SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/21/2023 8:08 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 "False Leaders Are Cursed For
Their Subversion"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 23:15
Message of the verse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
I have mentioned that it was the plan of God for the
children of Israel to reach out to the Gentiles to tell them the truth about
God, and the problem is that they were not doing this. However it was during the time of Christ that
they were reaching out to Gentiles, but the sad truth is that they were not
telling them the things that God had planned for them to tell them. Jesus thus is telling them in this verse that
the proselytes that they were making were certainly not being taught what God
intended them to be taught about God. I
suppose that you could say that the Jews were doing something similar to what
the modern day cults were doing, giving them some truth about God, but not the
real truth about Him in order for them to be saved.
John MacArthur writes “There were two kinds of proselytes
in the synagogue. One was called ‘a
proselyte of the gate,’ a Gentile who only attended the services. He now worshiped the true God, but he had not
committed himself to full ritualistic and legalistic Judaism. Such proselytes are referred to in the book
of Acts as a person who was devout (10:2, 7; 13:50), as ‘God-fearing’ (10:2,
22, 35; 17:4, 17), or as ‘a worshiper of God’ (16:14; 18:7).
“The other kind was referred to as ‘a proselyte of
righteousness,’ so called because he became as religiously Jewish as a Gentile
could become. They participated in all
the ceremonies, rituals, and feasts; they observed all the cleansing and other
rites, both biblical and traditional; and if males, they were circumcised. Those converts were even given Jewish names
in order to separate them as much as possible from their pagan past. Contrary to their popular appellation,
however, they became anything but righteous.
Like the scribes and Pharisees who instructed them, they became paragons
of self-righteousness.
“The obvious reasons there were many more proselytes of
the gate than proselytes of righteousness.
It was the latter kind in which the scribes and Pharisees delighted, and
it was considered a great achievement to initiate a Gentile into all their legalistic
practices.”
I remember hearing a story from a Pastor that I actually
don’t remember his name as this happened soon after I became a believer who
talked about once a person became a true believer in Christ that most times
they became very “on fire for the Lord.”
Ok his name was Howard Ball, as it just came to me. He tells the story that other older believers
liked to “warm themselves around the fire of the new believer. Well this is what happened to these
proselytes of the Jewish leaders, and once they believed what the Pharisees had
taught them they became on fire for Judaism, the kind that was taught by the
scribes and Pharisees and that is why Jesus said “you make him twice as much a
son of hell as yourselves.” You have to
become on fire for the cause of Christ in order to please the Lord, and these
proselytes were not as they were as much or more a part of the false religion
of the scribes and Pharisees. I suppose
that this is true with the cults today as their new converts become on fire for
the wrong things. The problem that if
they have children, many of them do not get so involved as their parents, and
so some of their children will be looking for the TRUTH, and they are easier to
come to the truth than their parents.
In our next SD we will look at the Greek word for hell
and it is my desire to then finish this section from Matthew 23:15.
Spiritual meaning for my life: I am going to give the verse that I have entitled my blogs for this section of this SD. “Study to show yourself approved to God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV).
My Steps of Faith
for Today: By God’s grace and the direction
of the Holy Spirit to always tell the truth as I tell others about Jesus Christ
in person and in my writings in by blogs.
10/21/2023 8:42 AM
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