SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/21/2021 7:52 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Difficult Circumstances”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
11:2-3
Message of the verses: “2 Now when John in
prison heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples, 3 and
said to Him, "Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?’”
In today’s SD we begin to look at the first reason
for doubt to creep in to those who are believers which is difficult
circumstances. We begin by talking more
about John the Baptist as humanly speaking the career of John ended in disaster
as we referenced to in our last SD. John
would end up in prison because of doing the right thing, and eventually would
lose his head because a jealous, spiteful woman could not stand that John was
telling her husband the truth. John was
faithful to the end.
John
MacArthur tells the story of Herod Antipas:
“On a trip to Rome, Herod Antipas, governor of Galilee, had taken a
liking to Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, and had seduced her. After returning to Galilee, Herod divorced
his own wife and married Herodias. When
John the Baptist heard of it, he publicly confronted Herod with his sin and was
promptly thrown into prison. Only Herod’s
fear of the multitudes kept John from being killed immediately (Matt. 14:5).
“John
was imprisoned at an old fort at Machaerus, located in a hot and desolate
region five miles east and fifteen miles south of the northern end of the Dead
Sea. He was placed in a dark, stifling
dungeon that was little more than a pit.
After some eighteen months in the limelight, this free spirit of the
wilderness was confined and isolated. He
had been in prison for perhaps a year when he sent the two disciples to Jesus.”
We
will end this short (Sunday) SD with a quotation from William Barclay who
captures much of the significance of John’s situation:
“He
was a child of the desert; all his life he had lived in the wide open spaces,
with the clean wind on his face and the spacious vault of the sky for his
roof. And now he was confined within the
four narrow walls of an underground dungeon.
For a man like John, who had probably never lived in a house, this must
have been an agony. In Carlisle Castle
there is a little cell. Once long ago
they had put a border chieftain in that cell and had left him for years. In
that cell there is one window, which is placed too high for a man to look out
of it when he is standing on the floor.
On the ledge of the window, in the stone, there are two depressions worn
away. They are the marks of the hands of the border chieftain, the places
where, day after day, he would lift himself up by placing his hands on the
ledge that he might look out on the green dales across which he would never
ride again. John must have been like
that; and there is nothing to wonder at, and still less to criticize, in the
fact that questions began to form themselves in John’s mind.” (The Gospel of Matthew vol. 2 [Philadelphia: Westminster,
1958], p. 2).”
11/21/2021 8:11 AM
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