PT-3 "The Protection of Prayer" (Matt. 6:13-14)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/7/2020 11:59 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                            Focus:  PT-3 “The Protection of Prayer”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                Reference:  Matthew 6:13-14

 

            Message of the verses:  “13 And do not lead us into temptation, But

deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

 

            We continue quoting from MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer” as we begin to look at how Satan tempts us.

 

            “How does Satan tempt us?  Through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.  Those do not proceed from the Father.  God’s desire is that we watch and pray and do not enter inter into temptation.

            “The word temptation is from the Greek peirasmos, which is used over and over in the Scripture.  IT is simply a test, or a trial.  The English word means ‘seduction to evil,’ but the Greek word is neutral, sometimes translated ‘test,’ and sometimes ‘prove,’ sometimes ‘trial,’ and sometimes ‘temptation.’

            “In the Disciples’ Prayer the word should be translated ‘trial.’  So, ‘Lead us not into trials, or testings.’

            “Any time there is a legitimate trial, or test, there is the possibility of passing or failing.  So when God brings a trial, there is always the possibility that the trial can be turned into a temptation.

            “Joseph said in Genesis 50:20, regarding his brothers’ selling him into Egypt, ‘You meant if for evil, but God meant it for good.’

            “When the prayer says, ‘Lead us not into trials,’ I believe the implication is, ‘Lord, don’t lead us into a trial that will present to us a temptation such that we will not be able to resist it.’

            “You walk along and you encounter a certain person or situation, a certain, magazine, a certain book, a certain movie theater, a certain program on television—those are all tests.  They can show your spiritual strength and cause you to grow, or you can fail and the experiences can turn into temptations that incite your lusts and draw you into sin.

            “The petition in question is a safeguard against presumption and against a false sense of security.  When you think you stand, take heed lest you fall.

            “The word ‘into’ is eis in the Greek, and some have compared it to the Hebrew liyadh, which means ‘into the power of’ or ‘into the hands of.’  In other words, we are praying, ‘Do not cause us to be led into the hands of the trial.’

            “Our Lord prayed the same prayer in John 17:15 when He said to the Father, ‘I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil [one].

            “Martin Luther said, ‘We cannot help being exposed to the assaults, but we pray that we may not fall and perish under time.’

            “When trials come, Satan wants to make us angry and bitter.  How do we deal with them?  James 4:7 gives us the simple word.  ‘Submit yourselves therefore to God.’  How do we do that?

            “We get under His lordship.  That means we’re going to do what He says.  We’re going to live in submission to biblical principles.  Submitting to God is not some esoteric (mysterious) thing.  It is not intellectual suicide or escapism (diversion).  Submitting to God is ordering one’s life to respond in accord with the biblical revelation of God’s will.”

 

12/7/2020 12:25 PM

 

PT-2 "The Protection of Prayer" (Matt. 6:13-14)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/6/2020 8:37 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                            Focus:  PT-2 “The Protection of Prayer”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                Reference:  Matthew 6:13-14

 

            Message of the verses:  “13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

 

            We continue with the quotations from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer.”

 

            “I realize that trials do a perfecting work and also that God does not tempt me, so I am faced with a paradox not unlike the one in Matthew 5 (rejoice when you’re persecuted) and Matthew 10 (flee persecuting).

            “Are we supposed to stand there and rejoice, or run?  There is a sense in which we run from persecution, but when it catches us we can know joy in the midst of it.  Even our dear Lord said, ‘Father, let this cup pass from Me’ (Mark 14:36).  There was something in His humanness that did not want that suffering.  Yet He endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).

            “I pray this because I know I am a sinner, because I sense my debt and have gone through the pain of confession so many times.  I am battered and bruised by a fallen world around me that continues to bump me.  So I ask, ‘God, deliver me from these things.’  But I accept the fact that such struggles strengthen me.

            “I don’t know about you, but I have to set a watchman over my eyes, another over my ears, another over my tongue.  I have to be careful where I go and what I see and whom I talk to (and about what) because I don’t trust myself.  And when I get into a trying situation, I rush into the presence of God like the sentry who doesn’t fight the enemy himself but runs to tell the commander.  I retreat to the presence of God and I say, ‘I will be overwhelmed unless You come to my aid.’

