SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/8/2021 10:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Barrier of Personal Comfort”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 8:18-22
Message of the verses: “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
continue writing about the scribe who told Jesus that he would follow him
wherever He goes.
Now
I have seen many “famous people” say that they have come to Christ and people
seem to flock to that person because of this.
However we have a leader in the Jewish religious system come to Jesus
and say that he would follow Jesus anywhere and Jesus doesn’t embrace what this
man has to say for as we said before “23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the
Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs
which He was doing. 24 But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to
them, for He knew all men, 25 and
because He did not need
anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man”
(John 2:23-25).
John
MacArthur responds to what Jesus said to this man: “Jesus responded to the scribe’s statement b
making a statement of His own. He did
not verbally question the man’s sincerity but simply mentioned some demands of
true discipleship the man never considered.
‘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.’ At first glance Jesus’ words seem unrelated
to the scribe’s affirmation. He was
saying, in proverbial form, that is spite of His divine authority and
miracle-working power, self indulgence was not in His plan, and He had fewer
physical comforts than animals. ‘Foxes
have holes’ they can call their own, and ‘birds of the air have nests’ to which
they can return and rest.”
We
see in our verses for today that Jesus calls Himself “Son of Man,” and this
title is used 80 times in the Word of God.
Let us look at Daniel 7:13 “"I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up
to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him.” According to this verse from Daniel the name “Son
of Man” is a messianic term only to be used by the coming Messiah. This was a term of His humiliation, and was
especially appropriate in the figure of His having “Nowhere to lay His head.” MacArthur writes “In His humiliation He did
not even have the basic comforts of life.
Jesus had no place of His own—no house or property, not even a
tent. After the dispute about Jesus’
healing of the blind man, ‘everyone went to his home, ‘John tells us: ‘But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives (John
753-8:1). Whereas others went home to
spend the night, Jesus spent I alone under the stars, in prayer with His
Father. We are told of His often
spending time in the home of Peter in Capernaum and of Mary, Martha, and
Lazarus in Bethany, but we are never told of His spending even an hour in His
own house, because He had none.”
In
our next SD we will try to better understand Jesus’ purpose in making such a
statement.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: God has given me the privilege of leading
people to the Lord and what I did afterwards was to disciple them as the Word
of God tells us to do.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I continue to trust the Lord to have His Holy
Spirit begin revival to my heart, and to begin to install it in the hearts of
those who have been coming to our prayer meeting for revival on Wednesday
evening. My prayer for this upcoming Wednesday
is that people would not only be open to learning about fasting, but we willing
to fast to aid in bringing revival to our church and then to our country and
then to our world.
4/8/2021 10:31 AM
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