SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/23/2023 10:11 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Intro to Matthew 24:1-3
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
24:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 And Jesus came out from the temple and was going away
when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him. 2 And He
answered and said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Truly I say
to you, not one stone here shall be left upon another, which will not be torn
down." 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?’”
I desire to finish up this introduction from John
MacArthur’s commentary on Matthew. This
is actually his fourth book in his commentary on Matthew, and it is the start
of my 5th year in my study of Matthew.
“In
the eight event of the Messiah’s coming Palestine would become the center of
the world, and all nations would be subjugated to the Lord. ‘And all the isles and the cities shall say,
How doth the Eternal love those men! For
all things work in sympathy with them and help them….Come let us all fall upon
the earth and supplicate the eternal King, the mighty, everlasting God. Let us make procession to His Temple, for He
is the sole Potentate’ (Sibylline Oracles
3:690ff.).
“Those ancient views of the coming of Christ were extrapolated
largely from Old Testament teachings, and they closely correspond to New
Testament premillennial doctrine about His second coming. The major difference is that those Jews had
no knowledge of His coming twice, the first time to offer Himself as a
sacrifice for the world’s sin and the second to establish His millennial
kingdom on earth. The Jewish people were
not looking for inward deliverance from sin but for outward deliverance from
political oppression.
“In
the minds of the Jews of Jesus’ day, the time was ripe for the Messiah’s
coming. They had suffered persecution
and subjugation for many centuries and were at that time under the relentless
power of Rome. When John the Baptist
appeared on the scene, reminiscent of the preaching and life-style of Elijah,
the people’s interest was intensely piqued.
And then when Jesus began His ministry of preaching, with unheard of
authority and of healing every sort of disease, many Jews were convinced that
He was indeed the Messiah. When He rode
into Jerusalem on the colt, the crowds were beside themselves with
anticipation, and they openly hailed Him as the Messiah, the long-awaited Son
of David (Matt. 21:9).
“At
that point, however Jesus’ ministry rapidly and radically departed from their
expectations. According to their
thinking, the next steps would be the gathering of the nations against the
Messiah and His dramatic and effortless victory over them.
“The
idea apparently was also still in the minds of the Twelve. Jesus’ many predictions that He must suffer,
die, and be resurrected had simply not registered withthem In some way or another they either had
discounted those teachings or had rationalized and spiritualized them into
being something other than literal, physical, and historical realities.
PROPHETIC
DISCUSSIONS WITH JESUS
“In
fairness to the disciples, the Old Testament prophets also saw the Messiah’s
coming and establishing His kingdom as a single event. The church age was a mystery to them, a
mystery, as Paul explained, ‘which has been kept secret for long ages past, but
now is manifested’ (Rom. 16:25-26).
Because Israel had obviously experienced tremendous tribulation, because
Jesus declared Himself to be the Messiah and identified John the Baptist as His
forerunner, and because He had accepted the Messianic acclaim of the people a
few days earlier, the disciples understandably thought that the sequence of
events would continue as they expected.
They were now certain that Jesus’ next move would be to demonstrate His
inexorable power over the nations that would soon rise up against Him.
“It
was doubtlessly such thoughts that had kept Judas superficially committed to
stay with Jesus. He expected to be in
the Messiah’s inner and prestige commensurate with that position.”
This
finally ends the introduction to these first three verses in the 24th
chapter of Matthew. I have to say once
again that I have studied the 24th chapter of Matthew before and
read over it many times, but those first three verses have always been somewhat
of mystery to me and after listening to MacArthur’s sermon on the introduction
to this chapter, and reading over his commentary those first three verses are
much less of a mystery to me.
Lord
willing in our next SD we will begin to look at the first two verses of this 24th
chapter of Matthew.
11/23/2023 10:41 AM
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