SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/7/2024 7:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Readiness”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
24:43-44
Message of the verses: “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.”
When it comes to the Greek language it is all Greek
to me and that means that I usually quote from John MacArthur’s commentary in
order to make sure that I, along with all who read these Spiritual Diaries
understand exactly what is being talked about.
MacArthur writes “Be sure of this translates what could be either a
Greek imperative or and indicative. As
an imperative it would be a form of command, but that idea seems inappropriate
here, because Jesus was simply stating the obvious, a truism. As an indicative it would be a statement of
fact as a reminder. ‘As everyone knows’
He is saying, ‘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.’ No sane thief
would announce his intention of robbing a house, and no sane head of the house
who knew in advance at what time of the night the thief was coming would fail
to be on alert in order to prevent his house from being broken into.
So what does that mean to the generation who will be
living in the Tribulation period? This
24th and 25th chapter of Matthew is speaking to those in
the Tribulation period as Jesus is warning them and talking to them about what
will happen, and He is doing it some 2000 years before the things in the
Tribulation period will happen. So the
generation living at that time is specifically told by Jesus that they will not
know the exact time that He will be appearing, and this is something that I
have been writing about for some time now in different Spiritual Diaries from
this 24th chapter of Matthew.
You may remember that it took me a while to understand what Jesus was
talking about, but after praying about it I realized that because He is talking
about and to the people who will be living in this time period that because of
the great difficulty for people living in this time period, especially
believers to which Jesus is talking about, that they really will only know the
signs but not the exact day that He will return. They will be able to know that they are
getting close, but will not know the exact day and hour. They will have other things on their mind,
things like trying to stay alive as they will be running from the Antichrist
and his army.
MacArthur writes on this “In other
words, to carry out the figure Jesus uses here, they will know with absolute
certainty that the thief will be breaking into the house sometime very soon and
they should be prepared accordingly.
In this section Jesus is not saying
that He is the thief, but was comparing His coming to the stealth and
unexpectedness of a thief’s coming. This
is not the only time that we find in the New Testament that it compares the
second coming to a thief’s coming. I
will give some different verse locations and then quote from one or two of
them. Here are the locations: Luke 12:35-40; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10;
Rev. 3:3; 16:15. Now it is for obvious
reason that, as Jesus here points out, a thief never tries to rob a place where
he knows he is expected, and certainly not at the exact time he is
expected. Now I will look in closing
this SD as a few of these verses that are mentioned above, and the thing is
that with the exception of the passage in Luke most of these are familiar with
me because of my love for end-time sections in the Bible.
“But
the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away
with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth
and its works will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). In my
opinion that verse speaks of a time just after the Millennial Kingdom will end
as it describes the destruction of the universe and the ushering in of the New
heaven and New earth, and also the New Jerusalem.
‘So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it,
and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you
will not know at what hour I will come to you” (Rev. 3:3).
“("Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one
who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and
men will not see his shame)” (Rev. 16:15).
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Today’s come from what I learned from looking
at an older SD from Daniel 9:4, which speaks of praying, and trusting the
Lord. Prayer is something the I long to
be better at, and trusting the Lord for certain things that cause me to be
anxious are also things that I must be better at.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Learn these things I need to learn by
trusting in the Word to teach me and the Spirit to accomplish them in my life.
2/7/2024 8:28 AM
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