SPIRITUAL DIAR FOR 8/9/2021 11:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Andrew”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 10:2b
Message of the
verse: “and
Andrew his brother; and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;”
We are talking about Andrew, and
have been for two + days, and we have stated that Andrew was a man who was a
part of the top four Apostles for our Lord, but is barely mentioned in the synoptic
gospels other than when all of the disciples are mentioned and then he his
mentioned in the first group of four. I suppose that the one thing that I
admire most about Andrew, from what I have learned was that he was willing to
be in the background of the ministry of our Lord doing only what he was called
to do by the Lord. I certainly admire
also the fact that we see him brining people to the Lord.
With that being said I want to quote
a short paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary and I also want to then quote
another section which he quoted from a book entitled “All the Apostles of the
Bible” which was written in 1972 by Herbert Lockyer.
“Andrew is the model for all
Christians who labor quietly in humble places and positions. He did not try to please men but God, and had
no interest in building a reputation for himself. He would gladly have taken for himself
Christian Rossetti’s words:
‘Give me the lowest place;
Not that I dare ask for that lowest
place,
But Thou has died that I might live
And share Thy glory by Thy side.
Give me the lowest place;
Or if for me the lowest place is too
high,
Then make one more low
Where I may sit and see my God and love
His so.’”
I have to believe that the Lord
chose Andrew to be exactly the person he was in order to do the things that the
Lord wanted him to do. I am not saying
that there were not flaws in Andrew, and that as soon as the Lord called him as
seen in the first chapter of John’s gospel, but that this was his personality
type and that the longer that he walked with the Lord, the Lord continue
developed him for the job that He called him to do. Andrew surely had to yield himself to the
Lord in order for the Lord to do these things he was doing. MacArthur writes “The cause of Christ is
greatly dependent on the self-forgetting souls who are satisfied to occupy a
small sphere in an obscure place, free from self-seeking ambition. Andrew was told that one day he would sit on
one of the apostolic thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt.
19:28). But for him that unique honor
was not cause for boasting but for humble awe and wonder.
“The Scotsman Daniel McLean wrote of
Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland:
‘Gathering together the traces of character found in Scripture [about
Andrew], we find neither the writer of an Epistle, nor the founder of a Church,
nor a leading figure in the Apostolic Age, but simply…an intimate disciple of
Jesus Christ, ever anxious that others should know the spring of spiritual joy
and share the blessings he so highly prized.
A man of very moderate endowment, who scarcely redeemed his early
promise, simply minded and sympathetic, without either dramatic power or heroic
spirit, yet with that clinging confidence in Christ that brought him into that
inner circle of the Twelve; a man of deep religious feeling with little power
of expression, magnetic more than electric, better suited for the quiet walks
of life than the stirring thoroughfares.
Andrew is the apostle of the private life—the disciple of the hearth.
(Cited in Lockyer, All the Apostles,
55-56).’”
There are now and were before people
like Andrew, a person who brought his brother Simon Peter to the Lord and then
the Lord used Peter as the head of the Apostles, but that certainly did not
bother Andrew, and I suppose that it made him very happy to bring his brother
to the Lord and watch how He used him.
In MacArthur’s commentary he tells the story of an 18th century
man named Thomas Mitchell, who was an old soldier of Jesus Christ, a man of
slender abilities as a preacher, and who enjoyed only a very defective education
is how he is remembered after his death.
MacArthur writes “Though a man of ‘slender abilities’ and ‘defective
education,’ he was nevertheless God’s means of bringing to Christ the great
preacher Thomas Olivers.
“Thomas Mitchell went to a little village in
Lincolnshire, where he arose each morning at five o’clock to preach in the open
air, as John Wesley often did. His
preaching was so fiery that he was arrested and attacked by a mob as he was
taken to the public house for a hearing before the village curate. The crowd convinced the curate to let them
throw Mitchell into a filthy, slimy pond.
Each time he managed to crawl out, the mob threw him back in. He was then painted from head to foot with
white paint and taken again to the public house. After a long debate about what to do with
him, they decided to drown him. He was
thrown into a small lake outside the town, and each time he came to the surface,
a man with a long pole would push him under again. Eventually he was taken out, more dead than
alive. He was tirelessly cared for by a
godly old lady of the village, but when the mob found out that he was
recovering, they threatened to rend him limb from limb unless he promised never
to preach again. He refused to make such
a promise but somehow managed to escape the threatened punishment. He later wrote of the incident, ‘All the time
God kept me in perfect peace and I was able to pray for my enemies.’ For the rest of his life he continued to
minister in obscure faithfulness. But by
God’s standards and in God’s power, he was far from being ‘a man of slender
abilities.’ So was Andrew.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I am thankful to
the Lord for what I am learning about Andrew. As I see that even though, like
the other disciples the Lord used them, and this gives me confident that as
long as I am willing to submit to the Lord that He then can use me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Submit to the Lord to be used by Him.
8/9/2021 12:47 PM
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