EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/29/2024 10:45 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Certainty of Sin”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 1:6,
8, 10
Message of the verses: “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;…If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us….If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”
I
want to pick up where I left off from yesterday’s SD by writing about the
people of Judah and what they did in the time of Malachi’s day as they were
equally adept at denying their sin. (You
will need to look at the SD from yesterday on this section of Scripture to best
understand where I am going with this tonight.)
God had given them very clear and detailed instructions concerning what
offerings were acceptable to Him which is seen in Lev. 1:1-7:38, as you will
have to look at this by yourself as it is a very long section of
Scripture. Yet they continued to present
defiled food and defective animals to the Lord and then they acted surprised
(thinking that they had done nothing wrong) when the Lord through the prophet
Malachi, confronted them about their clear disobedience as we will read about
this in Malachi 1:6-8: “6 "’A son honors his
father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And
if I am a master, where is My respect?’ says the LORD of hosts to you, O
priests who despise My name. But you say, ‘How have we despised Your name?’ 7 “You
are presenting defiled food upon My altar. But you say, ‘How have we defiled
You?’ In that you say, ‘The table of the LORD is to be despised.’ 8 “But when
you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the
lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor? Would he be
pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly?" says the LORD of hosts.”
MacArthur writes “God then moved from an expression
of displeasure to a warning of severe judgment on the religious leaders, the
priests:
1 "And now this commandment is for you, O
priests. 2 "If you do not listen,
and if you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name," says the
LORD of hosts, "then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your
blessings; and indeed, I have cursed them already, because you are not
taking it to heart. 3
"Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread
refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away
with it. 4 "Then you will know that
I have sent this commandment to you, that My covenant may continue with
Levi," says the LORD of hosts” Mal. 2:1-4).
Now I have one more paragraph to quote from MacArthur’s
commentary: “the Lord’s rebuke was
necessarily harsh because the people had disobeyed Him so grievously (1:11-16)
and yet were acting as though they had done nothing wrong. They had arbitrarily (and wrongly) excused
their wicked behavior, to the point that they audaciously accused God of being
unjust and unfair to them (v. 17). In a
similar sense, there are many today who think God would be brutally unjust for
sending any human being to hell. It is
not until people accept both the absolute holiness of God and full
responsibility for their sin that they admit God has the right to judge and
punish them (cf. Ezra 9:13; Neh. 9:33; Luke 15:21; 23:41).”
Now
in the next SD I will again pick up on what the apostle John faced, as he faced
a similar situation in writing to his audience.
8/29/2024 11:09 PM
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