EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/12/2024 9:34 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Intro to 1 John 2:1b-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 2:1b-2
Message of the verses: “And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
Today we begin to look at basically a chapter from
MacArthur’s commentary that has only one and a half verses in it, but I have to
say very important verses. Now in his
introduction to this chapter MacArthur begins to talk about something that to
me because of the time that he wrote it to be a bit outdated as he talks about
people liking to look at TV shows and also movies dealing with crime and
trials, now the part that is outdated is the avenue that people watch them then
and today as there are more modern ways of watching TV, even on a smart watch
you can do it, kind of like the old time cartoon called “The Jetsons.” Not sure how many will remember that show but
I’m sure you can do some detective work and find in on YouTube.
Here
is a courtroom trial that we can talk about as we look at this verse and a half. God the Father is the Judge (Gen. 18:25; Ps.
7:11; Heb. 12:230, Satan is the accuser (Zech. 3:1; Rev. 12:10; cf. Job 1:9-11;
2:4-5), and every person who ever lived is on trial. Now not many want to hear about this, and not
many want to believe this, but this is true.
“11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him
who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place
was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing
before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is
the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were
written in the books, according to their deeds. 13 And the sea gave up the dead
which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and
they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. 14 Then
death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death,
the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of
life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” Rev. 20:11-15).
“The
issue is how unjust sinners can be justified before a holy God. R. C. Sproul writes,
“The doctrine of
justification involves a legal matter of the highest magnitude. It involves a matter of judgment before the
supreme tribunal of God. The most basic
of all issues we face as fallen human beings is the issue of how we as unjust
sinners can hope to survive a judgment before the court of an absolutely holy
and absolutely just God. God is the
Judge of all the earth. Herein lies our
dilemma. He is just; we are unjust. If we receive from His hands what justice is
due us, we face the everlasting punishment of hell. (‘The Forensic Nature of Justification,’ in
Don Kistler, ed., Justification by Faith
Alone [Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo, Gloria, 1995], 24)
“All those standing before the bar of
divine justice are guilty of violating God’s holy law; they ‘are all under sin;
as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one’’ (Rom. 3:9-10), and ‘Whoever
keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all’
(James 2:10). The just sentence the
divine court should hand down is eternal punishment in hell, ‘for the wages of
sin is death’ (Rom. 6:23).”
Ok I will stop here, but what we have covered mostly
in this SD is the bad news, think about the passage that I quoted from the 20th
chapter of Revelation, and if you have not accepted the Lord Jesus in your
heart to forgive your sins, becoming a born-again believer then that is where
you will end up, and let me tell you: “You don’t want to end up there.” Stay tuned as Lord willing we continue
looking at this introduction in tomorrow’s SD to find some good news.
9/12/2024 10:01 PM
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