            “The kingdom child realizes that he lives in a fallen world that pounds against him with temptations he can never resist in his own humanness.

            “The natural world is fallen.  Men face volcanoes, earthquakes, fires, floods, pestilence, accidents, disease and death.

            “The intellectual world is fallen.  Man’s judgments are partial and unfair.  He careens on in the chaos of relativistic thinking to an inevitable destruction.  Propelled by his own bias, logic is ruled by pride.  Intellects are ruled by lust. Material gain makes liars out of me.  There is a constant colliding of human opinions.

            “The emotional world is fallen.  Grief and care and anxiety rule.  The inability to handle attitudes shrivels man’s spirit.  His soul is chafed by the rubbing together of life with life.  Envy stings him, hate embitters him, greed eats away at him.

            “His affections are misplaced.  His love is trampled.  His confidence is betrayed.  Rich, he steps on the poor.  Poor, he seeks to dethrone the rich.  Prisons and hospitals and mental institutions mark the moral and emotional upheaval of man.

            “The spiritual world is the darkest and thickest blackness of all.  Man is out of harmony with God.  The machinery is visibly out of gear.  He’s running out of ‘sync’ with God’s divine plan.  Evil tendencies dominate man from his tainted fallen ancestry.  He may want to do right, but he feels pulled down by some irresistible gravity of evil.

            “It is a fallen world.  It isn’t bad enough that the flesh is fallen, but Satan is also relentlessly attacking.  We live in this knowledge, praying, ‘And lead us not into temptation.’  We sin because we are tempted internally by our lusts, and externally by the enticements of Satan.  When lust conceives it brings forth sin.  And sin results in death.

            “How does Satan tempt us?  Through the  lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.  Those do not proceed from the Father.  God’s desire is that we watch and pray and do not enter into temptation.”

 

            With that we will end this SD.

 

12/6/2020 9:02 PM

PT-1 "The Protection of Prayer" (Matt. 6:13)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/5/2020 8:59 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                            Focus:  PT-1 “The Protection of Prayer”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 6:13

 

            Message of the verse:  “13 ’And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

 

            As we begin this section I have made the decision, at least as we begin it, that I will once again quote from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer.”  I am doing this because this chapter has so much richness in it, including at first a review, that I want everyone who reads this to get all that the Spirit of God wants them to get out of it.  One more thing that I want to mention and that is that as I began this section of Scripture it was my goal to learn how to have a more effective prayer life, and also it was my goal to learn how I am to be praying about the scandal that is going on in our country as far as the election, and that goal has been met as I wrote about it in the section “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

 

            MacArthur begins “We have been learning to pray.  Our teacher has been the Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us this model.

            “My own praying, has been reshaped to fit this pattern, for this Lord’s Prayer, Disciples’ Prayer is a skeleton for all praying.  The ingredients for this prayer touch every area of need and every element of glorifying and praising God.

            “It is a prayer that in every phrase and every petition focuses on God, His person, His attributes, and His wonderful works.  True prayer is expressing absolute dependence on God.  And that is what our Lord is after.

            “The basic reality of this prayer is the truth about God.  Every petition promises something that He already guarantees.  God’s name will be hallowed.  God’s kingdom will come.  His will is to be done.  He has already promised to give us our daily bread, He has already granted us total forgiveness in Christ.  And He’s already promised that He will lead us away from evil in the path of righteousness.

            “The more we understand about the promises of God, the richer our prayers become.  The premium has been paid by Christ, the policy is ours.  The benefits are rendered in our behalf, and all we have to do is make the claim.

            “We’ve noted that all the features of this prayer speak of God.  ‘Our Father’ speaks of God’s paternity; ‘hallowed be thy name,’ of God’s priority; ‘thy kingdom come,’ His program; ‘thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,’ His purpose; ‘give us this day our daily bread,’ His provision; ‘forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,’ His pardon; and finally, ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ speaks of God’s protection.  It ends with God’s preeminence in the great closing doxology.

            “The first three petitions relate to God and His glory.  The last three relate to man and his need.  We come then to verse 13, the sixth and final petition: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’  At first it seems clear, almost simple.  It’s like ‘Keep us out of trouble God.’

