SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/30/2021 9:35 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Jesus Was Accessible”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 9:18
Message of the
verse: “18
While He was saying these things to them, a synagogue official came and
bowed down before Him, and said, "My daughter has just died; but come and
lay Your hand on her, and she will live.’”
The first thing we have to do is
understand the first section of this verse:
“While He was saying these things.”
This refers to the conversation that Jesus had just been having with the
critical Pharisees and also the confused disciples of John the Baptist as seen
in verses 11-17, and it was in these verses we could see that our Lord made
clear that He had come to save only those who acknowledge and confess their
sins and the ways of the old life of the flesh and then the new life of the
spirit are totally incompatible.
As we look at this story found in
Mark 5:22 and also Luke 8:41 we see that they explain that the man who came up
to Jesus was named Jairus. This man’s
title in the Greek is archon which
means a synagogue official. Now he was
not only a synagogue official but he was the chief official, or the elder of
the synagogue. MacArthur says that in
the Greek archisunagogos and in the
Hebrew rosh hakeneseth.” So what this man was, was the highest ranking
religious official of the synagogue. “He
supervised the worship services and over saw the work of the other elders,
which included teaching, adjudicating disputes, and other such leadership
duties.”
In all probability this man was a
Pharisee and as we have been looking at Matthew’s gospel over the last few
months we can see that the scribes and the Pharisees were out to get Jesus, as
the hatred of these men of Jesus was beginning to show its ugly head. Why do I bring this up? Well as we go on with this story we will see
no hatred from Jairus, complete humility, and the reason was that his 12 year
old daughter as seen in Matthew’s gospel had just died. As we look at the other two gospels of Mark
and Luke we see that this had not happened right away as he first came to Jesus
to tell Him that his daughter was gravely ill and to come in a hurry and heal
her. Now as far as the opposition of the
scribes and Pharisees going on against Jesus at this time Jairus could not have
helped but to know about it, yet as stated there was something way more
important in his life at this time.
We will close this SD with a
quotation from MacArthur’s commentary: “Yet
when he faced Jesus he did not seek to protect himself by going at night, as
Nicodemus did, or by disguising his true motive and need with an involved and
veiled religious question. We are not
told what he then thought about Jesus’ messiahship, but to have ‘bowed down
before Him’ was to offer an act of great homage and reverence—and the Greek
term behind ‘bowed down’ (proskuneo)
is most often rendered ‘worship’ (see Matt. 4:10; John 4:21-24; 1 Cor. 14:25;
Rev. 4:10; etc.). The act involved
prostrating oneself before the honored person and kissing his feet, the hem of
his garment, or the ground in front of him.”
This for sure does not look like something a Pharisee would have done to
Jesus, but family will cause you to do things that you would not ordinarily do.
I may have mentioned that the title
of this section “Jesus Was Accessible” has really been something that has
stirred my heart in thinking in a new fresh way how much He is accessible to
me, and for that I am truly thankful.
5/30/2021 10:01
AM
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