SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/25/2023 8:54 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 "False Leaders Are Cursed For Their
Perversion"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
23:16-22
Message of the verses: “16 “Woe to you,
blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but
whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.’ 17 "You fools
and blind men; which is more important, the gold, or the temple that sanctified
the gold? 18 “And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but
whoever swears by the offering upon it, he is obligated.’ 19 "You blind
men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the
offering? 20 “Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears both by the
altar and by everything on it. 21 “And he who swears by the temple, swears both
by the temple and by Him who dwells within it. 22 “And he who swears by heaven,
swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it.”
I mentioned in my last SD that we would begin this
SD by talking about what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Let us look at Matthew 5:33-37 “33 "Again,
you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT
SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.’ 34 "But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by
heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is the
footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING. 36
“Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or
black. 37 “But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond
these is of evil.” In these
verses Jesus condemned all swearing of vows.
Now I mentioned in the last SD about some vows that I have made when I
was a very young believer, but the thing is that I was attending a Bill Gothard
seminar and he is the one who suggested that it would be good to make a vow to
read the Bible at least five minutes a day.
When a person is young in the Lord and has troubles in getting a system
of reading the Word of God each day then it kind of makes sense to make a vow
like this, and I also mentioned that although I have only missed less than ten
days in reading the Bible for at least five minutes a day since sometime in the
fall of 1979 after attending that conference that I wonder whether it was the
right thing to do, but since I made that vow I have tried very hard to keep
it. MacArthur adds to what these verses
say by writing “A godly person will always tell the truth, and for him a simple
yes or no is sufficient, because his virtuous character is his bond.”
MacArthur
goes on “Jesus was not teaching a new principle. The psalmist declared, “Offer to God a
sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High” (Ps.
50:14). In other words, a vow made is a
vow to be kept. David testified, “Thy
vows are binding upon me, O God; I will render thank offerings to Thee” (Ps.
56:12, and again “I will sing praise to Thy name forever, that I may pay my
vows day by day” (Ps. 61:8; cf. 66:13; 76:11).
It is significant that in each of those quotations the keeping of vows
to God is directly related to praise and thankfulness to Him.”
In
the fifth chapter of Acts we see the tragic story of Ananias and Sapphira who
saw Barnabas sell some property that he had and give it to the Apostles for the
cause of Christ. They decided together
to do the same thing, but once they got the money they then decided to keep a
part of the money for themselves. There
was nothing wrong with keeping a part of the money, but their sin was not to
tell the Apostles that they were doing this.
This vow that they did not keep cost them their lives as seen in Acts
chapter five. What they did was lie to
the Holy Spirit, something one does not want to do.
Now
I want to quote another paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary and the reason is
because the section that he talks about is something I do not truly understand. “The idea of swearing by the gold in the
Temple was binding by swearing by the Temple itself was not binding was moral
chicanery” (the use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose.) “and logical absurdity. “You fools and blind men,” Jesus said; “which
is more important, the gold, or the temple that sanctified the gold?” In other words, by what perverted logic had
it been determined that making a vow on something lesser was more binding than
one made on something greater? The only
reason the gold could be thought of as sacred, and thereby make the vow
supposedly more obligatory, was the temple that sanctified the gold.” I believe that I got the point now, and
perhaps it is because of the word “chicanery.”
I
can see now why Jesus called these men “blind guides.” They were committing fraud against the Lord,
something like what Ananias and Sapphira were doing, but perhaps the difference
was that Ananias and Sapphira were believers who got caught up in trying to
look good in front of the Apostles. My thoughts
are that there was little lying going on in the early church after they heard
what happened to this couple.
These
religious leaders applied the same twisted logic to swearing by the altar, which
was considered to be nothing, that is not required by rule or law, and to swearing by the offering
upon it, which was thought to make a person obligated to keep his vow. Jesus said to this "You blind men, which is more important, the offering or
the altar that sanctifies the offering?
MacArthur writes “The whole idea was both theologically and logically
preposterous. Those standards were
nothing more than wicked pretenses for using holy things to disguise their
unholy propensity to lie.
“As
Jesus went on to point out, to swear by the altar was to swear by everything on
it; to swear by the temple was to swear by Him who dwells within it, namely God
Himself; and to swear by heaven was to swear by the throne of God and by Him
who sits upon it. In other words,
everything involved with the temple and everything involved with heaven involved
God. In fact, since God is the creator
of everything, to swear by anything at all involves God.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I have to be careful and not let my emotions
cause me to do something that I cannot handle.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to remember that my life has to be lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, who called me to salvation with an effectual call, and then lives within me to cause me to understand His Word, and to remember Zechariah 4:6 “Then he said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.”
10/25/2023 10:07 AM
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