SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/8/2024 8:52 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: “Worship”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 28:9
Message of the verse: “And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.”
Today we go from Joy, (yesterday’s SD) to worship
(today’s SD). It seems to me that true
worship will bring about real joy. This
verse happened while the other women were on their way to report the angel’s
message to the disciples that Jesus met them and greeted them. MacArthur writes “Greeted translates chaired, a common greeting that loosely
rendered means something like ‘hello’ or ‘good morning.’ It was the ordinary salutation of the
marketplace and of travelers who passed each other on the road. In other words the greeting was casual and
ordinary, seemingly too mundane to be appropriate for such a momentous
occasion. Yet the glorified Christ, who
had just finished conquering sin and death, deigned to greet those faithful
women with warm, informal tenderness. As
the writer of Hebrews assures us, ‘We do not have a high priest who cannot
sympathize with our weakness’ (Heb. 4:15).”
These women immediately recognized their Lord, and the
women came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. I would say that these women got so much more
than when they went out to make sure that the body of Jesus was taken care of
in a proper way, and in actuality His body was surely taken care of in a way
that they did not think of as He was alive.
These women know knew for sure that the Lord had risen from the dead and
that surely He was the risen Messiah, the divine Son of God, and that adoration
and praise were the only proper responses to His presence. I think that this should be my attitude each
and every day to be thankful for the resurrection of My Lord and to worship Him
each and every day. These women did that
morning what every believer and unbeliever will do one day. When He comes again, ‘every knee [will] bow…and…every
tongue [will] confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the father (Phil.
2:10-11). This is the truth, and so it
is better to believe on Jesus Christ now, to confess that you are a sinner now,
to accept the forgiveness that He offers you now, than to do it as an
unbeliever when He comes to judge those on the earth.
MacArthur writes “At last the full reality of the
resurrection was solidifying in the minds and hearts of those women. They had heard the angel’s proclamation of
the resurrection, had seen the empty
tomb, had beheld the risen Lord, and had even touched His glorified body. They could now do nothing but adore and
worship Him.
Sir Edward Clarke wrote:
“As a
lawyer I had made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the
first Easter Day. To me the evidence is
conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the
verdict of evidence not nearly so compelling.
Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless
and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence
for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly
as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate.
(Cited in J. R. W Stou, Basic Christianity
[Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 1971], p. 47).
In a
similar statement, the noted historian and Oxford professor Thomas Arnold
wrote:
“The
evidence of our Lord’s life and death and resurrection may be, and often has
been, shown to be satisfactory; it is good according to the common rules for distinguishing
good evidence from bad. Thousands and
thens of thousands of persons have gone through it piece by piece as carefully
as every judge summing upon a most important case. I have myself done it many times over, not to
persuade others but to satisfy myself. I
have been used for many years to study the histories of other times and to
examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know
of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller
evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great
sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.
(Wilbur M. Smith, Therefore Stand: Christian Apologetics [Grand
Rap[ids: Baker, 1965] , pp 425-26).
Well I have one more short section in this chapter from
MacArthur’s commentary to go over and that is entitled “Hope” and Lord willing
will go over it tomorrow. That section
is from the 10th verse of the 28th chapter of Matthew,
and each and every day I get closer to finishing my almost five year study of
Matthew’s gospel. It has been a joyous
journey.
10/8/2024 9:23 AM
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