SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/6/2023 10:27 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-1 “Judgment Was Inevitable”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 23:34-35
Message of the verses: “34 "Therefore,
behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you
will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues,
and persecute from city to city, 35 that upon you may fall the guilt of
all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the
blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple
and the altar.”
It is because of what the Lord said in verses 32-33 (“32 “Fill up then the measure of
the guilt of your fathers. 33 “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the
sentence of hell?”), that the cup of God’s
wrath would very shortly be filled up; therefore the judgment of the scribes
and Pharisees was inevitable. It seems
to me that I learned that the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified in April of 29 A.
D. and that would mean that in 40 years that Jerusalem would be destroyed and
the temple would also be destroyed too.
Somewhere back in my memory I also remember that the large blocks of the
temple had gold between them and although General Titus, who would later become
the ruler of Rome, did not want to destroy the temple, but he wanted the gold.
Now as evidence and verification of that judgment, Jesus
said “behold, I am sending you prophets and
wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them
you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city.” MacArthur
writes “In other words, after they crucified Him, their Messiah, they would
proceed to kill and crucify His followers, especially the godly men He would
send as His emissaries—the New Testament prophets and wise men and scribes.”
Jesus
mentioned kill and crucify and this probably spoke of the two ways that these martyrs
would die, as the Jews stoned people to death and the Romans crucified as a
means of putting people to death. We
have seen in my study of Acts that Stephen was stoned to death by the Jews, and
James was put to death by the sword (Acts 7:58; 12:2). This was not the way that other believers
would be killed as some were drowned and various other means were used.
Jesus
went on to say that some of my followers “you will scourge in your synagogues,
and persecute from city to city.” I believe that there are now at this time
period that many people die for the cause of Christ each and every day. In the tribulation period there will be
millions of people die for the cause of Christ.
We live in a world where Satan is the ruler and it is his desire to kill
people, mostly believers. Our world is
getting darker and darker as the light of the glorious gospel is, although
always bright, but now it seems as we head rapidly toward the end of the age that
there is much darkness in our world.
In
MacArthur’s commentary he writes a paragraph that speaks of the suffering and
death of believers in the early church, and I will close this SD by quoting
it. “All the apostles experienced abuses
for their faith, as did most other believers.
‘Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes,’ Paul
recounted. ‘Three times I was beaten
with rods, once I was stoned’ (2 Cor. 11:24-25). Before his conversion, Paul had himself been
in the vanguard of those who persecuted Christians, from city to city (Acts
8:1-4; 9:1-2), and after his conversion he was the recipient of such
persecution. He was opposed in and
frequently driven out of many cities, including Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:45,
50), Iconium (14:1-2), Lystra (14:19-20), Thessalonica (17:5-10), Berea
(17:13-14), Corinth (18:12-18), Jerusalem (21:27; 23:12), and Caesarea
(24:1-9). Believers in the early church
were continually hounded by the false spiritual leaders of Israel, who sought
to stamp out the gospel of Christ.”
11/6/2023 10:59 AM
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