter of the
book of Acts and I have to say that studying them together I find some very
similar things, with the exception of what is happening in Acts is up to date
while in Matthew it talks about the future.
So
we begin to look at the seventh feature or characteristic of the church that
Jesus would build, and in this Jesus reminds the disciples that His church is a
spiritual reality, as Jesus warned
them they should tell no one that He was the Christ. Now I have mentioned the following in many
earlier SD’s but it is relevant here and that is that the people in Jesus’ day
were expecting a different type of Messiah, a Messiah who would come in and
conquer the Romans, and so they seemed to miss the OT prophecies that showed
that the Messiah would come to die for their sins seen in places like Psalm 22
and also in Isaiah chapters 52 and 52.
Zachariah also has prophecies in it that speak of a suffering
Messiah. So we see that the people’s
expectations were so wrapped and selfishly misguided that to tell them that
Jesus was the Christ would be to cast pearls before swine (see Matt. 7:6).
The
following comes from John 18:36 as Jesus is declaring to Pilate “"My
kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My
servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but
as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.’
John MacArthur writes “When Christians mix their faith with politics and
various humanitarian causes, they run the risk of losing their spiritual focus
and their spiritual power. Although
human government is divinely ordained by God (Rom 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter
2:13), the state is no more to be an instrument of the church’s program than
the church is to be an instrument of the state’s.
“Like
the kingdom of God, the church is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit. For he who is this way serves
Christ is acceptable to God.’ (Rom. 14:17-18).”
MacArthur
concludes this section and 4th chapter of his third commentary on
Matthew by writing “This great teaching of our Lord only introduces the subject
of the church , which from Acts on dominates the rest of the New Testament.”
In
our next section that we will begin tomorrow we will only be beginning to look
at two verses “Matthew 16:21-23.” “21 From
that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to
Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. 22 And Peter took
Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord!
This shall never happen to You." 23 But He turned and said to Peter, "Get
behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your
mind on God’s interests, but man’s."
9/16/2022 10:39 AM
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