SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/21/2022 9:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Setting”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
15:21
Message of the
verse: “21
And Jesus went away from there, and withdrew into the district of Tyre and
Sidon.”
Jesus’ ministry had mostly been in Galilee, but now
because of all the pressure that has been placed on Him and His ministry and
also I think because He and His disciples had not really had the time to get
that get away trip that had been planned ever since the disciples had gotten
back from their short missionary trip.
So now Jesus is actually going into the Gentile country, which I believe
is part of modern day Lebanon.
The pressure was not all a bad kind
of pressure as part of it came from all the multitudes that were following Him
where ever He had been traveling as many were convinced that He was their long
awaited Messiah. As the people saw and recognized
the miraculous powers that He had and knew that the Messiah would also have
these powers that is one reason that they thought He was their Messiah. The problem was that these people did not
realize why it was that He had come to planet earth, and that was to die for
them, but they missed those prophecies found in the OT books like Psalm 22, and
Isaiah 52-53. They were looking for
someone who would destroy Rome, but that will not happen until the next coming
when He comes in power and glory, where He will reign from David’s throne for
1000 years.
Next Jesus was under the pressure of
possible arrest and execution by Herod Antipas, who thought Jesus was John the
Baptist coming back from the grave after he had killed him. This can be seen in Matt. 14:2. I guess that they did not lack insane leaders
at this time of history either.
It was from the Jewish leaders that
was giving the most pressure on our Lord at this time during the beginning of
His third year of ministry. In Matthew
12:14 we read about the scribes and Pharisees of Galilee who wanted to destroy
Him. In 15:1-9 we saw that Jesus had embarrassed
the Jewish leaders who had come down from Jerusalem. John MacArthur quotes Alfred Edersheim who
commented, Jesus “was saying distinctly un-Jewish things,” ‘and even the
enthusiasm of the multitudes cooled rapidly when He began to make clear what
allegiance to Him demanded (John 6:60-66).”
So we see here that Jesus withdrew
from the frenzy of Galilee and traveled northwest “into the district of Tyre
and Sidon,” out of the land of Israel and beyond the jurisdiction of both Herod
and the Jewish religious leaders. This “district
of Tyre and Sidon” was the Gentile territory of ancient Phoenicia, and as
mentioned modern day Lebanon, which is on the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps He and His
disciples spent most of their time while there in the foothills of the
mountains, as this would have been refreshing from the heat of Galilee.
As I mentioned the reason for going
here was to get away from the pressures that were mentioned and also to spend
time with His disciples for after all Jesus was teaching them some of the
things that they would need to know for the time was not that far off when He
would go back to heaven and it would be eleven of these men who would be the
ones who humaningly speaking would begin the church age, and then a bit later
on Paul would become a large part of spreading the gospel to the Gentile
people. Let me make one thing clear and
that is that Jesus did not leave because of fear for He is God and does not
fear anything. Jesus knew what was
before Him, His crucifixion and so as stated He wanted to prepare His disciples
for when He would be gone from earth.
7/21/2022 10:03
AM
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