SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/17/2023 10:19 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 "False Leaders Are Cursed For
Their Exclusion"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 23:13
Message of the
verse: “13
"But woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven
from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.”
We move on now in looking at this verse and with the
help of MacArthur’s commentary I hope that all who read these Spiritual Diaries
on this verse will have a better understand of what the Lord is saying to these
scribes and Pharisees as this is not only important to understand what He is
saying to them but also what He is saying to all false leaders throughout the
Church age, and there are plenty of them around today.
I
want to begin by talking about what happened to those who went out to see John
the Baptist, and as we know John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus Christ
as prophesied by Malachi in chapter four and verses 4-6. “4 "Remember the
law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I
commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. 5 "Behold, I am going to send you
Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.
6 "He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and
the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite
the land with a curse.’” Now don’t be
confused about Malachi speaking of Elijah as Jesus explained this to His
disciples when He told them that if He would have been accepted by the children
of Israel that John the Baptist would have been the one that Malachi was
talking about in these verses, but since they were not going to accept Him John
would be the one who came before Jesus to be His forerunner. One more thing and this is something that I
believe is true and it goes along with what I am preparing for my Sunday school
class from the book of Zechariah chapter four where he receives his fifth night
vision. That vision speaks of what many
believe to be talking about the two witness who will come in the tribulation period
which is seen in Revelation chapters 6-19, and in the eleventh chapter of
Revelation we read “3"And I will grant authority to my two
witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in
sackcloth." 4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that
stand before the Lord of the earth.” Now
stay with me on this as I will explain the things that I have learned about how
all of this ties together. First of all
because Jesus was rejected by the children of Israel, that means that John the
Baptist who was His forerunner was not Elijah, but came in the power of
Elijah. The prophecy in Malachi then
shows that Elijah will come and if you tie what Zechariah says in chapter four
where he says "What are the two olive branches which are beside the two
golden pipes, which empty the golden oil from themselves?" 13 So he
answered me, saying, "Do you not know what these are?" And I said,
"No, my lord." 14 Then he said, "These are the two anointed ones
who are standing by the Lord of the whole earth’” (Zech. 4:12b-14). I have learned early on in my walk with the
Lord that these two anointed ones who are standing by the Lord of the whole
earth are in fact the two witness found in Revelation 11:3-4. Now who are these two witnesses? I have learned and believe that they are
Elijah and Moses and others have different people they believe they are but the
reason that I believe they are Moses and Elijah is because neither one of them
finished their ministry. Moses was to
lead the children of Israel into the Promised Land, but because of his sin God
did not allow him to do this, and so he did not finish his ministry. Elijah was taken up into heaven in a flaming
chariot and so he did not really finish his ministry, and so both of them, I
believe are these two witnesses found in Revelation chapter eleven as we have
looked at. I have to say that this was
not really what I had planned to write about here, but it seems to me that the
Spirit of the Lord has put this on my mind.
I will, in conclusion to this Spiritual Diary quote what John MacArthur
has to say about John the Baptist as it ties into Matthew 23:13.
“As
soon as men and women from Jerusalem and from ‘all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan’ went out to hear
John the Baptist and ‘were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they
confessed their sins,’ the unbelieving and unrepentant Pharisees and Sadducees
showed up, attempting to corrupt John’s work and confuse the people by
pretentiously submitting to baptism but without genuine confession of their
sins. Discerning their hypocrisy, John
called them a ‘brood of vipers’ who were under the judgment of God’s fiery
wrath (Matt. 3:5-8; cf. vv. 10, 12), using virtually the same words Jesus was
not about to use against them in the Temple (23:33).”
I
want to continue this quotation in my next SD, Lord willing.
10/17/2023 10:55 AM
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