SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/7/2022 9:21 AM
My Worship Time
Focus:
PT-2 “The Paradox”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:25-26
Message of the verses: “25 “For whoever
wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake
shall find it. 26 “For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole
world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
We see from verse 26 that Jesus is reinforcing the
paradox by adding “For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole
world, and forfeits his soul? Now before
I get into talking about this section of verse 26 I want to say that it seems
that every time that I have looked at this section of verse 26 that I think
about the Antichrist, and the reason is that he will be in control of most of
the earth, especially in the first part of the tribulation period when he seems to have the love of the whole world as he brings it together. Well we know what will happen to him as he
certainly will “forfeit his soul.”
Well
what we have in this section is the ultimate hyperbole. Now imagine, if you can, Jesus was saying, “what
it would be like to somehow possess the whole world. Of what lasting benefit would that be, if in
gaining it you forfeited your soul. As
one thinks about the truth of this, that is losing one’s soul and ending up in
hell for eternity there is no question which would be better. I guess as we live in the country that has
the emphasis on things and getting more things, and more things, perhaps it is
time to remember what are the important “things” in life, and that certainly is
a relationship, a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in order to
become His child and spend eternity with Him.
Even if you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ then keep your mind on things above and not
on things of this earth where all things on this earth will eventually be
burned up. Riches are not wrong unless
they own you. There are many rich
believers on planet earth, but if they lost all of their riches and that would
not effect their walk with the Lord then they really did not own them in the
first place, as they were just something that God put them in charge of and had
the right to take them away if He so chose to do that. Now back to the person who has gained the
whole earth and will lose his soul, as what they truly are is a walking dead
man who temporarily owned everything but who face and eternity in hell rather
than in heaven.
John
MacArthur writes “Or,’ Jesus continued, ‘what’ could possibly be worth having
during this lifetime, if to gain it you would have to exchange your soul?’ To gain ever possession possible in this
world and yet be without Christ is to be bankrupt forever. But to abandon everything in this world for
the sake of Christ is to be rich forever (cf. Matt. 6:19-21).”
We
have one more section to look at which comes from verse 27 and it is entitled “The
Parousia” which is the noun form of the Greek verb behind “to come” and is
often used to refer to Christ’s second coming, of which this is the very first
mention in the New Testament. Lord will
we will study this section in our next SD.
10/7/2022 9:40 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment