SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/19/2017 10:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus: It was a joyful Church
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
2:46b-47a
Message of the
verses: “with gladness and sincerity
of heart, praising God”
John MacArthur writes “It comes as no surprise that a
unified, miraculous, sharing church was also a joyful church. Agalliasis
(gladness) is the noun form of the verb agalliao,
which means ‘to rejoice.’ One of the key
reasons for that joy was the ‘sincerity of heart’ they manifested. Aphelotes
(sincerity) appears only here in the New Testament. It literally means ‘simplicity’ and derives
from a root word meaning ‘free from rocks,’ or ‘smooth’ (A. T. Roberson, Word
Pictures in the New Testament). There were
no stones of selfishness in their hearts.”
There are a couple of things that I would say as a result
of reading this portion of MacArthur’s commentary and the first is that I
really like when he goes into more specifics of what different words in the
Greek language mean. Next I want to say
is that whenever I look at a word that is only used once in the New Testament
then that also is something that interests me.
The last thing is that sometimes when I look at a Greek word’s meaning I
sometimes get baffled as to why it is translated into English the way it
was. Never would have thought that
“sincerity” would be the Greek word for rocks.
“46 Day after day they met by common consent in the Temple; they broke
bread together in their homes, sharing meals with simple joy (Phillips).” “From a compound of 1 (as a negative
particle) and phellos (in
the sense of a stone as stubbing the foot) (Greek/English Dictionary).”
Now we want to look at the first phrase of Acts 2:47
“Praising God.” I looked up this verse
in my Amplified version of the Bible and it begins with these words “Constantly
praising God,” so we can see that the praising of God that these people in the
early church did was not something that they only did on Sunday or when they
met but it was daily in their lives.
The question is how do we praise God and John MacArthur
states “To praise God is to recite His wonderful works and attributes. The goal of the first fellowship was to exalt
the Lord, and that produced true happiness.”
MacArthur goes on to write “Those who glorify themselves and seek the preeminence will never know
lasting joy. Joy comes to those who give God glory. Paul expressed that truth to the Philippians
when he wrote, ‘If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is
any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any
affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind,
maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose’ (Phil.
2:1-2).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: In my devotional
that I read this morning I read something about love as this month’s devotional
are all from 1 Corinthians 13. John
MacArthur wrote in that devotional about the difference between selfishness and
love, similar to the statement that he made in this section we are looking at
as I have highlighted it. He compared
the difference of what Adam and Eve did in the garden when they sinned as they
were looking for independence from God which ends up to be selfishness. We are all born with that sin nature which
even after we have been born again we have trouble doing things that the Lord
has commanded us to do. Jesus on the
other hand was never selfish as we can see from Philippians chapter two.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I want to be more like Jesus Christ so I can
be less selfish.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Rome.”
Today’s Bible
question: “What did Lot’s wife become?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/19/2017 11:28 AM
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