SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/13/2024 9:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Fickle
Wicked”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:39-40
Message of the verses: “And those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads, and saying, ‘You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’”
MacArthur gives the names of these people that Matthew
describes in verse 39 as “The Fickle Wicked,” Matthew simply says of them “those
passing by.” Perhaps these groups of
people were those who had come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. There were so many people coming for the
Passover celebration each year to Jerusalem that there was not enough to house
all of them so many had to camp outside the city or stay in nearby towns and
villages. Consequently, there was much
heavier traffic in and out of Jerusalem than usual.
MacArthur adds “This particular crowd of passers-by
almost certainly included inhabitants of Judea and Galilee who had previously
admired Christ and perhaps even followed Him for a while. They had heard Him preach and seen Him
perform miracles and expose the malicious hypocrisy of the scribes, Pharisees,
and other religious leaders. Some of
them no doubt had participated in His triumphal entry a few days earlier and
had joined in shouting hosannas to His name.
They had seen Him cleanse the Temple of the money changers and sacrifice
sellers and probably cheered Him for that while listening to His teaching.
“It is almost certain that these former admires had
earlier in the day called for Jesus’ crucifixion and had followed the soldiers
and Jesus to the Place of the Skull to witness the execution they had
demanded. These were the fickle wicked
who had a place for Jesus only when He satisfied their wants. They were fascinated by Him, knew who He
claimed to be, and had witnessed countless demonstrations of power that
verified that claim.”
Now let’s think about these people in relation to what
goes on in the world today. Let me tell
you what happened to me a few days ago as some of you may know from my
Spiritual Diaries that I walk each day at least five miles and I have a place
near me where I go and do much of this walking.
I was over there the other day when I saw a couple of men sitting down
talking, and I knew that they were a part of the AA group that meets their most
everyday about 2:00PM. There were only
two of them and so I stopped to talk to them about the forgiveness that Christ
offers to them. This group tires to draw
strength from God in order to keep them from drinking alcohol. I told them that when I first became a
believer that the Lord immediately cleaned up my swearing mouth. The response from them was that they thought
that they could stop swearing if they wanted to. Now I suppose what I should have said then
why can’t you just stop your drinking since you want to? The point is that the Lord took swearing from
me the moment that He saved me as this was a miracle. These men come to this place each day to talk
about their drinking and try and get the strength from the Lord kind of like
these fickle people of Jesus’ day who saw His miracles and other things he did
and then wanted to follow Him until they became disappointed that He did not do
what they wanted Him to do. I am not
trying to run down these men who met to draw strength in order to stop their drinking
as that is a terrible habit, but the thing that they really need is to have a
relationship with the Lord through being born-again. Not all sinful habits are taken away right
away when a person is saved, but when that happens to a person they can
certainly draw strength from the Lord to help them in their battles that they
are facing. The Christian life is a
battle that the Lord can use to draw His people to Himself in order to give
them strength to fight the sinful desires that they have. Temptation is a powerful thing that Satan
uses against the believer, but through the power of the Holy Spirit and prayer
temptations can be defeated.
Now these fickle wicked were probably disappointed that the
Lord did not do for them what they wanted Him to do for them. I believe what they wanted was the Messiah
that would take away the oppression they were getting from Rome, and when He
did not do this then they abandoned Him.
Jesus, the Messiah came the first time to pay for sins, but when He
comes the next time to planet earth He comes as Judge. Accepting Him as the Messiah which He is will
be better than to face Him as your Judge.
8/13/2024 10:10 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment