SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/1/2023 10:19 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-6 “Intro to Matthew 20:20-28”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
20:20-28
Message of the verses: “20 Then the mother
of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, bowing down and making a
request of Him. 21 And He said to her, "What do you wish?" She said
to Him, "Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one
on Your right and one on Your left." 22 But Jesus answered, "You do
not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to
drink?" They said to Him, "We are able." 23 He said to them,
"My cup you shall drink; but to sit on My right and on My left,
this is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by
My Father." 24 And hearing this, the ten became indignant with the
two brothers. 25 But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that
the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men
exercise authority over them. 26 “It is not this way among you, but whoever
wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you
shall be your slave; 28 just as the Son
of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom
for many.’”
I have been writing about humility and the opposite of humility is selfishness. I want to quote from the last paragraph that we looked at in yesterday’s SD and then begin to write more about this subject that Peter brought up when he said the following in Matthew 19:27 “What then will there be for us?”
If one thinks about that question that Peter asked
almost 2000 years ago it is not a surprise that Christians are asking that same
question today and have been for the past 2000 years. The truth is that many believers today think
that grace is a free lunch, a divine open door to health, prosperity, and self-fulfillment,
a celestial storehouse of good things they can order on demand from God. I guess that this is what is called “the
health and wealth gospel,” and it is totally a wrong view or should I say wrong
truth about what the gospel is really about.
I heard many years ago that there are 1000 believers a day that
will die for the cause of Christ a far cry from the health and wealth gospel.
John MacArthur writes “John Stott has observed that ‘A
chorus of many voices is chanting in unison today that I must at all costs love
myself.’ In his book The Danger of Self-Love, Paul Brownback
writes along the same line, saying, ‘This sudden escalation of teaching on
self-love…was the spontaneous response of those who were firmly convinced of
the solid biblical basis of self-love.
And…almost immediately the Christian public felt warmly at home with its
newfound friend; self-love has been easily incorporated into the mind-set of
evangelical Christians’ ([Chicago: Moody, 1982], p. 13).
“Also commenting on the current cult of self-love, John
Piper writes,
Today
the first and greatest commandment is, ‘Thou shalt love thyself.’ And the explanation for almost every
interpersonal problem is thought to lie in someone’s low self-esteem. Sermons, articles, and books have pushed this
idea into the Christian mind. It is a
rare congregation, for example, that does not stumble over the ‘vermicular
theology’ of Isaac Watt’s ‘Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed’: ‘Would He devote
that sacred head/For such a worm as I?’
(‘Is Self-Love Biblical?’ Christianity
Today August 12, 1977, p. 6)
“Referring to that last phrase from Watt’s hymn, critics
often accuse evangelicals of being victims of ‘worm theology,’ because they
preach and teach the total depravity of man.”
Now thinking about embracing self-love, it is not a new
danger in the church today as mentioned earlier it has been around since the
church began. It can be seen clearly as a
threat to the unity, faithfulness, and purity of the Corinthian church and was
surely a threat to many others of that day as well. It would be several hundred years later that
Augustine would write in his classic The
City of God: Two cities have been
formed by two loves: The earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of
God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glorifies in
itself. The later in the Lord.”
It is my desire to be able to finish this introduction in
my next SD as I want to begin with a quote from John Calvin as we continue to
look at the subject of self-love.
5/1/2023 10:52 AM
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