SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/17/2023 11:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Insured Conversion”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 23:39
Message of the verse: “39 "For I
say to you, from now on you shall not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO
COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’"
Now as I looked at this name that MacArthur gives
for this section at first it did not make a lot of sense to me, but then I
thought about it and Jesus is saying that Israel will come to Him, but they
will have to do it in the way that He is talking about as they say ‘BLESSED IS
HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’"
That to me is reassuring that Israel will come back to the Lord one day,
and my thoughts are that during the last judgment in the book of Revelation is
when they will realize that Jesus Christ is indeed their Messiah.
There
is very bad news for the Jewish people as we have already talked about for in
the first part of this verse Jesus speaks His last words to them as a group of
people, and from the time when the Romans destroyed their Temple until the end
of the tribulation period, as a nation they will not come to Him as their
Savior and Lord. That is over 1950
years, a very long time.
MacArthur
writes “Were it not for Jesus’ qualifying word until, that would have been
their final moment in history, and the theology of the Bible, both in the Old
and New Testaments, would be radically altered.
In addition to that, men would have had good reason never to trust God’s
word again, because He repeatedly promised that His chosen people would
ultimately be saved, restored, and blessed (see, e.g., Jer. 23:5-6; Isa. 55:10;
Zech. 14:1-11).”
There
is a difference between the words “unless” and “until,” and Jesus said “until.” One of the things that causes me to be angry is
when people who claim to be born-again believers, and for the most part I
believe that they are, want to throw Israel under the bus because of what they
did to their Messiah. Yes it was sinful
to what they did but it was also prophesied that they would do it and were
accountable for it. However God is a
forgiving God who only wants us to confess our sins and He will forgive our
sins. As I have mentioned in many Spiritual
Diaries that God has a plan for Israel and will never abandon them, as there is
a remnant coming to know Him since the church age began. I think of the fact that during the
Tribulation period that there will be 144,000 Jewish evangelists running around
telling people the good news of the gospel, as they risk their lives in doing
this, but most of those who have thrown Israel under the bus don’t believe in
the book of Revelation.
MacArthur
writes “Even in the context of His most sever curses upon unbelieving Israel and
her false leaders, that word offered hope.
One day Israel will finally say in faith, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN
THE NAME OF THE LORD,’ and in that day she will be forever redeemed, restored,
and blessed.”
Remember
when just a few days before this last statement that Jesus gave to the Jewish
leaders that He had rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the fowl of a donkey that
the crowds were shouting what was written in Psalm 118:26 “Blessed is the one
who comes in the name of the LORD; We have blessed you from the house of the
LORD.” The problem then was they were
looking for a Messiah who would take them from under the oppression of Rome,
but they missed the fact that Jesus came as the suffering Messiah to take away
the sins of the world. MacArthur adds “The
Messiah they wanted was not God’s kind of Messiah but their own, and when Jesus
soon demonstrated that He had not come to remove the Roman yoke as they
expected, the cries for His coronation turned to cries for His crucifixion.”
I
urge you not to miss out on what the Lord Jesus did for you!
11/17/2023 12:22 PM
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