SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/22/2024 10:41 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-1 “The Judge”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
25:31a
Message of the verse: “But when the Son of Man”
I mentioned in yesterday’s SD that there are several main points with sub points attached to them as we finish this last part of the 25th chapter of Matthew. The main point connected to this sub point is entitled “The Setting of Judgment” and it covers Matthew 25:31-32a “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him;”
The first thing that we need to understand that
Jesus used the name “Son of Man” 29 times in the book of Matthew, and Jesus
Christ is the sovereign judge over the separation of the sheep and the
goats. Let us look at John 5:22 “"For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has
given all judgment to the Son.” God the
Father has delegated all judgment authority to the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s talk a bit about what this
title “Son of Man” means. MacArthur
writes “That title affirmed His incarnation, His identity with mankind, His
time of humiliation and sacrifice. It
reflected His condescension, His submissiveness, His humility, His meekness,
and His gracious love for fallen humanity.
“That title also tended to be less
offensive than “Son of God.” To have
referred regularly to Himself as the Son of God would have aroused additional
and needless hostility from the Jewish religious leaders, and they would have
given even less heed to His teaching than they did.
“In addition to those reasons, for
Jesus regularly to have used any such exalted title of Himself would have
tempted His followers to be presumptuous and arrogant, missing His message of
spiritual salvation. Messiah, He would
soon overthrow the Roman yoke and establish His earthly kingdom on the throne
of David.”
MacArthur writes that there is one
more reason “In addition to shoes reasons, His referring to Himself as Son of
Man provided a profound contrast with the titles and roles He will have when He
comes in glory. It suggested a clear distinction
between His two comings.”
In
verses 34 and 40 we see the following “34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come,
you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world.” “40 "The King will answer and
say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these
brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” Notice the highlighted portions of these two
verses and we can see that Jesus went from calling Himself The Son of Man to
The King because even thought He surely was the King while on earth the first
time, He was humble and came to save us from our sins. In the Millennial Kingdom He will be both
King and Judge, and that is why the name changes. Jesus had never directly referred
to Himself as King up until this point.
Jesus had told a parable about a king who represented God the Father
(Matt. 22:1-14); but not until now talking privately to the Twelve as seen in
Matt. 24:3, did He speak of Himself as King.
In Matthew 27:11 Jesus answered Pilate who ask Him “Are you the King of
the Jews?” Jesus replied simply “It is as you say” (Matt. 27:11). But Pilate did not take that claim seriously,
at least not in a political sense, as evidenced by the fact that he offered the
Jews and opportunity to secure Jesus’ release, knowing “that because of envy
they had delivered Him up” (vv. 17-18).
3/22/2024 11:15 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment