Intro to Matthew 10:1

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/12/2021 11:50 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus: Intro to Matthew 10:1

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                      Reference:  Matthew 10:1

 

            Message of the verse:  “1 Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.”

 

            We move into chapter ten of Matthew today as we have been in chapter nine for a fairly long time, but Matthew makes a smooth transition as he moves from Jesus doing all of the ministry work to having Him send out His disciples to begin their ministry work in order to prepare them, and he does this gradually, to be able to take over the gospel teaching ministry once He is gone back to heaven to rule His church from there as He will have sent His Spirit into the word to all who become true believers in His provision for sin through His death on the cross.

 

            We ended up looking at Jesus’ request for actually His disciples to pray for workers, and now those who have prayed for workers now become workers.  The disciples, and all true believers begin to see the world as Jesus sees it as they look out on lost humanity through their Lord’s eyes and with His heart of compassion, and they also began to see that they themselves were called to go out and warn that lost world of the coming harvest of judgment and to invite them into the Lord’s kingdom.  I have mentioned many times in my SD’s that the Lord used the preaching of Hal Lindsey as he spoke of the end times to bring me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and when one understands exactly what is going to happen to this world and the people in it then we can be like Peter who told his readers that one day the world will be “un-created” (2 Pet. 3:10), and therefore knowing this they should live a godly life and to tell others the good news of the gospel for time is truly running out.

 

            MacArthur writes “Vital as it is, prayer is not all that is required.  The believer who prays for God to send workers but is unwilling to go himself prays insincerely and hypocritically.  The Christian who genuinely prays for God to send witnesses is also willing to be a witness.

 

            “William Barclay reports that when Martin Luther became convinced that the biblical way of salvation was by God’s grace working through man’s faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, he began earnestly preaching contending for this doctrine that became the hallmark of the Protestant Reformation.  A friend of his was equally convinced of this truth, and the two men agreed that Luther would spend his time out in the world, preaching, writing, and debating, while the friend would spend his time alone in a monastery upholding Luther and the cause of the Reformation in prayer.  As Luther visited the friend from time to time and reported the difficulties and obstacles of the work, the friend would intensify his praying.  One night the friend had a dream in which he saw a gigantic field that stretched over the whole earth.  But only one lone figure was working in the field, and when he looked closer the man saw that the lone figure was his dear friend Luther.  When he woke up he immediately went to find Luther and tell him that God made clear to him through the dream that it was not enough simply to pray.  He, too, must give himself directly to the work of spreading the good news of salvation.  He did not forsake praying, but he set aside his pious solitude and began to labor beside Luther in the heat and dirt of battle.”

 

            I have mentioned that this is a turning point in Matthew’s gospel and that we now see Jesus’ disciples going out to begin to spread the good news of the gospel.  MacArthur concludes his introduction: 

            “The major thrust of Jesus’ commissioning process begins in verse 5 of Matthew 10 and continues through the chapter as the Lord sets forth His foundational instructions for ministry.  But in the first four verses Matthew gives three essentials of the commissioning.  In verse 1 he tells of Jesus’ initiation of the disciples and of the divine impact their ministry was to have on the world.  In verses 2-4, which will be discussed in the next several chapters, we are given the disciple’s identities.”  I look forward to looking at all of these verses as our study of Matthew continues.

 

7/12/2021 12:13 PM