            “But as we look a little closer, several questions arise.

            “Do we have to ask God to not lead us into temptation?

            “Can a holy, righteous, pure, undefiled, blameless, unblemished, virtuous God possibly lead anybody into temptation?

            “Ad if we do not ask Him to deliver us from evil, is He going to lead us into evil?  The term temptation is neutral.  On one had it can refer to a solicitation to evil.  In that case God has no part.

            “James 1:13 says, ‘Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God:  for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.’

            “On the other hand it can refer to a trial or test for our good.  If we say, ‘Don’t lead us into a trial, Lord,’ are we denying another verse in James 1 that says to count it all joy when you enter into a trial?  You can see the dilemma, can’t you?

            “I think Chrysostrom, the early Father was right when he said that this particular petition is the most natural appeal of human weakness as it faces danger.  In other words, it is not so cognitive as it is emotional.  It’s cry of the heart that despises and hates the potential of sin.”

           

        “Definition of cognitive

1: of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering) cognitive impairment

2: based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge”

 

            With that definition we will be done with this SD for today.

 

12/5/2020 9:34 AM

  

PT-6 "God's Pardon" (Matt. 6:12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/4/2020 10:08 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  PT-6 “God’s Pardon”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                            Reference: Matthew 6:12;14-15

 

            Message of the verse:  “12 ’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” 14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”

 

            We have been talking about looking at verses 14-15 for a while and now is the time that we begin to look at these verses.  Once again we must go back to the beginning of “The Lord’s Prayer” to see that Jesus was talking to believers as He begins the prayer by saying “Our Father,” and God the Father is only the Father of believers.

 

            I know that what I am about to write about here is something that most, if not all believers already know.  I can give an example from my testimony and that happened on January 26, 1974.  I became a believer in Jesus Christ and accepted Him as my Savior on that day after listening to some sermons on the end times.  I was forgiven of all my sins, past present, and future sins.  I have mentioned that before my conversion that I could hardly say a sentence without taking the Lord’s name in vain, but once I became a believer God took that away, something that I tried to do back in 1966 when I promised God I would quit swearing if He got me out of the Army after I was drafted.  He answered that prayer, but soon afterwards I went back to the same vocabulary, taking God’s name in vain.  He took care of that promise that I made in 1966 by saving me in 1974 and took away my desire to swear.  With that said I, like all believers still sin and that is where verses 14-15 come into play here.  Judicial forgiveness happened for me in January of 1974, but I need what we could call Parental forgiveness, and there are other terms used for that kind of forgiveness, but I chose to use Parental forgiveness here. 

 

            We probably all know the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet and Peter telling the Lord that He was not going to wash his feet.  Jesus said that if I don’t wash your feet then you have nothing to do with me.  Peter then wanted all his body washed, but Jesus said that he was already clean, he just needed his feet washed.  Jesus is saying that as a person walks around in sandals his feet get dirty from either dust or mud and so one’s feet need to be washed.  This is a picture of sinning after a person becomes a believer.  We still have the flesh, or as some call it the old nature that causes us to be tempted and then to sin. 

 

            As I read through the Scriptures I find several lists of sins, some come from our Lord found in the Gospels, some from the epistles and as I look at those lists some of the sins on that list I am prone to fall into, and some on those lists are not a problem for me.  All believers have trouble with sins on these lists, not all of them but some of them and when we sin then we must confess our sins to the Lord and ask Him to forgive us as 1 John 1:9 tells us to do.  John in that letter tells us we all sin and we need to confess to the Lord when we do sin. 

 

            Now as we come to verses fourteen and fifteen which some say are not really a part of the Lord’s Prayer we have to understand what they mean to us as believers.  14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”  Be sure that this is not talking about Judicial sin as we spoke of earlier, but what we called Parental sin.  Now when we become a believer as mentioned we are forgiven of all of our sins.  Now if someone does something wrong to us, that is sins against us then we are to forgive them, and this is where things can get very difficult.  In order for us to understand this we have to go back to Peter once again.  Peter asked the Lord how many times that he should forgive someone.  The Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the Old Testament says three times and so Peter asked the Lord if he should forgive someone seven times as he doubled it and added one.  Jesus then gives this parable: “21 Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" 22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. 23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 “When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 “But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. 26 “So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ’Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ 27 “And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. 28 "But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ’Pay back what you owe.’ 29 "So his fellow

slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ’Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 30 “But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. 31 "So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. 32 “Then summoning him, his lord *said to him, ’You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 ’Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ 34 “And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. 35 “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart’” (Matthew 18:21-35).

