SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/13/2023 9:12 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Intro to Matthew 23:13-33”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 23:13-33
Message
of the verses: Once again I am not
going to put all of these verses onto this SD, but by looking at the first SD
(PT-1) you can read them.
We looked at the first 12 verses of
Matthew 23 recently and found out that Jesus declared that the scribes and
Pharisees, typical of all false spiritual leaders, were without authority,
without integrity, without sympathy, without spirituality, without humility,
and therefore without
God’s approval or blessing. He is now speaking to them directly as He asserts
they are under God’s harshest condemnation.
Why do you think that this true?
I think that because these false teachers are teaching false things to
people who are blindly following them that they all will end up in hell.
MacArthur writes “In verses 13-33
Jesus pronounces seven curses, or woes, on those wicked leaders. If verse 14 were included there would be
eight woes, but that verse is not found in the best early manuscripts of Matthew
(as indicated by its being set off by brackets in the NASB text). It was added later by a well-meaning copyist
who picked it up from Mark 12:40 OR Luke 20:47.
Although the statement is genuine, it will not be discussed here,
because originally it was not likely a part of this passage.
“The scene in the Temple that day
had become volatile in the extreme, in some ways more volatile than when Jesus
had cast out the merchants and moneychangers that day before. At that time Jesus’ anger was vented against
what the religious leaders were doing outwardly, and that attack had outraged
them (21:16, 23). Now, however, He
attacked what they were inwardly, and that infuriated them even more.
“In our day of tolerance and
eclecticism, the kind of confrontation Jesus had with the scribes and Pharisees
seems foreign and uncharitable. A person
who speaks too harshly against a false religion or unbiblical teaching or
movement is considered unkind, ungracious, and judgmental. Jesus’ indictments in Matthew 23, as well as
in other parts of the gospels, are so inconsistent with the idea of Christian
love held by some liberal theologians and Bible scholars, for example, that
they conclude He could not have spoken them.
What Jesus really said, they maintain, was modified and intensified
either by the gospel writers or the sources from whom they received their information.
“But the nature of Jesus’
condemnation of those corrupt religious leaders is perfectly consistent with
the rest of Scripture, both the Old Testament and the New. Not only that, but Jesus’ words in this
passage fly from His lips, as someone has said like claps of thunder and spears
of lightning. Out of His mouth on this
occasion came the most fearful and dreadful statements that Jesus uttered on
earth. They do not give the least
impression of being the afterthought of an overzealous writer or copyist.
“Matthew 23 is one of the most
serious passages in Scripture. Jesus
here makes the word hypocrite a
synonym for scribe and for Pharisee. He
calls them sons of hell, blind guides, fools, robbers, self-indulgent,
whitewashed tombs, full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, serpents, vipers, and
persecutors and murderers of God’s people. He uttered every syllable with
absolute self-control but with devastating intensity.
“Yet Jesus was never cold or
indifferent, even toward His enemies, and on this occasion His judgment is
mingled with sorrow and deep pathos. It
is not the Son’s will any more than the Father’s that a single person perish,
because it is the gracious divine desire that everyone would come to repentance
and salvation (2 Pet. 3:9). At the end
of His denunciation, Jesus extended by implication another last invitation for
belief, suggesting that He would still gladly gather any unbelievers under His
wings of a mother hen gathers her chicks, if only they would be willing (Matt.
23:37).”
I find it best when there are these
very long introductions in MacArthur’s commentaries to just quote them. It is my goal for people who read these
Spiritual Diaries to have the truth be taught and if that means to quote longer
sections from the author that I am using as references then that is the way
that I will do this. Each day after I
post my Spiritual Diaries onto my blogs I pray very specifically for five
things. I pray for the salvation of
souls, the growth of believers, that revival would happen to believers, that
the Holy Spirit would continue to send these around the world, and that if it
is the will of the Lord that the Holy Spirit would give an effectual call to
the very last person in the Church age to receive Christ after reading one of
these Spiritual Diaries. I also ask that
God would bless those who read these Spiritual Diaries and that He would be
blessed by those who read them. I
believe that God is blessing the writing of these Spiritual Diaries as this
year there have been almost as many of them read as in the first eleven years
since I began these blogs. I can only
say that it is all of the Lord, and I am thankful for that.
10/13/2023
9:50 AM
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