SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/28/2022 10:58 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Intro to The Discipline of God’s Children”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 18:15-20
Message of the verses: “15 "And if
your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you
have won your brother. 16 "But if
he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE
MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 “And if he
refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen
even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer. 18 "Truly I say to you, whatever you shall
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven. 19 “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth
about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is
in heaven. 20 "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there
I am in their midst.’”
I want to say that this will be a very interesting
subject to look at, and I have no idea how long this will take us to finish
looking at these verses, but perhaps you will learn something that you did not
know before.
When
God made the earth, putting man on it as His very last act of creation, and I
am speaking about both man and woman when I say man. He made mankind perfect in every way
including making Adam and Eve holy before Him, having purity of life, and we
all know that this was lost in the third chapter of Genesis. Even though sin had entered the universe it
was and still is God’s plan for His people to be holy and that He is grieved by
sin of any kind. We also know that Jesus
Christ came to earth to die in our place in order that all those who accept His
forgiveness will be born-again being then a part of the family of God. However there is still the problem with sin
as even the Apostle Paul spoke about this in the seventh chapter of Romans where
he was saying that he was doing the things that he did not want to do and not
doing the things that he wanted to do. I
think that all true born-again believers can understand what Paul went through,
but it is still God’s desire that all of His children walk holy before Him. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:14-16 “14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to
the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy
yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.’”
We know that God is extremely concerned about the
holiness of His people, thus we also should be concerned too about living a
holy life before the Lord. There is a
problem that we see in mot churches in our country and I am talking about those
who preach and teach holiness from the Word of God. The problem is not that the preaching is bad
or unscriptural, but that the follow up to the people is not what it is suppose
to be. I remember when I was going to
the first church that I went to after becoming a believer, and it took me four
years before I went to that church as all I can say is that God was very
patient with me, but then His Spirit moved in my heart and the heart of my wife
and we joined that church in Westlake, Ohio.
One of the things that I do remember is that there were a number of
times when the church had to discipline a few of its members because of un-repented
sin. This is certainly not a fun time,
but a necessary time as God’s Word teaches this. The truth is that this was something that is
not done much, if at all in churches today.
I can also remember that once we got another Pastor years later that it
seemed to me that whenever he wanted to discipline someone it was to get even
or even punish them, which is the exact opposite of what discipline is all
about, as discipline it to bring a person or persons back into proper
fellowship with those they have harmed and back in a right relationship with
the Lord.
I
will conclude this first SD on the intro to these verses with a quotation from
John MacArthur’s commentary: “The church
has always had need for confronting sins of its people. During its early days many foreign visitors
to Palestine were converted to Christ and decided to stay in or near Jerusalem
in order to enjoy the fellowship of believers there. A large number of native Jewish converts
there ostracized from their families and lost their jobs because of their
new-found faith. To help support those
needy brothers and sisters, many of whom were virtually destitute, the
believers who had property and possession sold them and gave the proceeds to
the apostles, who distributed to each, as any had need (Acts 4:35). That practice was the spontaneous reaction of
generous Spirit-filled hearts to meet the practical needs of fellow Christians.” Ok, many of you reading this know where we
are going with this, but we will have to finish this in our next SD, and I
think that you will understand why this story from the fourth chapter of Acts
is in the introduction to Matthew 18:15-20.
12/28/2022 11:28 AM
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