 

            Now the question is what does a person loose if he does not forgive others who have sinned against them, and for the answer we must go to two Psalms that David wrote after his sin with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah.  The prophet Nathan came to David after his sin and told him that God had forgiven his sin, and this speaks of Judicial forgiveness.  What happened to David in that year or so before Nathan had come to him is what can happen to us if we do not forgive those who sin against us.  1 For the choir director. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. 3  For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. 4 Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. 6 Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom” (Psalm 51:1-6).  As we look at these first six verses we can see how David repented of his sin, knowing that his sin was sin against the Lord, and so we can learn from this on how we are to confess, (agree with God).  Now looking at verse twelve we can see what David was missing before he confessed his sin to the Lord, and this is what we, as believers can also miss if we don’t follow what Jesus tells us to follow in verses 14-15.  “12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit.”  Now let’s look at Psalm 32 to see what David was going through before he confessed his sin:  “3 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah” (Ps. 32:3-4).

 

            So what is the bottom line here?  In order for us to have sweet fellowship with the Lord we must be willing to forgive others, first we must confess our sin to the Lord, agree with Him we have sinned, and then we must forgive those who sin against us so that we will not lose our joy in serving the Lord.

 

            I will close with a short story that came from a pastor who was preaching at the church we used to go to.  He was talking about holding grudges and told the story of a man who was owed some money, not much as I recall, but when he would open up his wallet there would be a yellowed bill reminding him of how someone owed him money.  My guess is that person who owed him the money did not even remember that he owed him, but this man certainly lost his joy by carrying around this yellowed piece of paper when he could have forgiven that person and then had his joy restored to him.

 

12/4/2020 12:08 PM  (Happy Anniversary to Sharlotte and Tim)

 

PT-5 "God's Pardon" (Forgiveness" (Matt. 6:12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/3/2020 10:29 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus: PT-5 “God’s Pardon” (Forgiveness)

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 6:12

 

            Message of the verse:  “12 ’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

 

            I want to pick up where I left off from our quotation from MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer.”

 

            “Declared righteous—positionally and forever, all sin covered, passed over, blotted out, and forgiven.  Oh, what a thought!

            “And it is all because of what Christ did on the cross.  In Matthew 26:28 He said as He held the cup, ‘This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’

            “In Ephesians 1:7 Paul said, ‘In whom [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ 

            “In 1 John 2:12, ‘I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.’

            “Ephesians 4:32, ‘Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’

            “Colossians 2:13, ‘And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us…and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.

            “In those days a criminal was crucified with the record of his crimes nailed at the top of the cross for all the world to see why he was being executed.  The apostle Paul was saying that when Jesus died on the cross, God pulled all the pages out of the sin books, stacked them all together, nailed them to the cross as if they were the crimes of Jesus, and when Jesus died He paid the penalty, and God blotted them out.

            “That is judicial forgiveness.  Oh, to know that we are ultimately and forever forgiven in Christ is tremendous joy!  We can say with Paul in Romans 8:34, ‘Who is he that condemneth?’ If God, the highest Judge isn the universe, declares me just, who’s going to condemn me?  Therefore, nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ.

            “Let’s look now at Hebrews 10, where the writer is comparing the sacrificial system of Israel with the sacrifice of Christ.  In verse 10 he says, ‘We are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

            “Sanctified means to be made pure, made holy, set apart, separated.  We are made holy by the one sacrifice of Christ.  When He died and we believed, His sacrifice was sufficient.  He said on the cross, ‘It is finished.’         

            “In contrast to that, in verse 11, the priests in the Old Testament were daily ministering, and they were offering the same sacrifice again and again, always standing because the job was never done.  Verse 12, ‘But this man [Christ], after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down.’  Why? It was over.

            “Verse 14, ‘For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.’

