SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/18/2023 10:05 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Infinite Reality”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 22:43-45
Message of the verses: “ 43 He said to
them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying: 44 ‘The LORD
said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”’?
45 “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?”
I want to begin this SD by talking some more about
the meaning of God’s right hand. We
already talked about it being a place of power and also being coequal rank and
authority. As the Messiah is sitting at
God’s right hand, he would then be invincible, because God would put His enemies
beneath His feet. This is a figure of
abject, helpless subjugation. There is
an example of this that went on during the B.C. years and I suppose early in
the A. D. years, and that is that when a defeated enemy was brought before an
ancient oriental monarch, the ruler would make the prisoner prostrate himself
at his feet. The king would then place
his foot on the neck of the vanquished enemy as if he were a footstool. “When they brought these kings out to Joshua,
Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of
war who had gone with him, "Come near, put your feet on the necks of these
kings." So they came near and put their feet on their necks” (Joshua
10:24). In conclusion to this we can say
that all the detractors, deniers, and other enemies of the Messiah are doomed
to subjugation beneath His control.
John
MacArthur writes “Literal critics have long maintained that David could not
have written Psalm 110, arguing that the Hebrew language in David’s time had
not developed to the level found in the psalm and that David would not have been
familiar with the priest-king relationship expressed in verse 4. But historical and archaeological discoveries
have proved both of those assumptions to be unfounded. Some critics also deny the messianic
character of the psalm, largely because they discount all supernatural
revelation and consequently all predictive prophecy. If a ‘prediction’ came true, they argue, it
was obviously written after the fact.
But that humanistic approach not only makes Scripture out to be
intentionally deceptive but makes Jesus Himself a liar or a dupe. H could hardly have been the model of the
highest level of human virtue, as many of those same critics claim, if He
declared Himself to be a divine but was not.
Of if the gospel writers misrepresented what He said about Himself, how
can anything else they reported about Him be considered reliable?” I would have to say that is a good question.
Jesus
then asks them If David then calls Him “Lord,” how is He his son? Another good question! Jesus’ point was that the title “Son of David”
alone was not sufficient for the Messiah, that He is also the Son of God. It is for sure that David would not have
addressed a merely human descendent as “Lord.”
I think that in effect Jesus was saying, “I am not giving you any new
teaching or revelation. You should have
been able to figure it out for yourselves, and would have done so if you truly
believed Scripture.” Now remember these
leaders that Jesus was talking to prided themselves in knowing the Scriptures,
especially the scribes. However the
truth is that the religious elite of Judaism had never seen that obvious truth,
because, like many people today, they did not look to Scripture for truth. That is a big problem with the cults today as
they also pride themselves on knowing the Scriptures, but they don’t really
know all the truth found in Scripture and just point out certain Scriptures to
be truth, but in fact they don’t interpret them in the correct way. When these Jewish leaders looked to it at
all, it was for the purpose of trying to shore up their humanly devised
religious traditions and personal preferences, again similar to the cults of
today.
I
will close this SD with another quotation from John MacArthur: “Jesus did not mention the most important
conclusion the Pharisees should have made from what He had just said: that He Himself was the divine Messiah, the
Son of David and Son of God. It was
unnecessary for Him to do that, because He had been presenting His divine
messianic credentials for three years.
He had done so many things to prove He was the Son of God that
unbelievers had to deny the obvious to conclude anything else. The signs and miracles recorded in the
gospels are but a part of the countless others that He performed. ‘Many other signs therefore Jesus also
performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book,’
John tells us; ‘but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name’
(John 20:30-31; cf. 21:25).” “And there are also many other things which Jesus
did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself
would not contain the books that would be written.”
9/18/2023 10:48 AM
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