SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/25/2023 9:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The
Example of Forgiveness”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 18:23-35
Message of the
verses: These verses will not be on
this SD in total as I will look at them as I study through this passage.
I want to put a few verses on this SD that has to do with
the incalculable, unpayable debt that is before all human beings, and only
because of Christ can that debt be taken care of. We will see that all of these men understood
about this great debt.
Romans 7:13 “Therefore did that
which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it
was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death
through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become
utterly sinful.
Job 42:6 “Therefore I retract, And
I repent in dust and ashes.’”
Ezra 9:6 “"O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face
to You, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has
grown even to the heavens.’”
John MacArthur writes: “Life is a stewardship from God to be used for His glory. Unbelievers take life from God, and, rather
than returning it to Him wisely invested for His glory and making the most of
what used to be called ‘gospel privilege,’ they squander it on themselves. They are like the prodigal son and the slave
who buried his talents in the ground, both o whom Jesus used to illustrate
wasted ‘gospel privilege.’”
When anyone commits a sin they are
committing it against God as David wrote of in his penitential Psalm 51, a
psalm that was written after he committed adultery and murder. “Against You, You only, I have sinned And
done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And
blameless when You judge” (Psalm 51:4).
It did not take David too long to realize this, sinning against God,
while he was writing this psalm.
MacArthur writes “The slave, then,
represents the unbeliever who has been given the knowledge of God (Rom.
1:18ff.), life from God (Acts 17:25), and the opportunity to give God what is
due Him (cf. Rom. 11:36; Col. 1:16) but squanders God’s property in sin.”
We see that the man in our Lord’s parable
“did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold,
along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made”
(v. 25b). We can see that this man not
only embezzled what belonged to the king but he also consumed it on himself
until there was nothing left. I realize
that this would have been impossible for a man to squander this much money, but
this is a parable and as we see what he squandered was his sinful life before
God as MacArthur writes about in the quote three paragraphs above this
one. So what is seen here is the case of
a bankrupt sinner! This is the state in
which all people are born into this life on planet earth as “All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God.” We
see that the payment to be made (v. 25) from the proceeds of selling his family
into servitude and redeeming all his personal possessions would not have paid a
tiny bit of what he owed to the king, but it was exacted as a punishment and so
the king could get at least a small portion of what was due to him.
We will conclude this SD with one
more quotation from MacArthur’s commentary:
“Just as the unpayable amount of money in the parable is a picture of
man’s unpayable debt for sin, the punishment mentioned here makes us think of
hell, where condemned men will spend eternity paying for the unpayable. The glory stolen from God by man cannot be
repaid by man, and therefore, even after spending an eon in hell, a person
would be no nearer paying his debt and being fit for heaven than when he
entered. The utter spiritual bankruptcy of every child of Adam
makes it impossible for him to pay the limitless debt he has incurred because
of his sin.
“By the standards of that day the
king in the parable had been gracious just by his not demanding an accounting
earlier. In an infinitely greater way
God is gracious to the most hardened sinner just in allowing him to go on
living. Life itself is a great gift of
divine mercy.”
The problem is that most people
today do not believe in God, and certainly do not believe that life is a
precious gift from Him, and so they squander life on themselves, whereas a
believer is to live his life for the glory of God, but at times believers also squander
life on themselves.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I must
remember that life is a gift from God and that I owe everything to Him.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to
trust the Lord to keep me from sinful things in my life, and by memorizing
certain verses it will help.
1/25/2023 10:20
AM
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