SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/12/2023 9:01 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro to: “Whose
Son is Christ?”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
22:41-46
Message of the verses: “41 Now while the
Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying,
"What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?" They said to Him, "The
son of David." 43 He said to them, "Then how does David in the
Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying, 44 ‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, "SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT THINE
ENEMIES BENEATH THY FEET"’? 45 “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how
is He his son?" 46 And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor did
anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question.”
The question that Jesus asked the Pharisees here is
the most important question in the world, “Who is Jesus Christ?” The problem is that the world has never
lacked for ideas and opinions about the answer.
Let us look at Matthew 12:24 to see what certain Pharisees said that
Jesus was: “But when the Pharisees heard
this, they said, "This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the
ruler of the demons.’” Wrong
answer! MacArthur writes “A
second-century A. D. comment in the Talmud said Jesus practiced magic and led
Israel astray (Sanhedrin 43a). Julian the Apostate emperor of Rome from A.D.
361-363, declared, ‘Jesus has now been celebrated about three hundred years
having done nothing in his lifetime worthy of fame, unless anyone thinks it a
very great work to heal lame and blind people and exorcise demoniacs in
villages of Bethsaida and Bethany’ (quoted by Cyril, a fifth-century bishop of
Alexandria, in Contra Julian, lib. Vi.,p.
191).”
In
his commentary MacArthur goes on to talk about different wrong answers that
answer this question about who Christ is, from different “famous” people to
some that are not so famous, from different “religions” to liberal
preachers. He concludes his comments by
writing “The battle lines of biblical Christianity are inevitably drawn at the
issue of Jesus’ divinity. That is the
one doctrine apart from which all others are meaningless, because if He were
not divine He could not be the Savior of the world, and men would have no way
of becoming reconciled to God.
“It
is that supreme issue of Jesus’ full identity with which Matthew 22:41-46 deals.”
As
I said at the beginning of this SD the question that is dealt with in these six
verses is the most important question in the world. I remember when I first became a believer in
Jesus Christ and shortly after I invited Him into my life to save me from my
sins, the truth is that I did not really know that much about who He is. One of the first things that I did was go to
a Christian book store and to buy a Living Bible. The first book of the Bible that I read was
Revelation, and I did that because I had a desire to know how the world was
going to end. After I got home from Florida,
where I accepted Christ as my Savior I went to a Christian book store, not a
church. I meet a man there who began to
mentor me, and after some time I then began to be able to answer this question
who Jesus really was. I am thankful for
God’s patience as it took me about four years to join a good Bible believing
church and to begin to grow in my walk with the Lord. My answer to the question of whose Son Is
Christ would be that he is the eternal Son of God who came to earth in order to
save sinners who will truly invite Him into their lives in order to save them
from their sins. He is the Son of God
and the Son of man. He is God who came
to earth in human flesh to accomplish what God had planned for Him to do in
eternity past before there was an earth or any other planets. He is my God and He is my Savior, and I love
Him and desire to serve Him in spite of the battles that I go through most
every day.
9/12/2023 9:30 AM
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