            “Jesus says in Matthew 5:48, ‘Be ye perfect,’ and then goes to the cross and perfects us.  Christ is the solution to the sin problem.’

 

            I don’t care how many times that you go over verses like we have gone over to show that as a believer in Jesus Christ we are totally forgiven it has to make us so very thankful that we are given the gift of eternal life when not one person who has ever lived on this planet can ever earn this or deserve it.

 

12/3/2020 10:49 AM

PT-4 "God's Pardon" (Forgiveness) (Matt. 6:12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/2/2020 1:04 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  PT-4 “God’s Pardon” (Forgiveness)

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matthew 6:12

 

            Message of the verse:  “12 ’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

 

            The first thing that I want to do in this SD is have a little bit of review of what we have been looking at.  First we looked at four principles in this phrase found in Matthew 6:12.  1) Sin makes man guilty and brings punishment; 2) Forgiveness is offered by God on the ground of Christ’s death; 3) Confession of sin is necessary to receive that forgiveness from God; and 4) the knockout punch of this passage—Forgiving one another is an essential part of receiving forgiveness for ourselves.  Now from those four principles we have been looking at four words, and in our last two SD’s we looked at the first one which is sin.  Now today we want to look at the second word, which is forgiveness.  Now the other two words that follow sin and forgiveness are confession and forgiving.  These two words will be looked at a later date.

 

            We have come to the conclusion that sin is the problem and since that is true then forgiveness is the provision.  Forgiveness is God’s passing by our sin.  It is His wiping our sin off the record, and it is God’s setting us free from punishment and from guilt. 

 

            Now I want to quote the first part of this section from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer,” and it looks like we will take a couple of days to do this for one would have to admit that forgiveness of our sin and our sins is the most important thing that any person can have so we will take our time looking at this.

 

            “It is essentially bound up in what Micah 7:18-19 says:  ‘Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?  He retaineth not His anger for every, because He delights in mercy.  He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.’

            “Isn’t that great?  God in the Old Testament says ‘I will remember their sin no more’ (Jeremiah 31:34).  It can be summed up in four simple statements:  Forgiveness is taking away our sin, covering our sin, blotting out our sin, and forgetting our sin.

            “Isaiah 53:6 says He has taken the iniquity of us all and laid it on Christ.

            “Psalm 85:2 says, ‘Thou hast covered all their sin.’

            “Isaiah 43:25 says, ‘I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions.’

            “And He remembers our sins no mere.  God literally eliminates our sin.

            “If we ever get to the place in our Christian lives where this becomes common place, we have lost that joy of understanding forgiveness and have hit a dry place.  How thankful we should be for such a forgiveness!  It is only possible because of Christ.

            “God could not pass by our sin unless He placed the punishment for it on someone else, and that is why Christ Jesus died.

            “There are two kinds of forgiveness.  One is judicial forgiveness, and the other let’s call ‘relational’ forgiveness.”  (Now in his sermon he called it parental forgiveness because of the first words of this prayer “Our Father.”)

            “Judicial forgiveness views God as a judge.  He says, ‘You’re guilty, you’ve broken the law, you’ve under judgment, condemnation.  There has to be punishment.

            “But then that same Judge says, ‘On the basis of Christ’s death, He bore your punishment.  He took your guilt.  He paid for your sin.  The price is accomplished.  I declare you forgiven.’

            “Through salvation, full complete, positional forgiveness is granted by God as the moral judge of the universe.  And by that act of judicial forgiveness, all our sins—past, present, future, committed, being committed, and to be committed—are totally, completely, and forever forgive, and we are justified from all things forever.

            “When does that happen?  The moment you invite Jesus Christ into your life.  The moment you are redeemed.  The moment you place your faith in Christ, your sin is put on Him and His righteousness is put on you, and God judicially declares you justified.”

 

            I have to say that this is the best news anyone can ever have, and there is a bit more of this good news we want to talk about, so we will save it for our next SD.

 

12/2/2020 1:35 PM

           

PT-4 "God's Pardon" (Matthew 6:12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/1/2020 11:04 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  PT-4 “God’s Pardon”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 6:12

 

            Message of the verse:  “12 ’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

 

            We continue to look at sin in this SD, and it is my prayer that all who read this will learn something new from this quotation from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer.

