SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/20/2024 8:23 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-5 “The
Religious Wicked”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:41-44
Message of the verses: “41 In the same way
the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking Him
and saying, 42 "He saved others; He
cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the
cross and we will believe in Him. 43 “HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE Him
now, IF HE DELIGHTS IN HIM; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’" 44 The
robbers who had been crucified with Him were also insulting Him with the same
words. 45 Now from the
sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 46
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "ELI, ELI,
LAMA SABACHTHANI?" that is, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN
ME?" 47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began
saying, "This man is calling for Elijah.’”
As I begin this SD I want
to again quote a paragraph from John MacArthur’s commentary that I used in the
last SD as this speaks volumes to me and hopefully to you.
“Jesus was not their kind of Messiah, and they had no desires to follow
Him in the way He demanded. They did not
want to be made righteous but successful.
They did not want to be cleansed but selfishly satisfied. They did not want to give up anything for God
but wanted from Him only the worldly, material advantages they cherished. When they realized Jesus offered no such
favors, they had no more use for Him.”
We have been talking about the religious wicked men
that are seen in these verses and these men had much to do with religion but
nothing to do with God, and that creates a big problem for those who were
suppose to be listening to them. We have
the same kind of problems in our world and in our country today. I could be kind and not mention Joel Osteen
but then I would be doing a disservice to those who read this, for he is an
example of one like these religious wicked that are mentioned in this
section. We move on now to continue to
talk about the religious wicked who were at the cross speaking insults to the
Lord as He hung there about to die for them.
It is because these men professed great knowledge of Jesus and presumed
to be pleasing to Him, there were the guiltiest of those who participate in
Jesus’s death. Let us now look at John
19:11 “Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had
been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the
greater sin.’” Although they claimed to
sit in Moses’ seat, they contradicted what Moses taught, and although they
claimed to speak for God, they were in fact the enemies of God.
Let
us not look at Zechariah 12:10 “"I will pour out on the house of David and
on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so
that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him,
as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the
bitter weeping over a firstborn.” MacArthur
writes “In the crucifixion the religious leaders represented all Israelites who
hat that time rejected their Messiah and ‘pierced’ Him. Everyone who rejects Christ shares in the guilt
of His crucifixion and of putting Him to open shame, even more so if, like
those religious leaders, a person has had special privileges from God and
exposure to His truth (Heb. 6:4-6).
“Matthew
again mentions (see v. 38) the two robbers… who had been crucified with
Him. As already noted, they took the
lead of the chief priests, scribes, and elders in vilifying Jesus, casting the
same insult at Him.”
Now
I mentioned in an earlier SD that one of these robbers finally stopped his
cursing and asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom to which
Jesus replied “42 And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in
Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you
shall be with Me in Paradise’’ (Luke 23:42-43).
There
were many others who would later on come to Christ as their Savior and Lord and
be a part of the very early church. This
would happen after Peter’s Spirit-empowered message at Pentecost as these hearers
of this sermon “were pierced to the heart, and sto to Peter, and the rest of
the apostles, ‘Brethren what shall we do?’
And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit’…So then, those who had received his word were
baptized and there were added that day about three thousand souls’ (Acts
2:37-38, 41).”
MacArthur concludes this section and this chapter by
writing “By the working of God’s sovereign grace, even some of the scoffing,
condemning religious leaders came to salvation during the early days of the
church, including ‘a great many of the priests’ (Acts 6:7).”
Lord willing we will begin to look at the
introduction to Matthew 27:45-53 “God’s Miraculous commentary on the Cross” in
the next SD.
8/20/2024 8:51 AM
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