SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/25/2014 8:14 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Introduction to “The Vengeance of the
Lord Jesus” PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2
Thessalonians 1:6-10
Message of the
verses: “6 For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who
afflict you, 7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well
when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in
flaming fire, 8 dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to
those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 These will pay the penalty of eternal
destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His
power, 10 when He comes to be glorified
in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have
believed-for our testimony to you was believed.”
I am reading a book entitled “One Minute after You Die,”
written by Moody Church Pastor, Erwin Lutzer, and in the book he explains
exactly how and when what we read about in the passage we are looking at. He tells what happened to those who knew God
in the OT and where they went after they died, and those who did not know God
and what their fate was, along with showing what will happen to the NT saints
who have died in the Lord, for there is a difference in that according to the
parable that Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about the rich man and Lazarus. In that parable both the rich man and Lazarus
died and went to a place called Hades, but there was a division between the two
places, one where the rich man went and one where Lazarus went, Lazarus is in
what He called Abraham’s bosom. After
the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead the people on that side of Hades
went to heaven, and that is where the NT saints go after they die. I want to mention that just because the man
was rich that that was not the reason he went into the bad part of Hades, it
was he did not believe in God in a personal way.
In our last SD we talked about a motive why the Lord
returns to earth at His second coming, but there are several other reasons why
He returns. The church is His bride and
He must return to receive His bride, and take her to the wedding feast. I believe that this will happen at the
rapture of the Church and the wedding feast will happen in heaven, and will
last for a long time, even coming to earth during the millennial reign of
Christ. We know that Satan is a usurper
and wants to rule the earth and so the Lord must return to prevent this from
happening, and this will be at the end of the tribulation period. When Christ came the first time it was in
humiliation and this demands that He return in glory at His second coming, for
the last view of the world must not be His death on the cross.
MacArthur writes “The return of Jesus Christ is therefore
the climax of all redemptive history and brings God’s purposes to culmination. Paul reminded the Thessalonians of this great
hope to encourage them to stand firm despite the severe persecution they were
undergoing. Their hope—like that of all
suffering Christians—was that Jesus would return and bring them relief.” We read of this in the book of Revelations
when the saints who had died in the Lord during the tribulation period were
pleading with Christ to bring justice for their death, which came at the hands
of Antichrist.
In the world we live in today the glory of the Lord is
hidden, and for this reason many people believe that He is dead “but they
simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and
about a dead man, Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive (Acts 25:19).” Now as believers we do not experience the
fullness of His glorious presence “and though you have not seen Him, you love
Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice
with joy inexpressible and full of glory (1 Peter 1:8).” There is a day when His coming will be
visible to both believers and non believers.
I am very much looking forward to that day.
We need to understand this next point and so I will again
quote from John MacArthur’s commentary:
“When Paul referred to the Second Coming in relation to believers, he
favored the word parousia
(‘presence’; ‘coming’). For believers,
Christ return is the presence of One they know and have an eternal relationship
with. They know Him as revealed in the
Old Testament prophecies, the New Testament gospel records of His life, and the
elucidation of His life, death, and resurrection in the epistles. But in verse 7when Pau wrote ‘the Lord Jesus
will be revealed,’ he used a different word, apokalupsis (‘revelation’; ‘unveiling’; ‘uncovering’). That word, which has the idea of manifesting
what was previously hidden or secret, views the return of Christ in relation to
unbelievers. The One who has been hidden
will be revealed in all His sovereign glory to a world that does not know or
worship Him. He will be unveiled as
Judge (v-8). This will be the Day of the
Lord.” We have already gone over the Day
of the Lord in our study of 1 Thessalonians chapter five and verses 1-3.
MacArthur goes on to talk about three prepositional
phrases that describe the apokalupsis of the Lord, and the first one is that he
will come from heaven. He had ascended
to heaven in bodily form and after this happened His apostles were staring up
into heaven when two angels dressed in white robes told them that this same
Jesus would return in the same way.
Jesus Christ will return and touch down on the Mount of Olives where He
left from almost 2000 years ago.
Next we see that He will not return alone when He returns
but with flaming angels, which means angels with power. Billy Graham wrote a book about angels a few
years back and the study of angels is what is called angelology and we surely
do not have time to go into that at this time.
The last prepositional phrase is He will return in
“flaming fire.” This fire that is described
here is the fire of judgment. We see
this fire in Exodus 3:2 when the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
and it was also seen at Mt. Sinai when the Law was given. MacArthur writes “The fire of God’s judgment
is so closely associated with God’s nature that Scripture declares, ‘The Lord
your God is a consuming fire’ (Deut. 4:24; cf. 9:3; Heb. 12:29).
MacArthur continues “These three modifying phrases
provide striking confirmation of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will return from heaven, where He is
seated on the throne of God (Rev. 3:21).
He will return with the same mighty angels who attended and serve only
God; they are also His angels. Finally,
Jesus Christ will return in the same flaming fire that marked God’s glorious
judgment presence. By associating with
the Son the realities characteristic of the Father, the apostle affirms His
deity as the Second Person of the Trinity.”
As I wrote about the book Lutzer wrote concerning when a
person dies, believers and unbelievers, so the second coming of Jesus Christ
will have a great difference on believers and unbelievers.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I am thankful
that I am a believer in Jesus Christ, for it was the grace of God and the death
of Jesus Christ on the cross, and the certain call of the Holy Spirit that has
caused me to become a believer and because of this privilege I desire to tell
others about His salvation.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Your heart” (Luke 12:34).
Today’s Bible
question: “Complete the beatitude ‘Blessed
are the peacemakers for they shall…’”
Answer in our next SD.
9/25/2014 9:07 AM
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