EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/14/2025 7:36 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Focus: PT-7 “Truth: “The Test of Christian Hospitality”
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.
I continue to quote from John MacArthur’s sermon in
this evening’s Spiritual Diary, and just to let you know with this SD we are now
over half way through this rather long sermon.
It is best to look at the previous Spiritual Diaries on this sermon so
that you can follow what is being taught in this sermon.
“Therefore” - verse 19 -
“we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law
that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God
because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified.” You can’t make
your life right with God by any kind of religious action. You can’t get there
from there. No one gets to God on his own because he can’t.
“Now, 2 Thessalonians 1. And this is
the last one and then we’ll go to our text. Second Thessalonians 1 and
verse 7, middle of the verse. It talks about when Jesus shall be revealed from
heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire. It’s talking about His return.
And verse 8 defines this very clearly. “He will deal out retribution” - or
punishment - “to those who do not know God,” and then a modifying,
equalizing phrase, “who do not know God,” or another way to say it, “who do not
obey” - what? - “the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” You don’t know God if
you don’t obey the gospel. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction.
“Now, do you understand why I’m so
passionate about this? We only have one message! Here we are at the greatest
point in church history in terms of being able to deliver that message, and we
don’t know what it is. Or we think people might be offended by it, and so we
want to change it. Or the easy way out, aw, they don’t need it anyway. Any
effort to confuse the gospel, any effort that ends up with an embarrassment
about the gospel, or any effort that says you don’t need the gospel doesn’t
come from God, does it? It comes from the enemy of men’s souls.”
Now this is why I work hard on
putting three different Spiritual Diaries on my blogs each day, and then the
Holy Spirit of God sends them around the world.
There have been over 873,000 views from around the world on my over
11,000 Spiritual Diaries that are on my two blogs, and recently I count over 30
countries where people are looking at these Spiritual Diaries, and that says to
me that the gospel is going around the world each and every day. I truly believe that the Lord has called me to
put these Spiritual Diaries onto my two blogs, and then I believe it is the
Spirit of God who sends them to where He wants them to go for the glory of God.
“Now please turn to 2 John. This
passage has to be added to the list I’ve just given you. Second John 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.” Can it be any clearer than that? Even if you deviate
from the biblical teaching of Christ, if you do not abide, remain in the
teaching of Christ, you do not have God. This seals the case. Salvation,
knowing God, having God requires the truth about Christ being believed.
“Now, this brief letter to a
Christian lady and her children is a call to all Christians to live in the truth.
And I’ve sort of poured my heart out on these last three and then this message,
telling you that there’s
nothing more important than the truth and we’re all in a battle to fight to
protect it. Both 2 John and 3 John emphasize the centrality of the truth.
“And do you remember the setting?
This is written to a lady and her children about how to live in the truth and
love in the truth and be loyal to the truth. And what really prompted this
letter was the issue of Christian hospitality. As I’ve been telling you, in
those times there were preachers who traveled around to the churches to preach
the gospel and to bring the truth of God to the people of God. And the only way
they could do that would be to be received into the homes. Inns were
unacceptable, dangerous places, immoral places, and so people opened their
homes.
“In fact, the Bible lays down
hospitality as a very important part of Christian life. One of the dangers, of
course, was that false teachers knew about this, and they wanted to get in too,
just like they want to get into Christian radio, Christian television,
Christian publications, et cetera. I asked one of the great publishers in
America why he published a heretical book and he looked at me like, “What do
you mean? We publish everything.” Didn’t even understand the question.
“These people want to get in
everywhere. They don’t want to operate outside the Kingdom, they want to
operate as much inside as they can. So they push their Trojan Horse through the
city gates and then let loose the damaging army of error. And what happened
was, in the early church, false teachers pretending to represent Christ would
travel around - it was a great gig - to make a living. You went in,
you stayed with somebody, ate their food, they took an offering for you, and
you went to the next place, and you just kept getting more money and more money
as you went along. And at the time, of course, you were representing Satan and
undermining the truth and damaging the lives of people.”
Lord willing more in tomorrow’s SD.
5/14/2025
7:57 PM
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