SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/8/2022 9:42 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Peril”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
18:6-7
Message of the verses: “6 but whoever causes
one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him
that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the
depth of the sea.
7 "Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it
is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the
stumbling block comes!
I mentioned in our last SD on these verses that we
would talk a bit about false prophets. There
is a reason that the Bible speaks so forcefully against false teachers or
prophets, and that reason is that they not only believe and practice evil, but
they also lure others, including God’s true children into their wicked beliefs
and practices. In my study of the book
of Hebrews I have been looking at what the Bible calls “apostates.” An apostate is a person who truly knows and
understands the truth of salvation, they know what they need to do in order to
become a true born-again believer in Jesus Christ, and then they walk away not
accepting the truth. Judas, and also
Esau are noted apostates found in the Word of God. Judas walked with the Lord for three years
and then sold Him for 20 pieces of silver.
Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of some kind of
red stew, and later on he sought it with tears but had gone too far and later
died in his sin. MacArthur writes “People
in the church who live ungodly lives and lure others into their sinful ways are
sticking their finger in God’s eye, as it were, and would be better off
dead. How we treat fellow believers in
the church is a matter of immense importance, and to lead them into sin, thus
irritation Almighty God, is unthinkable.”
Now remember that what is done to a true believer is done to Jesus Christ.
The truth is that there are many
ways persons can be caused to stumble into sin, and the most obvious way is by,
directly tempting them to sin, and we know that Satan and the world can use
even believers to tempt other believers to sin.
We
don’t have to get to far in our reading of the Bible to find the first person
who tempted another into sin, as we can go to the third chapter of Genesis to
find that Eve tempted Adam into sin with the eating of the forbidden fruit. It was after Satan’s temptation herself she
immediately seduced Adam into joining her in disobeying God. The blame game came after this as when
confronted by God Adam said it was Eve’s fault, and Eve said it was the snake’s
fault (Satan), and the snake did not have a leg to stand on. As we continue looking at the early chapters
of the Bible we see that Aaron, the high priest of Israel caused the whole
nation of Israel to sin as he made the golden calf while Moses was up on Mt. Sinai. Aaron had an excuse when confronted by Moses
as he stated that he put the gold into some kind of mold and out came the
calf. We can think of all kinds of
excuses as we all, at times play the blame game. Next we want to look at what happened after Solomon’s
son became king of all of Israel, and after that it was the will of the Lord to
allow the nation to split into two kingdoms.
Jeroboam was the first king of the northern kingdom, and as we read
through the history of the northern kingdom we see his name mentioned many
times, that is mentioned in a bad way. I
did a word search of Jeroboam from 1st and 2nd Kings and
found his name 71 times, and many of those times is spoke of the sin that he
committed. “29 It came
about as soon as he was king, he struck down all the household of Jeroboam. He
did not leave to Jeroboam any persons alive, until he had destroyed them,
according to the word of the LORD, which He spoke by His servant Ahijah the
Shilonite, 30 and because of the sins of Jeroboam
which he sinned, and
which he made Israel sin, because of his provocation with which he provoked the LORD God of
Israel to anger” (1 Kings 15:29-30). Notice the highlighted portion of verse
thirty as this is the first time that we see this mentioned in the Word of God,
but will be repeated again and again as we read through 1st and 2nd
Kings. This is what one can call an
example not to follow.
12/8/2022 10:15 AM
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