SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/29/2023 9:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-5 “The Invitation Rejected”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
22:1-6
Message of the verses: “1 Jesus spoke to
them again in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a
king who gave a wedding feast for his son. 3 “And he sent out his slaves to
call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling
to come. 4 “Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been
invited, "Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened
livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding
feast."’ 5 "But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his
own farm, another to his business, 6 and the rest seized his slaves and
mistreated them and killed them.”
Before I begin to look at these verses this morning
I want to say that this will SD number 10,000 that I have posted on my blogs. It all began on the 25th of July,
2011 while sitting in our kitchen on the island of Kauai. I had just began to look at the book of
Nehemiah and so I thought it was time to begin my first blog posting. A little over twelve years later, and after having
two blogs this will be number 10,000. It
is my desire to follow the theme verse of my blogs 2 Timothy 2:15 “Study to
show yourself approved to God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing the word of truth.” It is my desire to learn from
the verses that I am looking at and then to pass them onto those who will read
them in order to bring glory to the Lord who saved me 49 and a half years
ago. Since that first blog was posted
there have been over 350,000 of these Spiritual Diaries that have been looked
at, and I must say that there have been more Spiritual Diaries looked at this
year than any one year before, due to the great interest from the nation of
Singapore. To God be the glory great
things He has done.
Now
back to Matthew 22 as we want to begin by writing about the slaves God sent to
call again and again those who had been invited who were John the Baptist,
Jesus Himself in His preaching-teaching ministry, and the New Testament
apostles, prophets, and other preachers and teachers. New Testament preachers were also slaves too
because their message pertained to the King’s Son Jesus Christ. Now God was saying to Israel, His
already-invited guests, much the same as He had said from heaven at Jesus’
baptism: “Here is My Son; come and give
Him honor.” We know that John the
Baptist was rejected and beheaded, Jesus was rejected and then crucified, and
the apostles and prophets were rejected and persecuted, many were also put to
death.
MacArthur
writes “The indifferent guests in the parable represent people who are
preoccupied with daily living and personal pursuits. They are essentially the secular-minded,
those who are interested in the here and now and have no interest in spiritual
things. They are the materialists, whose
primary interest is accumulating things, and the ambitious, whose main concern
is ‘getting ahead.’ They are not usually
antagonistic to the things of God but simply have not time for them.
“Those
who are actively hostile to the gospel invariably are people involved in false
religion, including the many forms of humanistic religion that parade under the
guise of philosophy, mysticism, or scientism.
The history of persecution of God’s people shows that the chief
persecutor has been false religion. It
is the purveyors of error who are the aggressive enemies of truth, and it is
therefore inevitable that, as God’s Word predicts, the final world system of
the antichrist will be religious, not secular.
“The
fact that the kings sent his messengers on two different occasions cannot be
pressed to mean that only two calls were extended or that the first group consisted
of John the Baptist and Jesus and the second consisted of the apostles. The parable makes no distinction in the types
of slaves, or messengers. The point of
the two callings of the invited guests was to illustrate God’s gracious
patience and forbearance with the rejecters, His willingness to call Israel again
and again—as John the Baptist had done for perhaps a year, as Jesus did for
three years, and as the apostles did for some forty years, until Jerusalem and
the Temple were destroyed in A. D. 70.”
I
gave this rather long quote from MacArthur’s commentary because it brought some
things to my mind that I certainly did not conclude from this portion of this
parable. By the way both John MacArthur
and the late Warren Wiersbe have been two people who have helped me in my quest
to better understand the Bible, and I am thankful to both of them.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is my desire to reach the kind of people
that are described in this parable, as I know many who fall into the category that
are similar to those who heard the message, but had to them, more important
things to do than hear the Word of God.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: “Study to show
yourself approved to God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing the word of truth.” Lord willing to begin 10,001
& 10,002 tomorrow.
7/29/2023 10:14 AM
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