SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/5/2024 9:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Condemnation of the Unsaved”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
25:41-46
Message of the verses: “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 know that a lot of people who are living today have a
big problem with the fact that there is a hell and people who have not accepted
Jesus Christ into their lives as their Savior and Lord will end up there for
eternity, but that is what the Bible teaches.
We see in the passage above that Jesus is speaking of eternal separation from God and from His
goodness, righteous, truth, joy, peace, and every other good thing. Jesus is speaking of eternal association with the devil and his
angels, and that in and of itself is not good, as the place that God prepared
for the devil and his angels will be the place where unbelievers, the unsaved
will go. Jesus is speaking of eternal isolation, where there will be no
fellowship, no consolation, and no encouragement, and that perhaps will be
missed the most as everyone needs encouragement. Jesus is speaking of eternal duration and of eternal affliction, from which there will be no
relief or relief.
MacArthur writes “The evidence that those rejected people
never belonged to Christ will be that they did not love and serve His
people. Their response to believers’
needs will have been just the opposite of those who enter the kingdom. When, vicariously through the needs of His
people, Christ was hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in
prison, those unbelievers refused to minister to Him. And in so doing they proved they did not belong
to Him.
“Like the righteous who are received into the kingdom,
the accused who are rejected will also be amazed at the Lord’s words to
them. But they will ask, ‘When did we not
minister to You in those ways?’ He will reply, ‘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.’ To fail to serve Christ’s people is to fail
to serve Him, and to fail to serve Him, is to prove one does not belong to Him.”
Now again it is the Tribulation period, those last seven
years of planet earth as we know it now that Jesus is and has been talking to
His disciples about in Matthew 24-25, and times will be completely different
than they are now. However that does not
mean that as Christians that we are not to help our fellow believers during
this time we are living in not.
Now here is something to think about, and that is that
the sins that Jesus is speaking about here are not any kind of what we might
call gross sins that are committed here but rather simple acts of kindness not
committed. As we look back at what we
have seen in chapter 25 we see that the foolish virgins who had no oil for
their lamps were not shut out of the wedding feast because they were morally
wicked, but because they were unprepared for the bridegroom. This was seen in Matthew 25:1-13. Next we looked at the one slave who did
nothing with the money that His master gave him to invest it, so we as
believers can learn from this parable that God has given us something which can
be seen in Ephesians 2:10 and we are to invest what He has given us in the
Kingdom of God. MacArthur adds “It is
not that those who are damned to hell are equally wretched and vile; their
common reason for damnation is lack of faith.”
He goes on to write “Jesus uses the same word (Aionios, eternal) to describe salvation
and condemnation. If believers will be
in heaven with God forever, the lost will be in hell with the devil forever.” Again think about this truth and if you have
not invited Jesus Christ into your heart, admitting that you are a sinner, and
asking Him to save you then what He is teaching here will apply to you, and
that is not good.
Now since we have learned that the Millennial kingdom
will be worldwide, then there will be no place on earth for the accursed to go,
as they will be slain on the spot and go immediately into the eternal
punishment of hell, suffering permanent, everlasting crystallization of their
state of spiritual death. Then at the
end of the thousand years their bodies will be raised and they will again stand
before God for final sentencing and final condemnation in bodies suited for
hell’s torments. Now this is what
MacArthur states and I usually don’t have anything to say to disagree with him,
but I think that the people will not go into hell until after the Great White
Throne Judgment seen in the last part of Revelation. They will go where other unbelievers have
gone and I believe that is the bad side of where Abraham was before Christ
arose from the dead, and then all of those who were believers went to heaven to
be with the Lord, which consists of Old Testament believers. The rest stayed there in punishment and this
number has been added to up until the Great White Throne Judgment take place.
MacArthur concludes this section by writing “But the
righteous will go away into eternal life, to spend al eternity glorified with
their Lord and Savior. In marvelous
contrast to the prospect of the accused, at the end of the thousand-year
earthly kingdom the righteous will discover that their eternal blessedness will
only have begun.” Remember the verse in
Amazing grace which says “When we’ve been there ten thousand years bright
shining as the sun, we’ve no lest days to sing His praise than when we first
begun.”
As mentioned we began to study Matthew chapters 24-25 on
the 19th of November last year and with this SD, on April 5th,
2024 we have completed this marvelous section of Scripture.
4/5/2024 10:17 AM
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