SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/21/2024 9:42 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Intro to Matthew 25:31-46”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
25:31-46
Message of the verses: “31 "But when
the Son of Man comes
in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious
throne. 32 “All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate
them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and
the goats on the left. 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. 35 ‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something
to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a
stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and
you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37 "Then the
righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or
thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 ‘And when did we see You a
stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 ‘When did we see You
sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 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.’ 41 "Then He
will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the
eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was
hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me
nothing to drink; 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and
you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44 "Then they themselves also will answer,
‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or
sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45 "Then He will answer
them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the
least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 "These will go away into
eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
I have to say that I did not really end the last SD
at a good place, and so I want to continue talking about Jesus talking about
judgment as we begin this SD.
One of the things that I have on my prayer list that I
use most is praising the attributes of God and when one looks at the attributes
of God they will find that God is love, something that most people believe, but
God is also just, and we as human beings have a hard time in combining those
two attributes. I have to say that if
you are a parent of smaller children, even teenage children that you probably
have a good idea of how to combine these two attributes and there are times
that what is called tough love comes into play when raising children as you have
to discipline your children because it is the best thing that can be done for
them at certain times, and that love is combined with judgment. I know we can never do this like the Lord
does it but I think that parental love illustrates this.
John MacArthur writes about His love in which he says “Yet
nothing Jesus said or did was inconsistent with His gracious love. He wept at the impending punishment coming on
Jerusalem’s people (Luke 19:41-44). His
warnings of judgment and punishment were acts of live, divine appeals for men
to turn from their sin in order to escape the condemnation that would otherwise
be inevitable. One of love’s supreme
desires is to protect those it loves from harm, and Jesus therefore spoke so
much of judgment because, in His infinite love and grace, it was not His wish
nor the Father’s ‘for any to perish but for all to come to repentance’ (2 Pet.
3:9). What more important and loving
warning could there be than warning about the eternal damnation every human
being faces apart from Jesus Christ?
Jesus sought to draw men to Himself not only through the attractiveness
of salvation but through the horrors of its only alternative.”
I have mentioned that what we have been looking at since
the 19th of November of 2023 is a sermon which is called “The Olivet
Discourse,” and it is named that because Jesus preached this sermon to His
disciples about the tribulation period while on the Mount of Olives. We now want to consider Jesus’ closing words
in this sermon on His second coming as at the end of the tribulation period He
will return to planet earth, and this time not as a Savior, but as a judge as
we will see. Now at the end of this
sermon Jesus gives one of the most severe and sobering warnings of judgment in
all of Scripture. MacArthur writes that
this is “Pictured as the divine separation of the righteous sheep from the
unrighteous goats, that judgment will occur just before Christ establishes His
millennial kingdom on earth. Not only
will it determine the ultimate, eternal destinies of everyone living at the end
of the Tribulation but will also determine who will and will not enter the
kingdom. Only those who belong to the
King, believers who have been born into God’s spiritual family and been made
citizens of His kingdom, will enter His glorious kingdom.”
Now it is my practice to quote the last paragraph from
MacArthur’s commentary in order to see the direction that will take place as we
look at the verses we will be looking at.
“The judgment of the sheep and the goats is not mentioned in any of the
other gospels, no doubt because they do not focus on Christ’s kingship, as does
Matthew. For that same reason Matthew
places much greater emphasis on all aspects of the Lord’s second coming than do
the other gospels, because it is at His return that He will manifest Himself as
King of kings and Lord of lords in consummate regal glory and power (Rev.
19:11-16).”
I will now give the
different subjects and verse that pertain to them as we move through these
verses. 1) “The Setting of Judgment”
(25:31-32) Subsection to this main section (The Judge 25. 31a); (“The Time”
25:31b); (“The Place” 25:31c); (“The Subjects” 25:32a). 2) “The Process of Judgment”
(25:32b-46). Sub-sections to this second
main point: (“The inheritance of the
Saved” 25:34-40); (“The Condemnation of the Unsaved” 25:41-46). As you can see we will be in this 25th
chapter of Matthew for some time yet, but I believe will be blest as we look at
these subjects.
3/21/2024 10:15 AM
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