SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 7/23/2025 10:15 AM
My
Worship Time Focus:
PT-3“The Present: The Close, For Which He is Ready”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: 2
Timothy 4:6
Message of the verse: “For I
am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure
has come.”
I begin with a
quote from John MacArthur’s commentary this morning: “When the apostle was first brought to trial
in Rome, none of his fellow believers stood by him (v. 16). This great man of God was the spiritual
progenitor, directly or indirectly, of perhaps most of the redeemed souls in
the Gentile world. But during his time
of greatest personally need, he sat friendless in a dark, filthy prison, facing
Nero’s certain sentence of death. He was
not bitter but, like his Lord, prayed for his persecutors that the injustice
might ‘not be counted against them (v.
16). ‘The Lord stood with me, and
strengthened me,’ he affirmed, ‘in
order that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that
all the Gentiles might hear; and I was delivered out of the lion’s mouth. The Lord will deliver me from every evil
deed, and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom’ (vv. 17-18).”
Now as I look
back at the time when Paul was in that awful prison, a man as we see in the
above post was responsible for probably most every Gentile believer either
directly or indirectly at this time, and what I am wondering is what was going
on in heaven during the time when Paul was about to die. I think of another man who was also responsible
for many souls that either went or will go to heaven because of his ministry,
and that is John MacArthur who recently also was promoted to heaven, and I
wonder what was going on in heaven right after he got there. My point is that even though all things that
look very dark on earth for a believer will one day look very bright when we as
believers get to heaven, for that is when we will see our Lord Jesus Christ
face to face and all the trials and troubles will be over. My hope has always been that I will be one of
the believers who will be alive when the rapture of the Church happens, and for
a long time after I post one of my Spiritual Diaries I have a number of things
that I pray about and the last one is that if it is the Lord’s will that the
Holy Spirit will given the last effectual call in the church age to someone who
is reading one of my Spiritual Diaries.
I always pray to the Lord if this is Your will to have this happen this
way.
MacArthur
goes on to write “Has come translates
an intensive perfect of ephistenmi, indicating
that the time of Paul’s departure had arrived but had a
continuing effect. The clouds of death
had come and still hovered over him.
“But
for Paul, they were not dark clouds, because death held no peril for him. Like Peter, he viewed death simply as ‘The laying aside of [his] earthly dwelling’
(2 Peter 1:14). It was a move from
his demanding and painful life on earth to the infinitely glorious life of
peace and rest to come, when he would forever be with the Lord.
“Departure is from analusis, which has a variety of meanings. William Barclay explains four of those
meanings, each of which gives a vivid picture of the way in which the apostle
viewed his last days.
(a)
It is the word for unyoking and animal from
the shafts of the cart or the plough.
Death to Paul was rest from toil.
He would be glad to lay the burden down…(b) It is the word for loosening
bonds or fetters. Death for Paul was a
liberation and a release. He was to
exchange the confines of a Roman prison for the glorious liberty of the courts
of heaven; (c) It is the word for loosening the ropes of a tent. For Paul it was time to strike camp
again. Many a journey he had made across
the roads of Asia Minor and of Europe.
Now he was setting out on his last and his greatest journey: he was
taking the road that led to God. (d) It is the word for loosening the mooring
ropes of a ship. Many a time Paul had
sailed the Mediterranean, and had felt the ship leave the harbour for the deep
waters. Now he is to launch out into the
greatest deep of all; he is setting sail to cross the waters of death to arrive
in the heaven of eternity. (The Letters
to Timothy, Titus and Philemon [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957] 209).
For
a Christian, death is exchanging the burden of earthly life for the eternal joy
of heaven (cf. Phil. 1:21).
“Paul did not die like Napoleon,
Gandhi, Talleyrand, or any other person—no matter how successful and acclaimed—who
does not know Christ. The apostle faced
his departure with no feeling of futility
or hopelessness or despair but with the divine assurance that his real life was
only about to begin. Just as he had faced earthly living without fear, he faced
earthly dying without fear. Because he
abode so faithfully in the will of his sovereign God, he could echo the words
of Jesus, who said ‘No one has taken [my
life] away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative’ (John 10:18). As the Lord Jesus had commanded, Paul took up
his own cross and never laid it down, in the certain knowledge that ‘this perishable must put on the
imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when the perishable will have put on the
imperishable, and this mortal will put on immortality, he would exult with
Isaiah that Death is swallowed up in
victory,’ and cry out with Hosea, ‘O
death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ (1 Cor. 15:53-55;
cf. Isa. 25:8; Hos. 13:14).”
Spiritual Meaning for My Life
Today: I realize
that there is some mystery in death, but as one continues to understand what
the Bible has to say about death, death to a believer than that one need not
fear death. However if one is not a
believer then the truth is that they should fear it.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Lord will continue to use me
as I write these Spiritual Diaries so that the Holy Spirit of God will use them
to bring unbelievers to a knowledge of Jesus Christ so that they can be saved,
and that believers will grow in the Lord to serve Him exactly the way that He desires
for them to serve Him.
7/23/2025
10:58 AM
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