SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/26/2023 7:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “On the
Mount”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 24:3
Message of the verse: “3 And as He was
sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying,
"Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of
Your coming, and of the end of the age?’”
After living with Christ for almost three years, and
ministering with Him all of that time this time on the mount could possibly the
most exciting part of their experience with Him. The reason is that they were contemplating
the imminence of His millennial kingdom, and even though they did not really
have all the true details of that period of time it was exciting for them. In order to truly understand this you will
have to go back to the different introductions on this wonderful chapter. In order to give a little hint of what was
said there I want to quote from MacArthur’s commentary where he writes: “Based on what Jesus had just said, the
disciples believed that the next time the unbelieving Jews whom Jesus had just
confronted in the Temple would see Him would be when He came in His glory and
they would be constrained to declare, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of
the Lord!’ (Matt. 23:39). More than
ever, they were persuaded that that day could not be far off.” Based on what is happening in the Middle East
at this time with the war that Israel is fighting, perhaps that time is very
close, that is my prayer at any rate.
As
we just concluded going over the study of Acts that I did and put onto my other
blog it can be seen that even after the resurrection of the Lord that they
still felt the same way, that Jesus would bring the Kingdom at that time, but
it has been almost 2000 years of the church age and He is still in heaven.
Now
here is another important quote: “The coming
that the disciples had in mind was not a second coming. They saw His coming just as the Old Testament
prophets had seen and predicted it, compressed into an unbroken series of
events that would occur over a relatively short period of time.” In the book of Acts when the disciples were
asking Jesus about how soon His kingdom would be coming they had no idea that
there would be a church age that was about to begin.
“Coming
translates parousia, which has the basic
meaning of presence and secondarily carries the idea of arrival. The disciples’ question might there be
paraphrased, ‘What will be the sign of Your manifesting Yourself in You full,
permanent presence as Messiah and King?’
They did not use parousia in
the specific and more technical sense that Jesus used it later in this chapter
(vv. 27, 37, 39) and as it is often used elsewhere in the New Testament in
referring to His second coming (see, e. g., 1 Thess. 3:13; 2 Thess. 2:8; 1 John
2:28). They were not thinking of Jesus’
returning because they had no idea of His leaving, but were thinking rather of
His perfected Messianic presence, which they expected Him to manifest
presently.”
There
are a couple of more words that we need to look at in this section, but because
it is Sunday morning I will wait until the next SD to write about them.
11/26/2023 8:14 AM
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