SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/26/2024 9:23 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Intro to Matt. 28:1-10” “Resurrection
of Christ”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
28:1-10
Message of the verses: “1 Now after the
Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. 2 And behold, a severe
earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and
came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. 3 And his appearance was like
lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. 4 The guards shook for fear of
him and became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, "Do not be
afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. 6 “He
is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He
was lying. 7 “Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the
dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see
Him; behold, I have told you." 8 And they left the tomb quickly with fear
and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. 9 And behold, Jesus met
them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped
Him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and take word to My
brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see Me.’”
OK I finally made it to the very last chapter in the
book of Matthew. I am not sure how many
pages that I wrote as I went through the gospel of Matthew, but it has to be
over 2000 pages. The best thing is that
I have learned a lot from this study of Matthew, and am happy that the Lord has
used what I wrote to go around the world to places that I have not even heard
of in order to spread the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I
begin by quoting from John MacArthur’s commentary as he begins to talk about
these verses. “Like every piece of good literature,
Matthew’s gospel is not a random collection of facts or ideas or stories but
has a specific plan and purpose. Chapter
28 is not simply a closing group of anecdotes about the life of Christ but is
the powerful climax of everything else he has written under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit.” That last sentence is a
very important sentence to understand, that is the Bible was written by the
Holy Spirit giving its writers the knowledge of what to write, but also using
the personality of all of the writers that have written what we call the
Bible. I have been listening to the
Bible on my walks each day and it takes me about an hour and forty-five minutes
to walk my five miles each day, and so I can listen to many verses as I
walk. Moses is the human author of the
first five books of the Bible and it was God who gave him the things to write, for
Moses did not come along to probably close to three-thousand years after God
created the earth, and so Moses spent a lot of time up on Mt. Sinai getting all
the things from the Lord that He wanted him to write and that is how we got the
first five books of the Bible.
I
move on with MacArthur’s thoughts from his introduction to these verses: “The central event of that climax, the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, is also the central event of God’s redemptive
history. The resurrection is that
cornerstone of the Christian faith, and everything that we are and have and
hope to be is predicted on its reality.
There would be no Christianity if t here were no resurrection.” Now think about this last sentence as it is a
very, very important truth, “No resurrection: No Christianity.” Now that means
that every person that has ever been born would spend eternity in hell, away
from the presence of God. Thank God for
the grace that He has as He did send His Son to pay for our sins on the cross,
to die in our place so that when we accept this truth we can become a believer
in Jesus Christ, and we will change our place where we will spend
eternity. Confess that you are born a
sinner and because of that you sin, and then receive the forgiveness that
Christ offers to you through His shed blood on the cross, remembering that He
rose from the dead in order to show us that God accepted the sacrifice that He
offers.
I
will now quote one more paragraph from MacArthur’s introduction which will end
this SD for today. “The message of
Scripture has always been a message of resurrection hipe, a message that death
is not the end for those who belong to God.
For the believer, death has never been an end but rather a doorway that leads
to eternity with God. Abraham willingly
obeyed and then declared, God’s command to sacrifice his only son, Isaac,
because, in faith, ‘he considered that God is able to raise men even from the
dead’ (Heb. 11:19). The psalmists
declared, ‘God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol; for He will receive
me’ (Ps. 49:15) and that ‘with Thy
counsel Thou wilt guide me, and afterward receive me to glory’ (Ps.
73:24). Isaiah proclaimed, ‘Your dead
will live; their corpses will rise’ (Isa. 26:19). Through Daniel the Lord assures His people,
that although they die, one day they ‘will awake…to everlasting life’ (Dan.
12:2). Hosea assures believers that the
Lord will raise up all believers to live before Him (Hos. 6:2). Job asked rhetorically, ‘If a man dies, will
he live again?’ and then declared ‘All the das of my struggle I will wait,
until my change comes’ (Job. 14:14) That ancient man of God even foresaw the
reality of resurrection, proclaiming to his three friends, Bildad in
particular: ‘I know that my Redeemer
lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my
flesh I shall see God’ (Job 19:25-26).
“Such has been the promised hope of God’s people
throughout history, a hope predicated on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It
is His resurrection that guarantees ours.
‘Now Christ has been raised from the dead,’ Paul declares, ‘the first
fruits of those who are asleep. For
since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the
dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ all shall be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:20-22).”
9/26/2024 10:02 AM
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