SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/2/2021 10:51 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Strong Conviction”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 11:7
Message of the
verse: “7
As these men were going away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about
John, "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by
the wind?”
In today’s SD we want to begin to look at the second
characteristic of John’s personal greatness, and that is a strong conviction,
which made the first characteristic even more remarkable, the characteristic of
“He Overcame Weakness.” Now a person
with weak convictions is seldom reluctant to face doubts or change his beliefs,
as to him, vacillation is no cause for embarrassment or shame. However the very strength of John’s
convictions made his admission of doubt all the more admirable.
According to verse seven “As
these men were going away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John,”
we can see that this was not a private conversation that John’s disciples had
with Jesus, and so it is possible that some in the crowd would tend to think
less of John than they did when John was the only one teaching and preaching
before Jesus came on the scene. So the
question comes up “Was John not as trustworthy as they thought, and was his
message not reliable?”
Jesus asks the crowd a question in
order to show that John truly was trustworthy: "What did you go out into
the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” Jesus appealed to their own experiences,
asking, in effect, “Was the man you saw preaching and baptizing in the
wilderness uncertain and vacillating, a reed shaking by the wind?” “Now have you ever heard John change any of
his message or compromise his standards?”
John MacArthur writes “The reed to
which Jesus referred was common along Near Eastern riverbanks, including those
of the Jordan where John baptized. They
were light and flexible, waving back and forth with every breeze. The people
knew that John was not swayed like those reeds.
If ever there had been a man with unswerving convictions, it was
John. He stood up to the scribes, the
Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even to Herod himself—for which boldness he was
now in prison. The people knew John was
as far as possible from being spineless or irresolute. As John Bunyan points out in his Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr. Pliable does not
go to prison to be martyred for the truth.”
I
suppose that one of the things that I admire about John the Baptist, and I
suppose that the common people of his day admired was when he stood up to the
leaders in Judaism “7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and
Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You
brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear
fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and
do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our
father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up
children to Abraham. 10 “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees;
therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into
the fire.”
John MacArthur writes “The following incident is
reported about John Chrysostom, the famous fourth-century Christian leader:
‘When the great Chrysostom
was arrested by the Roman Emperor, the latter sought to make the Greek
Christian recant, but without success.
So the Emperor discussed with his advisors what could be done to the
prisoner. ‘Shall I put him in a
dungeon? The Emperor asked.
‘No,’ one of his counselors replied, ‘for he will be glad
to go. He longs for the quietness
wherein he can delight in the mercies of his God.’ ‘Then he shall be executed!’ said the
Emperor.
‘No,’ was the answer; ‘For he will also be glad to die,
He declares that in the event of death he will be in the presence of his God.’
‘What shall we do then?’ the ruler asked.
‘There is only one thing that will give Chrysostom pain,’
the counselor said. ‘To cause him to
suffer make him sin. He is afraid of
nothing but sin.’”
We
conclude with a couple of verses: “A
double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8 KJV). This verse speaks of the man Paul describes
as “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by
waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine,” (Eph. 4:14a). Like Chrysostom, however, John the Baptist
was far from being double-minded.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today:
One of the things that I do not want to do as James writes is being
double-minded, but have the courage to do the right things at the right times.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust the Lord that He will give me the
words to speak in our Sunday school class this Sunday as I will be talking
about one of the most controversial verses in all the word of God from what
many say is the toughest book to understand in all the Word of God.
12/2/2021 11:35 AM
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