SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/9/2014
8:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Unselfish Labor
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 Thess. 2:9
Message of the
verse: “9 For you recall, brethren,
our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to
any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.” (NASB) “1Th 2:9 For your remember, brethren, our
labor and toil; that laboring night and day; that we might not be chargeable to
any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God.” (Living Oracles)
As I looked at Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on this verse
he included it in the father’s metaphor that Paul used, while John MacArthur
includes it in the mother’s metaphor. I
am not trying to split hairs here but I do think that it belongs in the
metaphor of the father for Paul speaks of how he was working night and day, and
it is the father’s responsibility to work in order to support the family. I am not saying that in today’s society we
see many women working to help support the family, and I am not saying that the
women who stay home and care for the children and the house do not work, for
they do work very hard. Paul worked as a
tentmaker or one who worked with leather making things in order to help support
himself so that he would not be a burden to those that he was ministering to. In this way he could not be accused of taking
money from those whom he was ministering to.
Now if you include this in the mother’s metaphor you
could say that when a mother nurses her children that she surely does not want
anything from them in return, for that is her duty as a mother, and this is the
way Paul thought, for these believers were brand new babies in the Lord and
they needed spiritual milk to drink: “1Pe
2:2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you
may grow in respect to salvation.” I
suppose that this verse can be included in either metaphor and no one could
argue about it so I seemed to have changed my mind a bit here.
Let us look at 2 Thess. 3:7-9 “7 For you yourselves know how you ought to
follow our example, because we did not act in an undisciplined manner among
you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s bread
without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and
day so that we would not be a burden to any of you; 9 we do not have the right to this, but in order to offer ourselves as a
model for you, so that you would follow our example.”
No I want to look at Philippians 4:16 “for even in
Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs.” We see here that Paul received gifts on more
than one occasion from the church at Philippi to help him in his ministry at
Thessalonica. Now let’s look at 2 Corinthians
8:1-2 in order to see that those in Thessalonica were lacking in funds and so
Paul did not want to take anything from them:
“1 Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which
has been given in the churches of Macedonia, 2 that in a great ordeal of
affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the
wealth of their liberality.” Paul is
also telling those at Corinth that even though these people were very poor they
still managed to give funds for the people in the Jerusalem church.
John MacArthur finishes his commentary on his section on
the spiritual mother with these words: “So
Paul pictured Silas, Timothy, and himself as spiritual mothers who made the
maximum effort to provide gentleness, intimate affection, sacrificial love, and
hard-working provision as they proclaimed to them the gospel of God. That maternal metaphor, however, only
partially describes the effective spiritual leader. Describing the spiritual leader as a father
completes Paul’s picture of leadership.”
The picture of spiritual leaders began at verse one of the second
chapter of 1 Thessalonians.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: We have spent the
last three days looking at Paul’s metaphor of how a spiritual leader is like a
mother and as I noted in an earlier SD my respect for motherhood has grown a
lot for the job of being a mother is one of the most important jobs in any
nation for how the family goes is how the nation will eventually go and as we
look at our nation and all the immorality in it we can see the results, so what
we need in this country is good Christian homes with good Christian mothers and
fathers to teach the truth of God in their homes.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to trust the Lord in the daily
battles of life that I am going through, and pray for His mercy and grace to
help me win these battles for the glory of God.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Tentmaking” (Acts 18:3).
Today’s Bible
question: “What did Jesus say about power
in heaven and in earth?” A hard question
is this one so look up Matthew 28:18 for some help.
Answer in our next SD.
4/9/2014 9:31 AM
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