SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/13/2024 9:11 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-5 “The Reckoning We Face”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
25:19-27
Message of the verses: “19 "Now after
a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.
20 "The one who had received the
five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you
entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.’ 21 “His
master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with
a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of
your master.’ 22 "Also the one who had received the two talents
came up and said, ‘Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have gained
two more talents.’ 23 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful
slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many
things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 “And the one also who had
received the one talent came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man,
reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.
25 ‘And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you
have what is yours.’ 26 “But his master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked,
lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I
scattered no seed. 27 ‘Then you ought to have put my money in the bank,
and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.”
I begin this SD still talking about the
man with one talent. This man had an
erroneous estimation of his master’s character as it was it can be seen that
this slave had no intimate or reliable knowledge of him. This is still a problem with both those who
are truly born-again and those who are not, but the problem is that once a
person is born again they have the resources from the Word of God to understand
who God truly is and what He is about. I
have stressed in many of my Spiritual Diaries that you can get to know God by
the studying of His attributes and have placed a website on different SD’s
showing where you can read a great book on how to know God. https://bible.org/series/joy-knowing-god
Please take a look at this as you can read this book right from this website.
MacArthur
writes that what it was that was going on with this slave “portrays the
unregenerate church member who has no spiritual fruit in his life and no
spiritual worship in his heart. He is
blind to the Lord’s kindness, grace, compassion, mercy, honor, majesty, and
glory because he has never surrendered himself to the Lord’s sovereignty and
grace.”
In
verse 25 we see that in a certain way that he was afraid of his master, but it
was not the fear of reverential awe but of irreverent contempt. His own words testified that he resented and
despised the master and had no love or respect for him at all. He had the wrong kind of relationship with his
master, one of enmity rather than peace, or hatred rather than love, of rejection
rather than faith.
MacArthur
adds “This slave represents a professed Christian whose view of God is corrupt
because his unredeemed heart is still corrupt.
He views God through the lens of his own depraved convictions.” This is an important observation which I am
sure that many unbelieving people do, and that is view God in the way that they
look at themselves, and all unbelievers are still dead spiritually because they
have not been born-again, and that gives new life and a new heart to understand
God in a new way, in His way.
Lord
willing in the next SD I will begin to look at the response to the unfaithful
slaves rationalization from what the master has to say to him.
3/14/2024 7:31 AM
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