 

            “Isaiah 48:22; ‘There is no peace, saith the Lord unto the wicked.’

            “Romans 8:20 says, ‘The creature was made subject to vanity [emptiness].’

            “So man’s whole life is stained with sin.  And the 50 million or so that die every year face the ultimate consequence of it.

            “The Bible takes great care to present to man the full meaning of sin.  There are five New Testament words for sin.  First, hamartia, Greek for ‘missing the mark.’  It is used 137 times in the text and is an archer’s word.  Generally, the idea is that you miss because your arrow falls short.  Some people’s arrows go farther than others, but nobody’s get there.

            “We miss the mark.  What is the mark?  In Matthew 5:48, our Lord said, ‘Be ye…perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’  When we are like God we hit the mark, and when we aren’t, we don’t.  Welcome to the community of those who miss the mark.

            “The second New Testament word for sin is parabasis. It means to step across a line, God’s line between right and wrong.  It is doing what is forbidden in thought, in word, or in act.

            “Third the word anomia, based on the word nomos (or law) means lawlessness.  This is a flagrant rebellion against God.

            “Notice the progression in these words.  Hamartia speaks more of our basis incapacity, our nature.  Parabasis means we just can’t restrain ourselves from the forbidden area, a little more flagrant than hamartia.  Parabasis is more self-directed, more premeditated.

            “But when you come to anomia, that is open, flagrant rebellion.  This describes the man who does not want God making any claim on his life. 

            “Then we come to the fourth and fifth words, the words used in the phrase in question and in Matthew 6:14-15 following the Disciples’ Prayer.  The fourth word is trespass, or paraptoma, which means to slip or fall (see Galatians 6:1). ‘Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.’

            “Fifth, debt, or opheilema, is a very interesting word.  It is used only here in Romans 4 as a noun, but its verb form is used many times.  It is a word not that familiar to us in terms of sin.  But the verb form is used thirty times, twenty-five in a moral sense, and it means to owe a debt.  When you sin you owe to God a consequence.

            “At the end of the age, at the great white throne judgment, God will judge the ungodly out of the books (Revelation 20:11-15).  What books?  The books that record the unpaid debts.

            “Among the rabbis and the Jews of Matthew’s day, the most common word for debt was hova, an Aramaic word also meaning responsibility.  When you read about the Disciple’s Prayer in Luke, Luke says, ‘Forgive us our trespasses’ because he speaks in possibly a more classical manner.  But Matthew, with his Jewish orientation, zeroes in on his concept of debt because he knows his Jewish audience.

 

            “We owe such a massive debt to God because of our unrelenting sin that we could never pay it off.  Even Peter said, ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord’ (Luke 5:8).

            “Even Paul said he was the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

            “Jesus taught all men everywhere to pray, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ and in so doing He laid out the universality of problem of sin.  The Holy Spirit came into the word, says John 16, to convict of sin.  Any man who honestly faces the reality of his character cannot be other than conscious of his debt to God and his need to be forgiven.”

 

            I want to now quote from MacArthur’s sermon on this topic as he quotes Arthur Pink: “Arthur Pink says, “As it is contrary to the holiness of God, sin is a defilement, a dishonor, and a reproach to us.  As it is a violation of His law, it is a crime; and as to the guilt which we contact thereby it is a debt.  As creatures, we owe a debt of obedience unto our maker and governor.  And through failure to render the same on account of our rank disobedience, we have incurred a debt of punishment, and it is for this that we implore a divine pardon.”  In other words, we owe such a massive debt to God because of our unrelenting sin that we could never pay that debt.  Do you know that?  Never pay that debt.  Like the unfaithful servant, who owed so much it never could be paid in his whole lifetime, we can’t pay the debt.  We can’t pay it, and that is precisely our problem.  We are sinners who owe a debt that is so monstrous, it’s inconceivable that we could pay it.  Never done.  And if ever, beloved, you ought to come to God, you will come to God on the terms of recognition of that debt.  That’s right.” 

 

            Our next word we want to look at is much more pleasing as it is forgiveness.

 

12/1/2020 11:43 AM