SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/10/2023 9:42 AM
My Worship Time PT-2
"He Showed He Was On A Divine Mission"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
21:12a
Message of the verses: “And Jesus entered the temple”
Jesus
began His ministry at a Passover as seen in the second chapter of the gospel of
John, and now as we look at what is going on at the end of His ministry we will
find that He will end His ministry at a Passover. Jesus went into the temple to cleanse it at
the beginning of His ministry and now at the end of His ministry to the people
He will cleanse the temple again. I
guess you can say that the people did not learn a lot in the past three
years. Let’s look at John 2:14-16 “14 And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen
and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them
all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins
of the money changers and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He
said, "Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of
business.’”
John MacArthur writes “During the hidden years of
His adolescence and young adulthood, and certainly during His ministry, Jesus
had seen much social injustice, much economic inequity, much deprivation and
poverty, and much oppression and cruelty by the Romans. But His mission never focused on those
things, because they are not man’s greatest problems. It was the far more severe problem of sin that
Jesus had come to conquer. Men’s problem
with God is infinitely greater than their problem other men. They cannot, in fact, solve their problems
with each other until their problem with Him is solved through faith and
obedience.”
I
wrote recently about the use of the words “Temple of God” and how it is only
used in certain translations in this section of Matthew. This temple that Jesus went into was the
temple of God, but the problem was that what was going on inside it was not at
all what was pleasing to God otherwise Jesus would have no need in cleansing
it. It was in the Temple erected in His
own name and by the people He had chosen for Himself that the Lord was most
offended and denied. Therefore it was in
His own house that cleansing began. The
truth is that as long as things were wrong with Israel’s worship, things could
not be right in the nations. MacArthur
writes “Worship is always the focal point.
The great problem with society is not injustice, inequity, crime, or
even immorality—pervasive and destructive as those evils might be. Society’s evil of evils has always been its
abandonment of God. And it is as true
today as it was in ancient Israel that the people of God must themselves be
revived and renewed before they can be His instruments for changing the world
around them.”
I
mentioned that the people did not learn from when Jesus cleansed the Temple at
the beginning of His ministry, so the question is what would He again bother to
make this seemingly futile gesture?
Jesus knew that His act of cleansing would be temporary and would not
change the hearts of the religious leaders.
However He was compelled to make that clear testimony to God’s holiness
and to God’s judgment against desecration and false religion.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: The Bible teaches me that my body is the
temple of the Holy Spirit. Psalm
139:23-24 tells me “23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my
anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in
the everlasting way.” In following these
two verses is something I need to do daily in order to keep my body, the temple
of the Holy Spirit clean.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Lord will do as He says in
His Word, and that is if I confess my sin He will be faithful and just to
forgive me, and this is because Jesus died for me on the cross to take all of
my sin away.
6/10/2023 10:12 AM
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