SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/14/2023 8:56 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Intense Compassion”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
23:37-38
Message of the verses: “37 “O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How
often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her
chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 “Behold, your house is being
left to you desolate!”
I know that I did not get too far in looking at
these verses, but there were things that I thought that the Lord wanted me to
write before I began writing commentary on these verses. There is one more thing that I wish to write about
before moving on that that has to do with the
Attributes of God. I want to talk about God’s love and God’s
judgment. What we have been looking at in this 23rd chapter of
Matthew is mostly God’s judgment that will be coming upon Israel, and it will
last all the way through the church age.
Now in these verses we see God’s love and compassion as Jesus is
actually crying over the fate of the people, His people, the Jews. Humaningly speaking I think that this is
almost impossible to do, that is have love and judgment for someone. God’s attributes all bring glory to Him. When a believer dies that brings Him glory,
but when an unbeliever dies that also brings glory to God, and the reason is
because of His attribute of judgment.
Again all God’s attributes bring Him glory, and that is difficult for me
to understand, but it is something that the Bible teaches so I believe it. The following comes from something that I
found as I searched the internet for a definition of God’s glory.
“Ezekiel 10:4 helps us to glimpse and understand God’s
glory: “Then the LORD’s glory rose from above the winged creatures and moved
toward the temple’s threshold. The temple was filled with the cloud, and the
courtyard was filled with the brightness of the LORD’s glory.” The word
translated here as “glory” is kabod in Hebrew. Curiously, this word is derived
from a root with the basic meaning of “heavy.” From this root came, among other
things, a word meaning “rich.” Speakers of ancient Hebrew would refer to a rich
person as “heavy in wealth,” much as we might say someone is loaded. A similar extension of the
literal sense of kabod included being loaded with power,
reputation, or honor. It’s from this use of the word that we get the meaning of
glory. God’s glory is God’s weightiness in wonderful qualities such as
might, beauty, goodness, justice, and honor. When it comes to these
characteristics and so many others, God has them in superabundance.” “Then the
glory of the LORD went up from the cherub to the threshold of the temple, and
the temple was filled with the cloud and the court was filled with the
brightness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 10:4).
MacArthur writes the following as we move back to
looking at our verses: “Now Jesus
expresses grief at the hardness of His people.
There is a great pathos (sorrow) as well as rebuke in His repeating the
name, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. It was much
as when He had said, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so
many things’ (Luke 10:41); and when He had said, ‘Simon, Simon, behold, Satan
had demanded permission to sift you like wheat’ (Luke 22:31); and when He would
say some years later, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ (Acts
9:4). The name Jerusalem means ‘city of
peace,’ and it was often called the holy city.
But over many centuries it had become the city of violence and of Unholiness. In the book of Revelation it is called, ‘the great
city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt’ (11:18), Sodom representing
moral perversion and Egypt representing pagan religion. The city of God had become the city of Satan.”
In
the Lord’s use of Jerusalem here He is talking about it as being a
representative of all Israel, and so the Lord again reminded the people of
their rebellion against Him, manifested in their killing the prophets and
stoning the other messengers that He had sent to her. MacArthur adds “The verbs kills and stones translate
two Greek present active participles and could be rendered, ‘who are killing …
and stoning,’ indicating a process that was still continuing. Unbelieving, rebellious Israel had been
killing God’s righteous people from Abel to Zechariah (v. 35), and they would
soon kill God’s Son and then continue to kill the ‘prophets and wise men and
scribes’ that the Son Himself would send to them (v. 34). In the parable of the vineyard grower, Jesus
described them as tenants who beat and killed the servants the owner sent to
them and even killed the son and heir
when he came (Matt. 21:33-39).”
11/14/2023 9:31 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment