SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/20/2022 9:35 AM
My Worship Time PT-2 “The
Plan of God”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:21
Message of the
verse: “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.”
I think that we all remember where Jesus was when He
was speaking what is found in this verse, as He was in Caesarea Philippi, which
is as far from Jerusalem as He could be and still remain in Palestine. He was only their a brief time and afterwards
He and His disciples would move down again through Galilee and Samaria to
Jerusalem, and this is where the Twelve
began to fear that death by stoning at the hands of the hostile Jewish leaders
awaited Jesus, and they were probably thinking it would also happen to them too
(John 11:16). “At that point the
disciples saw such a possibility not as the fulfilling of the plan of God but
as the hindrance or even destruction of it” writes John MacArthur.
In Matthew 15:1 we say that even
when Jesus was in Galilee that it was the Jewish leaders that came from
Jerusalem who gave the greatest opposition to Jesus. The truth is that this opposition to Jesus
still goes on today, only not just in Israel but all around the world and
because Jesus is not here physically at this time it is taken out on the body
of Christ, the church. We know that the hypocritical,
self righteous Judaism that had flourished in Jerusalem could not stand Jesus,
because He exposed their wickedness and ungodliness and rejected their
cherished, man-made traditions (see verses 3-9). Once Jesus and His disciples got to Jerusalem
these Jewish leaders would not have to hunt them down, especially Jesus for
they would be there and this is the very place where Jesus had to be crucified
in order to fulfill prophecy, and there is a lot of prophecy that would be
fulfilled when He was put to death for our sins, such as things in the Psalms,
especially Psalm 22, and in the prophets like in Isaiah and also Zachariah, and
other places. Jesus Himself had just
related to what was going to happen to Him, and as I have stated before it was
Jesus who was in charge of what took place with Him, not anyone else as they
were just used to fulfill prophecy.
Jesus declared “I lay down My life that I may take it again, No one has
taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have
authority to take it up again” (John 10:17-18).
Here is what He told Pilate, “You would have no authority over Me,
unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11).
John MacArthur writes “The name Jerusalem
means ‘foundation of peace,’ although a few times in its long history has that description
been fitting. The city is located 33
miles east of the Mediterranean Sea and 14 miles west of the Dead Sea, elevated
on a plateau some 2,500 feet above sea level.
When first mentioned in Scripture it was known as Salem whose king was
Melchizedek, ‘a priest of God Most High’ (Gen. 14:18) and a picture of Christ,
who was ‘designated by God as a high priest according to the order of
Melchizedek’ (Heb. 5:10). It was on
Mount Moriah, which was near Salem, that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice
to the Lord (Gen. 22:2). At the time of David
was made king, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites, and one of the
first acts of the new monarch was to conquer the city and name it after himself
(2 Sam. 5:5-9). Three months later he
brought the Ark of the Covenant there and Jerusalem became the city where the
Lord Himself symbolically dwelled. It
was in Jerusalem that David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple, and the city
therefore became the central place for Jewish worship.”
I have one more
thing to say about this city and that is before Solomon would be able to build
the Temple he would have to have a place to build it and this came about when
David sinned greatly in numbering the people and after many thousands died
because of David’s sin the Lord stopped the plague right there on Mount Moriah
and David bought the place from a Jebusite where at that time David offered a
sacrifice there, the very same place where Isaac was offered as a sacrifice,
but the Lord saved him from dying as there was a ram caught in the thicket and
Abraham offered it instead. The future
history of Jerusalem will continue to go on as right now it is in control of
Israel and has been since 1967, and will continue to be so, especially during
the tribulation and millennial kingdom, and then after the Lord destroys the
earth and surrounding universe there will be a New Jerusalem where God’s people
can dwell. Well this is at least 1007
years away and will be 1007 years away until the tribulation period begins
which will not happen until the rapture of the church which I have to say that
I personally have been looking for since Jan. 26, 1074, the day that I became a
born-again believer in Jesus Christ.
9/20/2022 10:14 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment