SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/18/2024 9:43 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Sorrow”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 26:36-38
Message of the verses: “36 Then Jesus came
with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, "Sit
here while I go over there and pray." 37 And He took with Him Peter and
the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. 38 Then He said
to them, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here
and keep watch with Me.’”
At
the end of the last SD I was talking about Peter, James, and John who were the
leaders of the Apostles, as they were the inner circle to whom Jesus gave
special attention throughout His ministry.
And Now I want to move on to what MacArthur writes after this section that
I ended with yesterday.
“It
was surely for that reason that the Lord took those three with Him to
pray. He wanted to teach them further
about facing strong temptation with confidence in God rather than in
themselves. In light of their
self-declared dependability (v. 35), the disciples needed to learn the humility
and poverty of spirit that is necessary before God can effectively use His
people (see Matt. 5:3). He wanted Peter,
James, and John to be convinced and convicted of their foolish smugness and feelings
of invincibility. And He wanted them, in
turn, to teach their fellow disciples that lesson.”
As
I continue to look at these verses, verses that I have read over many times in
the last 50 years of being a born-again believer in Jesus Christ I am learning
new things from them. One may wonder why
Jesus took these three disciples with Him during this most critical part of His
ministry on planet earth. One may think
that He needed someone to bring comfort to Him, but these three would not be
able to do that in the selfish shape that they were in. MacArthur writes “He took them along for
their benefit, not His.” That statement
truly fits the character of our Lord who even in His great time of need He was
looking out to teach these apostles of His.
He
goes on to write “His purpose also was to teach that, as important and helpful
as the fellowship and support of other believers can be, there are times when
one’s only help is direct communion with God in prayer. He wanted to show them vividly that, in His
humanness, even the divine Son of God needed the sustenance of His heavenly
Father.
“Fallen,
sinful humanity refuses to acknowledge its weakness, but the unfallen, sinless
Son of Man well knew His human weakness.
When He became flesh and dwelt among men as a man, He accepted the
weaknesses that are common to all humanity.
He experienced the weakness of hunger, thirst, pain, and
temptation. Now He was about to
experience the supreme human weakness: death.”
I
continue looking from MacArthur’s commentary as what he is writing is somewhat
new to me, and therefore I want to have him express his learning’s to me and to
those who read this SD.
“In
acknowledging His human weakness and His consequent need for His heavenly
Father’s presence and strength, Jesus did what the disciples saw no need for doing. It was because He looked to His Father that
He endured and passed every temptation, including sin-bearing and death—the severest
test of all. Every moment of Jesus’
life, from His first cry as an infant to His last cry from the cross, was lived
in total submission to His heavenly Father.
And through that sinless submission during His humanity He became a high
priest who can fully ‘sympathize with our weakness,…one who has been tempted in
all things as we are, yet without sin’(Heb. 4:15).”
We will continue to look at this section in our SD
for tomorrow, and I must say that truly has been a learning session for me.
5/18/2024 10:15 AM
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