SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/9/2023 10:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “True
Leaders Accept Lowly Service”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
23:11-12
Message of the verses: “11 “But the
greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 “And whoever exalts himself shall
be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.”
Today
begins Spiritual Diary number 10144 that I have placed on my blogs. The first one was put on my blog in July of
2011, and so far in these last 12+ years there has been 574,047 of these
Spiritual Diaries looked at. Just one
more note and that is that there have been 262,000 Spiritual Diaries looked at
from Singapore this year. I was talking
to a friend of mine at church yesterday about this and I told him that I hope
and pray that the Lord is using them, but the only way that I will find out how
He is using them will be when I get to heaven, something that every true
believer should be looking forward to.
In
today’s SD we begin looking at the last two verses from this section that we
began looking at on the 22nd of September. John MacArthur entitles his 34th
chapter of his third commentary on Matthew “The Character of False Spiritual
Leaders,” which covers the first twelve verses of Matthew chapter 23. One thing that I have learned from listening
to sermons and from reading MacArthur’s commentaries is that most of the time
he uses a paragraph at a time as he preaches through his different
sermons. I guess that makes sense when
you think about it as a paragraph is suppose to be made up of one subject.
In
our last SD we learned that Godly leaders were suppose to avoid elevated titles
but also willingly accept lowly service in their Lord’s name, which follows the
Lord’s example of when He was ministering on earth.
Jesus
tells His listeners that the greatest person is the one who is a willing servant. His human greatness not only was manifested
in His perfect sinlessness and love but in His being the perfect servant. Now as I think about Jesus being the perfect
servant it makes me think about the gospel of Mark where Mark’s gospel really emphasizes
on Jesus as a servant. Matthew’s gospel
speaks of Jesus as the King. Luke’s
gospel emphasizes Jesus as a man, and John’s gospel emphasizes Jesus as
God. In John MacArthur’s sermon from the
third chapter of Zechariah, a book that I am teaching in our Sunday school
class talks about how Jesus is the Branch and then goes on to show how the
Branch is used of Messiah in four ways.
The four ways are what I just wrote about on how He is seen in the four
gospels. This goes to show me that the
Bible is about the Messiah and can be seen in many ways in the Old Testament.
In
our Lord’s humanity He was the Servant of servants just as in His divinity He
is the Lord of lords and the King of kings.
Our Lord’s mission on earth was not to be served but to serve as He spoke
of this in Matthew 20:28 “and to give His life a ransom for many.”
I mentioned that in the gospel of Mark that Jesus is
seen as a servant, and the key verse in the gospel of Mark comes from Mark
10:45 which is similar to Matthew 20:28.
“"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,
and to give His life a ransom for many.’”
I
have chosen to finish this section in our next SD as it is my desire to listen
to the sermon which goes along with Matthew 23:13-33 “The Condemnation of False
Spiritual Leaders—Part 1 Expressing the Condemnation.” In that section of Matthew’s gospel Jesus
really lets these false teacher of Israel have it as we will see.
10/9/2023 10:44 AM
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