SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/31/2023 10:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Rejecter’s Punished”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 22:7-8
Message of the verses: “7 “But the king
was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their
city on fire. 8 “Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those
who were invited were not worthy.”
In our last SD we ended by talking about the
fulfillment of the second prophetic feature in this parable which occurred in
70 A. D. I want to go on to talk some
more about this event in this SD, which I believe will end this section. There was a Roman General named Titus who
came into Jerusalem and tore down the city and also the Temple, and one of the things
that I have heard about this is that he did not want to destroy the Temple but
in between the large blocks was gold and the only way to get the gold out was
to take apart the Temple, which he did.
Titus soon after this battle in which he killed 1,100,000 Jews actually
became the Roman Emperor. During this
battle their army crucified 500 people a day and actually used most of the
forest around the city to make the crosses.
Many of the dead bodies were thrown over the walls because of the smell
that they were making. MacArthur quotes
the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who witnessed the destruction of
Jerusalem, graphically as he chronicled the horrible scene:
“That building [the Temple
at Jerusalem], however, God long ago had sentenced to the flames; but now in
the revolution of the time periods that fateful day had arrived, the tenth of
the month Lous, the very day on which previously it had been burned by the king
of Babylon…One of the soldiers, neither awaiting orders nor filled with horror
of so dread and undertaking, but moved by some supernatural impulse, snatched a
brand from the blasing timber and, hoisted up by one of his fellow soldiers,
flung the firery missile through a golden window…When the flame arose, a
scream, as poignant as the tragedy, went up from the Jews…now that the object
which before they had guarded so closely was going to ruin…While the sanctuary
was burning,…neither pity for age nor respect for rank was shown; on the contrary,
children and old people, laity and priests alike were massacred…The emperor
ordered the entire city and sanctuary to be razed to the ground, except only
the highest towers, Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne, and that part of the wall
that enclosed the city on the west.”
We
read in verse eight the following as the king explained to his slaves that the
wedding was ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to attend. As I look over this part of verse eight it is
heartbreaking to me, but the truth is that they had been asked on two different
occasions to come to the wedding of the King’s Son, but refused. MacArthur adds “Their unworthiness was not
because in themselves they lacked the required righteousness. Neither the original invitation nor the subsequent
calls were based on merit but solely on the king’s gracious favor. Ironically and tragically, they were declared
to be not worthy because they refused an invitation that was in no way based on
worth. As the parable goes on to make
clear (v. 10), ‘both evil and good’ people were called.”
Now
here is the most important aspect of this parable: That which makes a person worthy or receiving
salvation is not any sort of human goodness or religious or spiritual
accomplishment but simply his saying yes to God’s invitation to receive His
Son, Jesus Christ as Lord. I will admit that when I first became a believer
that I did not realize that Jesus Christ was my Lord until sometime later, and
I suppose that is the truth of many who have received Him as their Savior, but
a true believer will sometime after receiving His as their Savior will then
receive Him as their Lord and when that happens they are willing do to anything
asked of from Him because He is their Lord.
When
Adam and Eve fell into sin in the garden of Eden they were not worthy of
belonging to the Lord, but the Lord saved them when He died on the cross for
them. Yes they knew that they were
believers, but their sin was not totally paid for until Jesus died in their
place. Old Testament saints looked
forward to the cross New Testament saints look back at the cross. The point I am making is that no one is
worthy of salvation, no one can do anything on their own in order to become a
believer in Jesus Christ, but by grace through faith a person can receive the
free gift of salvation. I prayed for my
father-in-law for many, many, years. I
told him the good news of the gospel over and over, and yet two days before he
died at the age of 102 he asked me what he needed to do to become a believer. I
told him that he had to receive Jesus Christ as his Savior and to this day I
don’t know whether or not he did. In my
very young age I was married to my neighbor for four years, and we had a
daughter. She decided that I was not the
man for her and married another neighbor.
Years later he died very suddenly and a couple of years after that she
got cancer and was dying. I wanted to
see her, and she allowed me to see her.
On that visit she apologized to me for being unfaithful to me. I told her that I did not come to see her for
that, but I came to see her to tell her how she could have eternal life through
Jesus Christ. I explained the gospel to
her and prayed for her, and then left. I
was to see her again to introduce my son to her but that never happened. I went to her funeral and I don’t know where
she is at today, but I do know that she did have the gospel shared with her
before she died.
We
know from history what happened to Israel 40 years after Jesus went back to
heaven, and it was not good. God loves
Israel as He called her to be His people, but there were times of punishment
that they had to endure and even now when the Lord brought them back into their
land on the 5th or May, 1948 they mostly still now know who their
Messiah is, and won’t know that as a nation until the last judgment of the
tribulation period when what Paul wrote to the Romans “and so all Israel will
be saved; just as it is written, "THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE
WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.’”
How about those who are reading this SD and are not sure that they truly
are a believer in Jesus Christ, are not sure where they will spend eternity,
how about talking to God, tell Him that you are a sinner in need of salvation,
tell Him that You believe with all your heart that Jesus took your place on the
cross and then accept what He did for you and you will be saved. Then get down on your knees and thank the
Lord for saving you!! You will never
regret it.
7/31/2023 11:35 AM
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