SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/18/2025 8:28 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “False Teaching Brings Shame on
the Teachers”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
2 Timothy 2:15
Message of the
verse: “Be
diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to
be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”
I continue to look at the verse that I have named my
blogs after, 2 Timothy 2:15.
Think about this as I begin this last section from this
great verse in 2 Timothy, and that is because we know that the Bible is God’s
inerrant, authoritative, sufficient, and sole source of His divine word of
truth, that every other truth rests on that truth. Now it is not that the
inerrancy of Scripture is a more important truth than perhaps, the deity of
Christ or the Trinity, however it is only from the truth of Scripture that we
can know all other truths. God’s word of
truth in Scripture is the source and the measure not only of all spiritual and
moral truth but of all truth of any sort
on which it speaks.
MacArthur tells the following story: “In explaining, and evidently trying to justify, the conception of his first child
out of wedlock, a prominent evangelical leader maintained that true marriage
with his wife began at that time, rather than at the time of their
wedding. That claim, of course, utterly
contradicts what Scripture teaches about the unconditional sinfulness of
fornication. When the man’s wife was
asked how she felt about that ‘indiscretion’ being made public, she added to
her husband’s twisting of Scripture by responding, ‘Well, now I understand the
meaning of John 8:23, ‘the truth will make you free.’’ The most cursory look at
that passage reveals that Jesus was not speaking about the feeling of relief
that often comes with having a sin justified.
He was speaking about the truth of His divinity and messiahship. He was speaking ‘to those Jews who had
believed Him,’ explaining that their knowing and being made free by that truth
was conditioned on their abiding in His Word, which would mark them as ‘truly
[His] disciples’ (v. 31).”
He goes on to tell another story” Equally blasphemous was a young woman who posed nude for a pornographic magazine and said the experience had drawn her closer to God. She even claimed the scriptural promise ‘Draw near to God and He will draw near to you’ (James 4:8). The arrogant folly of her statement is made clear in the next half of that verse, which commands: ‘Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.’”
I will also conclude with the final quote that John
MacArthur writes about his comments on this verse that means so much to me
because my blogs are name after it.
“It is one thing to genuinely repent of a sin and to have
the assurance of God’s forgiveness. It
is a different thing entirely to twist God’s Word in an effort to justify the
sin. It is one thing for an unbeliever,
who makes no claim of godliness, to be unashamed of a sin. It is quite another thing, and immeasurably
worse, for a person who claims salvation to be unashamed of a sin, especially
when God’s Word is used to defend it.”
Spiritual Meaning for my Life Today: When I was a
small child I use to watch a kid’s program on our black and white TV and this
host would always end his show with these words. “You can fool some of the people all of the
time, and all of the people sometime, but you can’t fool mom.” Well as I think about what I have been
learning in my study of the Bible and am reminded of it while looking at this
passage I can say “You can’t fool God.”
God knows when I sin and since He paid for those sins on the cross I certainly
need to do like John tells me to do in his first epistle “If we confess our
sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.”
My Steps of Faith for Today: Never hold
back from confessing any sin to the Lord.
2/18/2025 9:01 AM
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