SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/10/2021 11:32 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Barrier of Personal Comfort”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
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.’”
The
following are some of the things that this scribe did not think over before he
eagerly stated to Jesus that he would follow Him anywhere. He did not count the cost of self-denial,
sacrifice, and perhaps suffering for the cause of Christ which each one of His
Apostles ended up doing as they were all, with the exception of John died
because of their faith in Christ.
MacArthur writes “Jesus’ proverb about the foxes and the birds
represented the relatively minimal sacrifice of being homeless—yet even that
cost was obviously too high, because the scribe simply disappears without
another word said by or about him. The
Lord’s words hit him where he was weak and unwilling, and his true loyalty only
to his own comfort was quick to show itself.”
Once again we should think about the parable of the seed that we looked
at earlier.
As
we look at the life of Jesus while on earth and the places that He taught we
never see him sugarcoating the gospel which is exactly what the leaders of the “health
and wealth gospel” do. The more that I
understand the truth of what is involved in following Jesus Christ the more
that I dislike those phony people like Joel Osteen who market the gospel for
their own wellbeing. He is surely not
the only one as when I was a young believer I fell prey to some of the other
ones who are probably now all past on.
Jesus
ministered with His disciples for three years and it was not until towards the
end of His ministry that He began to tell them what was going to happen to Him,
and also what was going to happen to them.
I think about what happened to Peter as he denied the Lord three times
and was ready to quit being a part of the ministry over the guilt and shame
that he went through, and yet at the end of John’s gospel Jesus came and
rescued him from this error as He asked him three times “do you love Me?” Three times is the number of times that Peter
denied Jesus and three times Jesus asks that penetrating question to him. Then Jesus tells him how he his death would
glorify God, which was being crucified for the cause of Christ. Peter asked about what would happen to John
and Jesus told him not to be concerned about John just continue to serve
me. Peter made a mess by denying Jesus
and our wonderful compassionate Lord cleaned up that mess like He cleans up
messes that I too make. What a wonderful
Savior I serve.
The
scribe that came to Jesus on the shore, probably near the place where Jesus
rescued Peter would not put up with following Jesus.
John
MacArthur concludes this section: “There is no thrill like the
joy of knowing and following Christ, but it is not a thrill that the world can
understand or appreciate. Jesus Christ
gives great peace to those who belong to Him, but His peace is not the kind the
world gives or seeks (John 14:27). His
joy and peace come by the way of ridicule, suffering, and the cross, which His
disciples must take up when they follow Him.
‘If anyone whishes to come after Me,’ He said,’ let him deny himself,
and take up his cross, and follow Me’ (Matt. 16:24). The Christian life is not adding Jesus to one’s
own way of life but renouncing that personal way of life for His and being willing
to pay whatever cost that may require.”
4/10/2021 11:56 AM
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