SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/8/2018
8:44 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Toward God—Service”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 20:19
Message of the
verses: “19 serving the Lord with all humility and with
tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews;”
Sunday’s Spiritual Diaries are usually not too long as
Sunday is kind of hectic for me as I usually don’t sleep well because of
teaching Sunday School at our church. I
believe that when one teaches the Word of God that they have to do their very
best, not making any mistakes that could lead someone down the wrong path.
I wanted to begin this SD with a quote from John
MacArthur as he talks about the word “service:”
“Serving is from douleuo, the
verb form of doulos (‘bond-servant;
slave’). Paul uses the verb form seventeen
times in his epistles, primarily to refer to obedience to the Lord. He considered it a great honor and privilege
to serve the King of kings and Lord of lords.”
You may remember that a few months back, perhaps even a year by now that
I read a book by John MacArthur on slaves, where he remarked that when one
looks at the word “bond-servant” that it is always the same Greek word “doulos.”
As we continue in this section of Acts we will go with
the word “bond-servant” saying that two attitudes mark what a bond-servant of
the Lord has. The first one is that
their service is done with all humility as we see in our verse for today’s
SD. According to Matthew 10:24 we learn
that a servant is not greater than his master, and so since our Master is the
Lord we certainly are not greater than Him.
In many of Paul’s writings we see how humble he was like in 1 Cor. 15:9
he states that he was “the least of the apostles…not fit to be called an
apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Paul is not the only servant of God who was
humble, as even in today’s world there are many, many humble servants of God.
Second we see that serving the Lord involves a
willingness to endure suffering as Paul eludes to in the end of verse 19. I have just finished studying over my
Spiritual Diaries that I wrote on Psalm 22 as can be seen on a recent SD that I
put on a few days ago, and while studying this Psalm which tells about the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ 1000 years before it happened one can see the
humility that our Lord had while on earth.
Paul writes about this humility in Philippians chapter two. We have very little idea of what Christ left
in heaven to come to earth to die on the cross for us.
In verse nineteen Paul mentions his tears, which speaks
of his internal suffering. MacArthur
writes “Paul’s zeal for the Lord caused him to be grieved and pained when God
was dishonored by unbelievers and believers.
Those who share Paul’s passion will share his tears.” I sit under a pastor whose tears are seen on
many a Sunday. He has a great love for
the Lord Jesus Christ and even mentioned one Sunday that he has never looked at
the movie that portrayed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ because he could not
handle seeing our Lord crucified.
In our next SD we will look at three things in particular
that moved Paul to tears.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “As a thief in the night.”
Today’s Bible
question: “Who said ‘"The woman
whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.’?”
Answer in our next SD.
7/8/2018 9:09 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment