EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/8/2025 8:39 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “Guarding
the Truth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 John 9-13
Message of the verses: “9 Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in
the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching,
he has both the Father and the Son.
“10 If anyone
comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your
house, and do not give him a greeting; 11
for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.
“12
Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with
paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your
joy may be made full. 13 The children of your chosen sister greet you.”
This morning while taking my walk I listened to a
sermon by John MacArthur on the verses above from 2 John, and this was his last
message on this short letter of 2 John.
It took him a while to get into these verses as he had some things to
talk about before explaining what these verses mean, and I found what he was
talking about in his long introduction very interesting very and so I decided
to quote from his sermon in order to help us understand his introduction and also
what he gleamed out of these verses. I
will make a decision on whether or not to use the outline in his commentary
after I get done quoting from his sermon, which will take a fairly long time to
get through it but I believe it will be well worth looking at. In his sermon he entitles it “Test of Human
Hospitality.”
Truth: The Test of Christian Hospitality
Code: 63-4
“We now find ourselves so privileged
as to hear the voice of God by turning to His Word, 2 John, and looking,
really, at the last portion of this very brief letter, verses 9 through 13. And
we’ll read those in a moment. Let me introduce our fourth and final look at
this little epistle by reminding you that we have titled it, “Living in the
Truth.”
“Now, all genuine and faithful
Christians have always understood the great commission. All true believers who
understand what the New Testament teaches and what Jesus commands know what our
duty is. It is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and to preach it to
every creature. That is unmistakable, unambiguous. It is a clear command. It is
a mandate. It is an obligation. It is a duty not without privilege but rather
with high privilege but nonetheless a duty. We know we have been told to go
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
“We also know and Christians have
always known that apart from the knowledge of the true gospel and faith in the
true Christ, no one can go to heaven. That is not a revolutionary statement,
that is a fact laid down in Scripture and affirmed by true Christians since the
New Testament. Sinners must hear the gospel. They must believe the gospel. And
they must embrace the gospel. This clear command, understood by all faithful
biblical Christians, has been maintained through the centuries by all of those
who sought to obey the Lord.
“It is behind all the witnessing and
all the evangelizing and all the missionary work that has ever gone on. Since
faith comes by hearing, and hearing only by the message of Christ, we know what
we are to do. We are to preach Christ and Him crucified. Time, years, lifetimes
of millions of people have been invested in this, the highest and greatest of
all duties. Money - incalculable sums of money has been spent in this
effort, teaching, preaching, witnessing, training, strategizing, acquiring
languages, traveling, building, establishing, printing, producing media that
the gospel indeed might be taken to the ends of the earth to every creature, an
unrelenting effort to use every means available and call every Christian to
this duty and this privilege.
“And here we are at a time when we
have the greatest means to do this in history - unquestionably. We have
the capability, virtually, to reach the world. We can get there physically
faster than ever. We can translate and print material faster than ever with the
use of computers. We can mobilize people, train people, and dispense people
faster than ever. We can use the media. It’s instantaneous, whether it’s the
Internet or whether it’s tapes or whether it’s CDs or DVDs or videos or -
you name it. Never has the church had this capability to fulfill the great
commission - never - to disseminate the gospel to the ends of the
earth.”
Now that is the reason that I write
Spiritual Diaries and put them onto my two blogs, which the Spirit of God cause
them to go around the world as many different countries have looked at them
each and every day, and the total continues to rise through the power of the
Holy Spirit as over 872,000 have been viewed since I began this about 10 years
ago, but in the last two plus years the numbers have grown which shows me that
the it is because of the Spirit of God getting the message of the gospel out around
the world.
“It is astounding to me that just
when the church has its greatest opportunity; it has become confused about its
message. This is unthinkable. This is unimaginable. Frankly, for me this is
inconceivable, that we would reach the point - really the ultimate point
in all of the history of the church when we can go everywhere faster than ever
and get the gospel in the hands of people and now we’re not sure what the
message is. In fact, the church is confused enough to debate what the message
is, to argue what the message is, to tolerate a minimal kind of gospel.
“The church seems to be embarrassed
by its narrowness. It seems eager to redesign it to make it more acceptable.
Now that we can reach everybody, we’re afraid of what they’re going to say when
they get the message. All those people who gave their lives for all those
centuries, all those people who battled and fought in the hardest periods of
the church’s history to train and prepare and to learn the meaning of the Word
of God without all the tools we have today, without all the endless books and
commentaries and resources, all those people who traveled for months and
sometimes years, all those people who made sacrifices away from their families.
“All those people who died from
diseases in hard places, all those people who laboriously worked to create
languages, reduce into writing and translate the Scripture, all of that effort
passed down to us, and here we are in the high-tech world, we can expedite all
of that like never before and we’re not sure, one, what we want to say, and,
two, whether or not we want to say it because we’re a little embarrassed about
the fact that it’s going to condemn them.”
Lord
willing, more tomorrow as I continue to look at MacArthur’s sermon on these
remaining verses of 2 John.
5/8/2025
9:11 PM
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