SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/31/2024 8:21 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Intro to Matthew 24:36-51”
Bible Reading &Meditation Reference: Matthew
24:36-51
Message
of the verses: “36
"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor
the Son, but the Father alone. 37 “For the coming of the Son of Man will be
just like the days of Noah. 38 "For as in those days before the
flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the
day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood
came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 “Then
there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41
“Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and
one will be left. 42 “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 43 “But
be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the
night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have
allowed his house to be broken into. 44 “For this reason you also must be
ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He
will. 45 “Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master
put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46
“Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. 47 “Truly
I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 “But if
that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’
49 and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; 50
the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and
at an hour which he does not know, 51 and will cut him in pieces and assign him
a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
I
have mentioned that I have always had trouble with this section of Scripture,
and I am beginning to better understand it now, especially after praying about
it. There is a section in this passage
that I believe is the key to understanding what the Lord Jesus is saying But of
that day and hour no one knows. I think
that one has to put themselves in the position of those saints who are living
in the tribulation period to best understand this, for they will understand the
signs and know that it will be soon when the Lord returns but not actually know
the day or the hour because of all the very difficult times that will be going
on during this awful time period. I
remember going to my first Moody Founders Week back in 1978, I remember it well
because there was a very bad blizzard that happened during that January of
1978, and mostly because the theme of the conference was the second coming of
Jesus Christ. I bought a book that was
like a novel of the tribulation period and in that book there was a woman, a
wife of a man who was blind and they had to be careful to care for her because
of her blindness. At the end of the book
when this couple knew that the Lord would soon return this woman regained her
sight as the Lord returned. My point is
that they did not know the day or the hour, but they did know it was going to
happen very soon.
I will now
continue to quote from John MacArthur’s commentary and will do this until I am
done with this introduction, which will probably take a couple of days to
finish it. I will continue from where I
left of yesterday.
“Even if they
knew the precise time of Christ’s appearing and were certain they would
live until then, they would be fooling themselves to think they could simply
receive Him before that time. The fact
that they will have put off trusting in Christ for as long as they have will be
certain evidence they have no sincere desire to follow Him as Lord and
Savior. If the indescribable perils of
the Tribulation will not persuade them to turn to the Lord, the knowledge of
His exact arrival time certainly will not.
“As far as
believers are concerned, knowledge of the specific time might also make them
careless, causing them to withdraw and become spiritually sedentary, thinking
it would be pointless to make plans for serving the Lord or to make further
effort to win the lost. No one, believer
or unbeliever, could think of function normally knowing the exact day and hour of
Christ’s coming.
“Neither
will the supernatural would know the precise time, not even the angels of
heaven. Although the righteous angels
enjoy intimacy with God, hovering around His throne to do His bidding (Isa.
6:2-7) and continually beholding His face (Matt. 18:10), they are not privy to
this secret. The angels will be directly
and actively involved in the end time as God’s agents to separate the saved
from the unsaved (see Matt. 13:41, 49), but for His own reasons God the Father
will not reveal in advance exactly when He will call them into that service.
Still more
amazingly, not even the Son knew at the time He spoke these words or at any
other time during His incarnation.
Although He was fully God as well as fully man (John 1:1, 14), Christ
voluntarily restricted His use of certain divine attributes when He became
flesh. ‘although He existed in the form of
God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, (Phil. 2:6). It was not
that He lost any divine attributes but that He voluntarily laid aside the use
of some of them and would not manifest those attributes except as directed by
His Father (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38).”
Lord
willing I will finish quoting this section from MacArthur’s commentary in my
next SD. I have to say that I am excited
to have new insight into this passage.
PTL.
1/31/2024 8:55 AM
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