SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/2/2023 9:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-7 “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 want to continue to talk about self-love. The
following statement happened about a thousand years after these verses were written. John Calvin said “For so blindly do we all
rush in the direction of self-love that everyone thinks he has a good reason
for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison.” Calvin then comments that “there is no other
remedy than to pluck up by the roots those most noxious pests, self-love and
love of victory. This the doctrine of
Scripture does. For it teaches us to
remember that the endowments which God has bestowed upon us are not our own, but His free gifts, and
that those who plume themselves upon them betray their ingratitude”
John
MacArthur then writes the following “Someone has wisely written;”
‘The cross of popular
evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a bright ornament upon the
bosom of the self-assured and carnal Christian whose hands are indeed the hands
of Able, but whose voice is the voice of Cain.
The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross
condemns; the new cross assures. The old
cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the
new cross brings laughter. The flesh,
smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross, and before that cross
it bows and toward that cross it points with carefully staged histrionics, but
upon that cross it will not die and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly
refuses to bear.’”
MacArthur
goes on to write “It is the cross of suffering and death that Jesus calls His
disciples, and to the obedience and self-giving that lead to that cross. But the believer’s cross is small and his
suffering insignificant compared to what his Lord’s suffering and death
purchased for him. “For if we died with
Him,” Paul assured Timothy, “we shall also live with Him; if we endure, we
shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2:11-12).
To the Roman church he testified, “For I consider that the sufferings of
this present time are not worth to be compared with the glory that is to be
received to us” (Rom. 8:18). And at the
end of his life Peter had long since stopped asking, “What’s in it for me?” Instead, he confidently counseled fellow
believers: “After you have suffered for
a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in
Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you” (1 Peter
5:10).”
Now it is time to go back to when these verses were
spoken by our Lord, as at this time His disciples were far from such self-giving,
self-effacing discipleship. So it is
safe to say at this time they were not really listening to what Jesus was
saying as this was the third time that He had told them about what was going to
happen to Him not too many weeks later.
I know that they will have remembered what He said after the event of
His death on the cross, and after His burial and then resurrection as the Holy
Spirit of God would remind them about this after the church age began as seen
in the second chapter of Acts. I have
mentioned earlier that it was no sooner after Jesus told His disciples of what
was about to happen to Him that the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus
with her sons, bowing down and making a request of Him. She wanted her two sons to be seated on His
right hand on His left hand in His kingdom.
MacArthur
concludes this very long introduction by writing: “In that event and in Jesus’ response to it
we can see four wrong, worldly ways by which men pursue greatness. Following that, the Lord gave an exhortation and
an example of what constitutes the true greatness that God honors.” That
is what we will be looking at as we look more closely at these verses.
5/2/2023 9:31 AM
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