SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/2/2022 9:28 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Source”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:17b
Message of the verse: “because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
We have been talking about how it is very possible
that the disciples of Jesus did not fully understand or believe that He was the
Messiah. I suppose that it is also
possible that once you become a believer that it would be difficult to
understand why they did not realize who He was for after all they had seen His
wonderful miracles and listened to his teaching. The problem was their background, as they had
been taught by the Jewish leaders who , to be kind, were not the best to
listen to at this time as their teaching was not exactly what the Old Testament
had said, as they taught from the commentaries on the Old Testament that were
written when the children of Israel were in captivity in Babylon and then after
they returned to the Promised Land from that captivity. Another thing is that for the most part the
teaching about the Messiah came from the parts of the Old Testament that talked
about how He would rule over Israel in the kingdom age and so they were
actually looking for someone to get them out from the rule of Rome and to them
Jesus did not fit this evaluation of the Messiah. They also forgot to look at places like
Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and Psalm 116, and also the second Psalm as all of these
spoke of the Messiah and in the case of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 you have the
best description of the crucifixion given in the Word of God. Another thing that they neglected was the
prophecy found in the 9th chapter of Daniel as it gave in detail as
to when the Messiah would be “cut off” and so to know that number of days in
this prophecy it would have been easy to see the Jesus of Nazareth was the fulfillment
of what the Old Testament showed to be the Messiah.
So the question is how did these disciples, and I may say
eleven of them finally understand that Jesus was their Messiah? The answer is seen in what Jesus said “flesh
and blood did not reveal this to you.” Jesus
was directly talking to Peter and as we mentioned he was the spokesmen for the
disciples. Let us look at a verse from
the pen of Paul that helps us better understand what our Lord said to
Peter: “But a
natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually
appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14). In an earlier
post that I wrote in 2017 as I was looking at the 2nd chapter of the
book of Acts I mentioned a story that happened in the summer of 2014. The story was about the man who I grew up
with who gave me the tapes that the Lord used to change me from “a natural man”
to a child of God. We met for lunch that
year as it was 50 years after his graduation from high school. (Mine would come
a year later.) He told me that his mom
had died and that she was uneasy about dying and he told her that she would be
heading right up to heaven. I did not
say anything to him as I am not a judge, but after knowing that he did not
believe in the gospel to be saved I thought that his mom may have been disappointed
after she died. The truth is that there
are many, many, many “natural” people in the world today who have a false hope
that is given to them from people just like the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day and
like the Jewish leaders of today and also like many false teachers of the
gospel, and many of them will be seen on your cable TV asking for your money so
your prayers will get answered.
Well I did not get as far into our
text as I wanted but sometimes it is best to listen to the Spirit of the Lord
and write what I believe that He wants me to write.
9/2/2022 10:04
AM
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