SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/21/2021 12:50 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Humility
and Dependence”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
11:25b-26
Message of the verses: “that You have
hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them
to infants. 26 "Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.”
We
begin a new section in our time in Matthew chapter eleven, and when we get through
the last three sections from chapter eleven verses twenty-five to thirty we
will be done with this eleventh chapter of Matthew, and I think that it is safe
to say that we will be done with the part of Jesus’ first half of His ministry,
and the second half will be nothing but trouble for Him, as we will see when we
get to chapter 12.
The
specific praise that Jesus gives to the Father is for His wisdom in hiding “these
things from the wise and intelligent and” instead revealing them to “the
infants.” What I want to say is that I
believe that there are two things that the Lord is displeased with, I know that
there are more, but I want to mention two here.
He is displeased with those who have a know it all attitude about
becoming a believer, like I can do it on my own and don’t need to have God tell
me how to do it. He is also displeased
with those who blatantly oppose Him, and I can think of what happened with
Pharaoh when He opposed God and hardened his heart against God, and then
finally God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. In
coming to Christ one has to have a heart like a child, as children will listen
to their parents at the early stages of their growth as their hearts are open
and purer than when they grow older.
Jesus said this about humility in Matthew 5:3 “"Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Now we want to look at the phrase “These things.” This refers to the kingdom, on which Jesus’
entire ministry focused on. This was
true even during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension as Jesus
was “speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God as seen in Acts
1:3. Now His teaching about His
messiahship, lordship, and also saviorhood, and about salvation, submission,
and discipleship centered in the kingdom of God which is the realm where He is sovereign,
and also where His people dwell by grace through faith, and where His righteous
will is done.
I
will end this rather short SD with a quotation from John MacArthur: “The wise and intelligent’ sarcastically
refers to those who are intelligent in their own eyes and who rely on human
wisdom and disregard God’s. The Lord
does not exclude smart people from His kingdom but rather those who trust in
their smartness. Paul was a brilliant,
highly educated scholar, and he did not forsake his intelligence when he became
a Christian. But he stopped relying on
his intelligence to discern and understand spiritual and divine matters. It is not intelligence but intellectual pride
that shuts people out of the kingdom.
Intelligence is a gift of God, but when it is perverted by pride it
becomes a barrier to God, because trust is in the gift rather than in the
Giver. ‘For through the Lord is exalted,
yet He regards the lowly; but the haughty He knows from afar’ (Psalm 138:6).’”
Lord,
willing we will continue to look at this section in our next SD.
12/21/2021 2:03 PM
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