SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/3/2025 9:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Lovers
of Self”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Timothy
3:2-4
Message of the verses: “2 For men will be lovers
of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents,
ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving,
irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of
good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers
of God;”
In this section of Paul’s second letter to Timothy
Paul uses a lot of words, words that describe how mankind will be acting in the
last days, and so we will begin to look at the first words “Lovers of self” in
today’s SD and see how many of these words we can look at this morning.
“Lovers
of self translates the single Greek word philautos,
a compound of the verb phileo (to
have great affection for) and the pronoun autos
(self). Phileo is not a wrong kind of loving, and the verb is frequently
used positively in the New Testament. In
John 16:27, it is used both of the Father’s love for believers and of the
believer’s love for the Son. It is used
of Jesus’ love for John (John 20:2) and is used once even of the Father’s love
for the Son (John 5:20). In the present
passage, it is not the kind of love
that is evil but the wrongly elevated object
of that love, namely self. Whenever love
for self is raised, love for God and the things of God is lowered. For that reason, misdirected love always
engenders vice. It was first from Lucifer’s and then from Adam’s
and Eve’s love of themselves over the Lord—and from the similar self-love of their
descendants—that every other sin has issued.” Now look at this highlighted portion of this
last sentence of this paragraph and think about it as what MacArthur is saying
that all sin began with the selfishness of first of all Lucifer, and then
passed on to Adam and Eve and then to every person born on planet earth. Loving one’s self is how sinfulness began on
planet earth and it is still going on today.
There was only One Person born on planet earth that did not possess this
sin or any other sin, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ who did not have an
earthly father, but His humanness was conceived by the Holy Spirit to a virgin
named Mary. We have to go back to the
third chapter of Genesis in order to help explain this. “And I will put enmity Between you and the
woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And
you shall bruise him on the heel.’” This
is Genesis 3:15 and the Lord is talking first to Satan and then He states that
through the woman’s seed will come the Messiah and the Messiah will be the One
who will destroy Satan. Now this has not
totally happened yet, but Satan does not have the power that he had before the
cross, and then after the end of the Tribulation Period Satan will be thrown
into hell along with the Antichrist and the False Prophet, but after that 1000
year period Satan will be let out of hell for a little while in order to do
more damage using unbelievers from the Millennial Kingdom who turned down the
offer of Salvation through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. The war will be short and then Satan will
return to hell where he will be there for eternity. After that the Lord will destroy the earth
and all the universe and all believers will then go into the place where the
Lord has built for us, the New Jerusalem and I believe there will also be a new
earth. Take a look at the 21st
chapter of Revelation to find this out.
I think that it would be best for me to just quote the 21st
chapter of Revelation as I close this SD.
1 Then I
saw a new heaven and a new
earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there
is no longer any sea. 2 And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven
from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud
voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among
men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God
Himself will be among them, 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any
mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." 5 And He
who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new."
And He said, "Write, for these words are faithful and true." 6 Then
He said to me, "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning
and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of
life without cost. 7 “He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be
his God and he will be My son. 8 “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and
abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and
all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and
brimstone, which is the second death."
9 Then one
of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came
and spoke with me, saying, "Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife
of the Lamb." 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high
mountain, and showed me the
holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory
of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of
crystal-clear jasper. 12 It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at
the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the
names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. 13 There were
three gates on the east and three gates on the north and three gates on the
south and three gates on the west. 14 And the wall of the city had twelve
foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve
apostles of the Lamb. 15 The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to
measure the city, and its gates and its wall. 16 The city is laid out as a
square, and its length is as great as the width; and he measured the city with
the rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. 17 And
he measured its wall, seventy-two yards, according to human
measurements, which are also angelic measurements. 18 The material
of the wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. 19 The
foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious
stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third,
chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; 20 the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius;
the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth,
chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. 21 And the twelve
gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the
street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. 22 I saw no temple in
it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 And the city
has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has
illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light,
and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 In the daytime
(for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; 26 and they
will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; 27 and nothing
unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into
it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
There
is a lot of information in this second to last chapter of the Word of God and
what is here is the future for all of those who have come to a saving knowledge
of Jesus Christ as they realized that they were a sinner and so the confessed
to the Lord that they were a sinner and then they came to the Lord Jesus Christ
as realized that His death on the cross was for them and so they accepted that
forgiveness that Jesus Christ offered them and thus became a born-again
believer and this 21st chapter of Revelation show the destination of
all true believers. Think about that if
you have not trusted Christ as your personal Savior and Lord and do it today.
4/3/2025 9:39 AM
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