SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/3/2023 10:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Person who Initiates Discipline”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
18:15b
Message of the verse: “go and reprove him in private;”
The Christian views that we are talking about in this
section of Matthew are true as they are in all of the Bible, but in the world
we now live in there would be many who would not want to have another person
express to him what he is doing wrong even if that would be greatly helpful to
the one doing wrong. MacArthur states “Love that tolerates sin is not
love at all but worldly and selfish sentimentality.” It is not easy to do what is right, but it
must be done anyway and done in true love.
To preach love apart from God’s holiness is to teach
something other than God’s love. In the
12th chapter of Hebrews the author writes about God’s discipline,
and he compares it to the discipline of earthly fathers. It is difficult to discipline a child, but
done in the correct way it shows how much that the parent loves the child, they
love the child so much that they want them to change, and discipline is what
will cause them to change for the better.
MacArthur writes “No church that tolerates known sin in its membership
will have spiritual growth or effective evangelism. In spite of that truth, however, such
tolerance is standard in the church today—at all levels.”
Now I will quote a paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary
and then quote from Richard Lovelace from his commentary as both speak of what
is going on in our churches today.
“History has seen excesses in preaching what is commonly
known as hell fire and damnation, but that is not the church’s danger
today. Beginning in the nineteenth
century, there has been a drift away from forceful preaching of the holiness of
God and His demand for holiness in men.
Even in many evangelical churches and organizations emphasis has shifted
to the almost exclusive preaching of God’s love, with little, if any, reference
to His wrath and judgment.
“Commenting on the contemporary church, Richard Lovelace
writes:
“The whole church was…avoiding
the biblical portrait of the sovereign and holy God who was angry with the
wicked every day and whose anger remains upon those who will not receive His
Son. Walling off this image into an
unvisited corner of its consciousness, the church substituted a new god who was
the projection of grandmotherly kindness mixed with the gentleness and
winsomeness of a Jesus who hardly needed to die for our sins. Many American congregations were, in effect, paying
their ministers to protect them from the real God…It is partially responsible
not only for the general spiritual collapse of the church in this century but
also for a great deal of [evangelistic] weakness; for in a world in which the
sovereign and holy God regularly employs plagues, famines, wars, disease, and
death as instruments to punish sin and bring mankind to repentance, the
idolatrous image of God as pure benevolence cannot really be believed, let
alone feared and worshiped in the manner prescribed by both the Old Testament
and New Testament. (Dynamics of Spiritual
Life [Downers Grove, Ill.’ InterVarsity, 1979], pp.83-84)”
What
I want to do now as I close this SD is to talk about the different churches
that are found in the second and third chapters of Revelation. I have studied Revelation perhaps more than
any other book in the Bible as it was the first book that I read after I became
a believer almost 49 years ago. Actually
it was 49 years ago on the 26th of this month. Now in these churches, something that I have
learned, and that is that they are in chronological order as far as the church
age, and in Hal Lindsey’s book “There is a New World Coming” he writes about
which church is in different time periods of the churches history. In the 1800’s we see that the dominant church
is identified with the church of Philadelphia, one of two churches that the
Lord had nothing to say wrong to. The
last church Laodicia and here is what the Lord had to say to this church: “14 "To the
angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness,
the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: 15 ‘I know your deeds, that
you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 ‘So because
you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. 17
‘Because you say, "I
am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do
not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,
18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become
rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the
shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes
so that you may see. 19 ‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore
be zealous and repent. 20 ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone
hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with
him, and he with Me. 21 ‘He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with
Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. 22
‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’"
As one reads over what Christ has to say to this church I don’t think that it is hard to believe that this is the dominate church in our world today. I believe that in the church age we will see all of the seven churches written about in the book of Revelation, but there always seems to be a dominate church in the different times of the church age. There is a pretty famous painting that goes along with this church where we see Jesus Christ standing at a door knocking, but the thing about it is that there is no door handle which would allow Him to enter, which is what is the discretion in the verses on this church. The point in all of this is that we are living in the time of this last church, and although it is probably the worst church written about in Revelation 2-3, it is the last church, and so this gives me hope that the Lord will soon come to gather His bride and take them to heaven before the terrible last seven years of history as we know it on planet earth.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I must
remember that the God that I serve is not only love, but that He is just too,
and cannot tolerate sin.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Holy Spirit will help me to
begin again, and keep on memorizing and meditating of Bible verses that are
helpful as I live the Christian life.
1/3/2023 11:11 AM
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