SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/13/2018 9:51 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Salvation is From Sin”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
2:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 And you were dead in your
trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the
sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging
the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
I
promised a short story from John MacArthur’s commentary to begin this SD.
“One day a young boy came up
and pounded on my office door. When I
opened the door, I saw he was breathless and crying. He said, ‘Are you the Reverend? Are you the Reverend?’ When I answered yes, he said, ‘Come on. Please hurry.’ I ran after him for a block or two, and we
went into the house. A young woman was
standing inside, weeping uncontrollably.
She said, ‘My baby is dead! My
baby is dead!’ Lying on the bed was the
limp body of her three-month old infant.
She had tried to revive him, and nothing I could do proved to be of
help. He showed no sign of life. The mother caressed the baby, kissed it,
spoke to it, and cried tears over its little head. But the child made no response. When the ambulance crew arrived they tried
desperately to get the child breathing, but to no avail. He was dead, and nothing anyone could do had
an effect or could bring any response.
There was no life there to respond, not even to the powerful love of a
mother.” Now we will look at why this
story was told.
“That is the way of
spiritual death as well. A person who is
spiritually dead has no life which he can respond to spiritual things; much
less live a spiritual life. No amount of
love, care, and words of affection from God can draw a response. A spiritually dead person is alienated from
God and therefore alienated from life.
He has no capacity to respond. As
the great Scottish commentator John Eadie said, ‘It is a case of death
walking.’ Men apart from God are
spiritually zombies, the walking dead who do not know they are dead. They go through the motions of life, but they
do not possess it.”
Let
us take a look at a story that Jesus told in Matthew chapter eight “18 Now
when Jesus saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side of
the sea. 19 Then a scribe came and said to Him, "Teacher, I will
follow You wherever You go." 20 Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes
and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to
lay His head." 21 Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit
me first to go and bury my father." 22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and allow the dead to
bury their own dead.’” We can be
pretty sure that this man’s father was not dead at this time, but he was giving
an excuse not to follow Jesus, and was concerned with the physical things. This
man wanted to take care of his physical welfare first and showed no genuine
desire for the spiritual. Paul spoke of
this when giving advice to Timothy about widows in the church as he wrote “But
she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives (1 Tim.
5:6).”
I
mentioned in our last SD that Paul was writing about who believers were before they were saved
and I have highlighted some words in our passage at the top of the first page
of our SD for today. Paul writes
something similar to the Corinthians: “9
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do
not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards,
nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Such were some of you; but you
were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God’ (1 Cor. 6:9-11).”
John
MacArthur comments on the words “dead in…trespasses and sins.’ The Greek case is the locative of sphere,
indicating the sphere, or realm, in which something or someone exists. We were not dead because we had committed sin but because we
were in sin. In this context ‘trespasses and sins’ do not
refer simply to acts but
first of all to the sphere of existence of the person apart from God.” The following are some examples that go along
with this quote. First of all a person
does not become a liar when he tells a lie, he tells a lie because he already
is a liar. Now we can add more sinful
things to this example like being a thief who steals something, he steals
because he is already is a thief. Same
can be said about a murder. I have
written in one of my Bibles what the definition of total depravity is and I
think that that goes along with what we are talking about here: “Total Depravity: Not that we are as bad as
we could be, but we are as bad off as we can be.” We are as bad off as we can be means that we
steal because we already are a thief or we lie because we already are a
liar. We take God’s name in vain because
that is the nature we were born with.
One of the things that caused me to realize that I had become a believer
in Jesus Christ was because from the time I was about ten years old I picked up
the habit of swearing, (not in front of my parents or sisters), but when around
the crowd that I hung around with. I
made a deal with God when I was drafted in the army that if the Lord got me out
that I would stop swearing. After three
days in the army I received notice that I would be discharged on a medical
discharge. The thing is that I only had
the medical problem for the time that I was getting ready to be enlisted, and
once I was back home I had to get a physical to go back to my job and the
problem was gone. After a couple of
weeks of not swearing I reverted back to the same I was before I made the deal
with God. Eight years later while
listening to some tapes on the end times which at the end gave the gospel
message the Lord saved me. I knew He
saved me because He took all of those four letter words out of my
vocabulary. Before I was swearing
because that was who I was, and then when God saved me all things were made new
in my life.
In
our next SD we will begin to look at the word “trespasses,” and find out more
about that word.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It
is good to remember how the Lord saved me and how He changed my life and is
still changing my life to become more like my Savior!
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to be available to the Lord in order
to become what I already are “in Christ.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Nicodemus” (John 3:1).
Today’s Bible question: “Who said ‘Shall I go and call to thee a
nurse of the Hebrew women?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/13/2018 10:41 AM
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