SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2023 9:44 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: “The
Attack”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 19:3
Message of the verse: “And some Pharisees came to Him, testing Him, and saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”
This is not the first time that Jesus has had a run-in
with the Pharisees. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His
disciples, "Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and
sinners?’” (Matt. 9:11). In Matthew
12:14 we see that they tried to kill Him:
“But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, as to how
they might destroy Him.” We know that
eventually that they would be a part of the crucifixion of our Lord, but it was
all in the plans of God, yet they will be accountable for it. Let us look at Matthew 5:20 “"For I say
to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This verse is in the Sermon on the Mount and
the question is “How can a person’s righteousness surpass that of the scribes
and Pharisees? Well the answer is that
on your own we can’t, and that means that in order to enter the kingdom of
heaven we have to receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ who died in our
place on the cross.
When the Pharisees came to Jesus and
asked Him a question you can be assured that they wanted to trick Him, but that
is impossible to do. They wanted to embarrass
Him in public. Their goal was to
discredit Him in the eyes of the people so that He would lose His popularity
and make it easier for them to destroy Him.
MacArthur writes “This time their test question was well thought out,
carefully calculated to place Him at odds with Moses, the great giver of God’s
law.”
I have to tell you that in this
section of Matthew 19:1-12 that John MacArthur has six sermons on them, and I
have one more to listen to before I am done with all six. The sermons are probably a total of close to
six hours given on these twelve verses and in them he talks about the treatment
of women that was going on during the time when Jesus was on the earth, and
also about the women’s movement that is still going on in our country
today. He talks about marriage and
divorce which is what the Pharisees’ question is all about. You have to go back to the beginning of the
Word of God to understand God’s treatment on marriage as He officiated the very
first marriage on planet earth, and this is the standard that is still to be
going on in His eyes today. We will talk
about these things as we go through these verses as this is just a kind of preview.
It is true that for many centuries
divorce has been a volatile issue for debate among the Jews. During these centuries women were treated
almost like merchandise to be bought and sold, or traded, divorce inevitably became
common. We know from earlier SD’s that the
Jews read the Word of God, and I am talking about the scribes and Pharisees,
but because they were not true believers they did not understand the Word of
God. They also changed the Word of God
to fit what they wanted it to say. I
have mentioned before that they way these men treated the Word of God that it
was almost like being in a cult.
MacArthur writes “Because of their spurious, self-serving
interpretations of the Mosaic law to justify their lusts for other women, the Pharisees
had become the leading exponents of easy divorce. They were known for frequently divorcing
their wives for all causes at all to marry another woman and for teaching that
the practice not only was permissible but sometimes mandatory.”
There was another side of this
story, and that had to do with the rabbis, represented by a certain Shammai,
who maintained that divorce was never permissible. Their position was very unpopular at the
time, but like the Pharisees it too was not biblical.
There was a liberal rabbi named
Hillel, who had died about twenty years before Jesus began His ministry who
stated that a man could divorce his wife for any reason. Things like letting her hair down in public,
burning his dinner, talking to other men, or even putting too much salt on his
food.
The Pharisees certainly kept track
of Jesus’ teaching and knew that He would not be in favor of divorcing a wife
for such mundane, silly reasons and so they were trying to trick Him as we have
already mentioned. Let us look at
Matthew 5:32, again a part of the Sermon on the Mount: “but I say to you that everyone who divorces
his wife, except for the
reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced
woman commits adultery.”
MacArthur concludes: “Ultimately, of course, they wanted to
destroy Him. The clever Pharisees were
all aware that Perea, where Jesus now ministered, was under the rule of Herod
Antipas. He was the tetrarch who had
John the Baptist imprisoned and eventually beheaded for condemning his unlawful
marriage to Herodias, whom he had seduced away from his brother Philip (see
Matt. 13:3-12). No doubt the Pharisees
hoped that, by denouncing divorce for any cause at all, Jesus would thereby
publicly condemn Herod’s adulterous relationship just as John had done—and suffer
John’s fate.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: The
trouble with the Pharisees is that they did not know who they were dealing
with, as they were dealing with the all knowing Son of God, and that one day
soon they would realize it, but by then it would be too late.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I want to
always remember who Jesus is and what He has done for me as He took my place on
the cross to pay for my sin, and that He has sent His Holy Spirit to live
within me so that I can do the things that He has called me to do in eternity
past, and it is my desire to do that, with a thankful heart.
2/9/2023 10:25
AM
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