SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/8/2024 7:35 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-6
“Saving Faith”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 27:54
Message of the
verse: “54
Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they
saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened
and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!’”
I can say for certain that John MacArthur has a lot
to say about this one verse from Matthew’s gospel, and in today’s SD I want to
finish quoting what he has to say about the saving faith of some of those
people who were at the cross when Jesus died watching the miracles that
happened so help show that Jesus Christ is indeed the very Son of God.
“But as they ‘began to return,
beating their breasts’ in fear and remorse, they showed no sign of
repentance. They were perhaps
overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and foreboding about their participation in the
execution of an innocent man.” (You have to look at the last SD to pick up on
who is being written about here.) “Like
Judas, they may have wished sincerely that they could somehow undo the terrible
wrong they had done. They probably
realized that God was expressing disfavor through the darkness and earthquake
and that they were the objects of that disfavor. But they made no confession, either of their
sin or of Christ’s lordship. They felt
sorry for Him, but they did not try to help Him. They knew they were under His judgment, but
they did not seek His mercy. They
neither gave Christ help nor sought help from Him, and instead of turning to
Him like the soldiers, they turned away.
“It is probable that many people in
this crowd eventually returned to Him in faith.
A few weeks later upon hearing Peter’s indictment that ‘God has made Him
both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified,’ many of hearers ‘were
pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of for the apostles, Brethren,
what shall we do?’’After he explained the way of salvation, many who had been
in the crowd beneath the cross became numbered among the 3,000 souls converted
at Pentecost (Acts 2:36-41).
“But the convictions of most of
those who turned away from Jesus at the cross remained shallow, and the seed of
the gospel was never able to take root and grow into saving faith. Unlike those whom Paul commended in Corinth,
most of those who beat their breasts at Golgotha did not have the sorrow ‘that
is according to the will of God [and that] produces a repentance without
regret, leading to salvation.’ They
evidently had only ‘the sorrow of the world [that] produces death’ (2 Cor.
7:10).”
Now we have heard the story of those
who were around the cross, seeing the miracles that happened to show that Jesus
Christ is indeed the Son of God and by believing this truth, confessing that
you are a sinner, repent and then ask Jesus to come into your heart to save you
is the most important decision that you will ever make in your life. Please think about this and do not be like
some of those who saw the miracles that happened while Jesus was on the cross
and turn you head away from Him. “Today
is the Day of Salvation” No one knows
how many days you have to live on planet earth.
9/8/2024 7:54
AM
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