SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/22/2023 7:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 "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 mentioned at the end of my last Spiritual Diary that
I wanted to talk about the word “hell” to begin this SD today. MacArthur writes “Of hell translates a Greek
genitive that refers to belonging to or being characterized by. Son of hell referred to a person who was
especially characterized by hellishness.
Twice…a son hell would be a person who was doubly hellish and doubly
damned.
“Hell is from geenna,
derived from the name of a valley just outside Jerusalem called Hinnom
where refuse was burned. It was
considered an accursed place because it was the site where ancient worshipers
of the pagan deity Moloch offered their children as live burnt sacrifices, a
hideous practice taken up even by some Israelites (see 2 Chron. 28:3; Jer.
7:31). When King Josiah declared the place unclean (2 Kings 23:10), it became
a garbage dump, and because flames and smoke arose from the valley continually,
it also became a vivid picture of the eternal fires of hell.”
I think that all believers should be grateful that at
some time in their lives that they were confronted by a spiritual door-opener
rather than a spiritual door-closer, someone who shows the way to the kingdom
and not one that shuts people out of the kingdom as Jesus is talking about in
this verse. All believers should be
grateful to have the opportunity to hear and study the Word of God in
truth. Even a dull presentation of the
true gospel is immeasurably superior to the most exciting presentation of a
false gospel that damns to hell.
MacArthur concludes this section by writing the following
paragraph. “As a citizen of God’s
kingdom, every believer ought to be one who opens the door of the kingdom to
others. All saints have the keys of the
kingdom, which is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:19), and every
false teacher takes away the key of knowledge that leads to the kingdom (Luke
11:52). When Christians are confronted by
a representative of a false cult, sect, or religion, they should offer to
explain the way of salvation in Christ to him, hoping to snatch him out of the
fire, as it were (Jude 23). But they
should not debate theology or the merits of various sacred writings or
interpretations of the Bible, thereby ‘casting pearls before swine,’ but firmly
denounce the teachings of that group as ungodly and damning—just as their Lord
did with the scribes and Pharisees.”
Here you believers have good instruction when one of
those cult members knock on your door.
10/22/2023 8:05 AM
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