SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/26/2025 7:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Preeminence of the Lord”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
2 Timothy 2:8
Message of the verse: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel.”
I want to begin by quoting from John MacArthur’s
commentary about the word remember. “Because
the Greek verb behind remember is in the active voice it carries the idea of ‘continue
to remember’ or ‘keep on remembering.’
The preeminence of our Lord Jesus Christ should always be in the
forefront of our minds. He is the
supreme and ultimate teacher of teachers.
He was the greatest soldier, the greatest athlete, and the greatest
farmer, as it were. He fought the
greatest battle and won the greatest victory.
He ran the greatest race and won the greatest prize. He sowed the perfect seed and reaped the
perfect harvest.” I certainly have to
admit that I never thought about this before, but now that I read it I believe
it, and more than that I am thankful for that truth.
The thing that I do know about Jesus is that His path to
glory was marked by pain before pleasure, sorrow before joy, humiliation before
glorification, and persecution before exaltation, death before resurrection,
earthly hatred before heavenly worship. To
remember those truths about our Lord’s earthly life will protect us from the
foolish and ungodly promises of the so-called health and wealth gospel, which
vitiates (corrupt) His command to tak up our crosses as He took up His. MacArthur writes “If Jesus’ perfect and
sinless obedience of His heavenly Father did not bring Him earthly prosperity
and well-being, how much less can we expect to receive those things because of
our imperfect service of Him? If our
Lord Jesus Christ, ‘although He was [God’s] Son,…learned obedience from the
things He suffered’ (Heb. 5:8), how much
more should we?
“We are to remember Jesus Christ first of all because He is risen from the dead, more literally, ‘having been raised from the dead.’ It is that great truth on which Paul focuses in 1 Corinthian 15. ‘For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,’ he said, ‘that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3-4). That truth is of ‘first importance’ because, ‘if Christ has not been raised, [our] faith is worthless; [and we] are still in [our] sins…If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied’ (vv. 17, 19).”
Just a bit more about the health and wealth gospel: When
I was working at my job at Ford I went into see the nurse about some problem
that I had and she told me that the Pastor at her church told her that because
she did not have enough faith that this was the reason that she had to have her
cancerous foot cut off. I was angry with
that Pastor, but did not show it to her as she had enough trouble. I told her that I did not agree with her
Pastor. The reason that I was angry was
because I believed her Pastor had no right to tell her this as she felt like it
was all her fault that she had to have her foot removed, and that was certainly
not true.
With that story I will conclude this SD as it is Sunday
morning, a special day for me as it was 52 years ago today that the Lord saved
me from my sins, and for that I will be ever thankful.
1/26/2025 8:16 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment