SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/3/2021 10:42 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Christ’s
Divine Compassion”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
9:36a
Message of the
verse: “36
Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them,”
I think that I have mentioned that I
listened to the sermon that goes with this section a number of times as it
truly moved my heart when thinking about the divine compassion that our Lord
had, and as I listened to it a couple of times I copied a couple of portions
and had them read to our very small group of people who attend out revival
prayer group on Wednesday’s after our regular time of prayer at our
church. I will probably use some of
those quotations as we go through this section.
I now want to repeat what John MacArthur wrote at the end of his
introduction to the main section “His Motives” which cover Matthew
9:36-37a). “Three elements of that
motivation are His own divine compassion; man’s lost condition, and the coming
consummation of judgment.” Now it is
good for us to remember that as a part of the NT church we are a part of the “body
of Christ,” and as a part of the body of Christ we are to show Christ to others
in this lost world that we live in.
Remember when Jesus said that it was better for Him to go away, well
once He went back to heaven after His resurrection the church soon began and
the church can be in many places all at the same time while Jesus was on earth
He could only be at one place at a time, and that is why I believe He made that
statement.
When one looks at the metaphors that
are given for the church there are some that are similar to the ones given to
Israel, but “the body” is a metaphor that is only used for the church, and as
our Lord is in heaven now directing His church we as believers need to have
some of those similar things that Christ has, including compassion, but it can
only come through the power of His Holy Spirit.
As we have been studying chapters
8-9 of Matthew we have suggested that this was the great part of our Lord’s Galilean
ministry and we have seen many people follow Him through this region that He
was living in. We saw them follow Him
across the waters of Galilee, we have seen Him heal many of their diseases,
feed them, cast demons out of them but we know that there was something deeper
that these people needed as all people need and that is spiritual healing and
Jesus was deeply moved with compassion for their great need of spiritual healing. MacArthur writes, and with this we will end
our SD for today: “But in ‘seeing the
multitudes,’ Jesus saw the deepness and pervasiveness of their sin and the
desperate plight of their spiritual blindness and lostness. Consequently, ‘He felt compassion for them’
as only God could feel. He cared for them
because He was God incarnate and it is God’s nature to love and to care, for ‘God
is love’ (1 John 4:8). Over and over in
the gospel record, we are told of Jesus’ ‘compassion’ and love for men. When He withdrew in a boat to be alone after
hearing of the death of John the Baptist, the crowd discovered where He went
and ‘followed Him on foot from the cities.
And when He went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and felt compassion
for them, and healed their sick’ (Matt. 14:13-14). After He had healed a great number of people
on a mountainside in Galilee, He privately told His disciples, ‘I feel
compassion for the multitude, because they have remained with Me now three days
and have nothing to eat; and I do not wish to send them away hungry, lest they
faint on the way’ (15:32). It was not
enough that He had healed the lame, the blind, the dumb, and many others among
them (vv. 30-31). When they were without
food, He cared deeply about their hunger.”
In our next SD I want to look at the
most unusual word from the Greek that makes up “felt compassion.”
7/3/2021 11:08
AM
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