SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/4/2022 7:47 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-3 “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.”
I mentioned in our last SD that I would be quoting
from MacArthur’s commentary on a subject that I am not sure that I knew about
before listening to his sermon on this section.
“Perhaps the greatest testimony of Jesus’ messiahship,
however, was His claim to be Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:8), a claim that for
a Jew of His day could only have been interpreted as presumption of deity. The Sabbath, which has the basic meaning of
rest or cessation, was the center of Jewish life. Not only their week by their entire calendar
of feasts and holy days was built on the concept of Sabbath. The seventh day of the week (Ex. 20:11) and
every other sabbath observance was a time of rest and worship. The book of Leviticus mentions nine
sabbath-based festivals, which include the weekly Sabbath (Lev. 23:3); the Passover
(vv4-8); the feast of first fruits (vv. 9-14); Pentecost (vv. 15:22); the feast
of trumpets (vv. 23-25); the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur (vv. 26-32); the
feast of tabernacles (vv. 33-44); the sabbatical year (25:2-7); and the year of
jubilee (vv. 8-55), when, every fiftieth year, all slaves were freed and all
land restored to its original owners.
“All of those sabbath observances were pictures of the
final and eternal rest of the children of God, the time when Messiah would come
to earth to set His people free and establish His divine kingdom. Every time a Jew celebrated a sabbath he was
reminded that some day he and all his fellow Jews would be released from all
bondage—whether the bondage of political oppression, the bondage of continual
sacrifices, or the bondage of labor to make a living. The entire sabbath system pointed to the
true, perfect, and eternal rest that Messiah would bring to His people.
“For Jesus to claim that He fulfilled the prophecy of
Isaiah 61:1-2, as He did in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-21), was
unmistakably to claim messiahship. For
Him to present Himself as the source of rest (Matt. 11:28) was to present
Himself as the source of holiness, and to claim lordship over the Sabbath (Matt.
12:8) was to claim lordship over everything.
“Because Jesus is Himself God’s perfect Sabbath rest and
the source of true holiness, believers have no more reason to observe the
seventh day of the week or any other special day. ‘For we who have believed enter that rest,
just as He has said…There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of
God. For the one who has entered His
rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His’ (Heb. 4:3,
9-10). ‘Therefore let no one act as your
judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a
Sabbath day,’ Paul wrote. Such things ‘are
a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ’ (Col.
2:16-17).
The command to keep the Sabbath day is the only one of
the Ten Commandments that the New Testament does not require of
Christians. By His grace, Jesus Christ
gives every believer in Him a jubilee liberation that is perfect, final, and
eternal. A Christian therefore does not
violate the Sabbath when he works on the Lord’s Day but when he persists in
self-righteous works in the presumptuous hope of adding to what the Savior has
already accomplished.
“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father,’
Jesus had explained on an earlier occasion; ‘and no one knows the Son, except
the Father; nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom
the Son wills to reveal Him’ (Matt. 11:27).
“As with the disciples, when people today confess Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior and fellowship with Him through His Word, the Spirit
opens their minds and hearts to more and more of His truth and power. ‘Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the
word of God,’ Paul declared (Rom. 10:17).
As we continue to gaze into His glory we are transformed into His image
(see Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:49; Col. 3:10).
I hope and pray that this was good for all who read it.
9/4/2022 8:12 AM
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