SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/14/2024 12:21 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Defection of the Disciples”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
26:55-56
Message of the verses: “55 At that time
Jesus said to the crowds, "Have you come out with swords and clubs to
arrest Me as you would against a robber? Every day I used to sit in the
temple teaching and you did not seize Me. 56 “But all this has taken place to
fulfill the Scriptures of the prophets." Then all the disciples left Him
and fled.”
I have come to the point in this section of John
MacArthur’s commentary where he is just writing things that go along with these
verses and I usually just quote from the things that he has to write about
different verses, and the reason that I do this is because what he has to say
about these verses is much better than what I would have to say and so I learn
by reading them and you learn by reading these things on my blogs.
“Just
as there are common marks of false disciples there are common characteristics
of defective disciples, as the eleven proved to be on this occasion. First of all, they were unprepared. All of them, including the three Jesus chose
to accompany Him into the garden, had fallen asleep at this time of Jesus’
great struggle. Because they confused
good intentions with spiritual strength, they were powerless when testing came. They were overconfident and felt no need of
prayer. Had they taken to heart the Lord’s
marvelous promises in the Upper Room discourage (John 13-17), they would have
had the divinely provided wisdom and strength to meet the crisis.
“But
because they had paid little attention to Jesus’ teaching and had neglected
prayer, the disciples discovered they were unprepared and inadequate. It is an absolute spiritual law that a
believer who neglects the study of God’s Word and neglects fellowship with Him
in prayer will be unprepared (cf. Matt. 26:41).
When testing comes he will be weak, afraid, unfaithful, and ineffective.” (Matt. 26:41 “41 “Keep watching and praying
that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”
“A
second mark of a defective disciple is impulsiveness. The eleven disciples, and Peter in
particular, reached on the basis of emotion rather than revelation. They did not look at the situation from the
perfect perspective of God’s truth but from the imperfect and distorted
perspective of their own understanding.
Therefore, instead of acting on the basis of God’s Word and in the promised
power of His Spirit, they reacted on the basis of their emotions and in the
weakness of their own resources.
“The
believer who fails to saturate himself in God’s Word and to have fellowship in
God’s presence becomes a captive of circumstances. His thinking is based on the emotions of the
moment, and his actions are based on the impulses of the moment.
“A third mark of a defective
disciple is impatience. Because
the disciples refused to take Jesus’ truth and promises to heart, they became
anxious and impatient when things did not go as they thought they should. They could not wait for the Lord’s
deliverance and so devised their own.”
“Many
Christians take the easy route of fleeing from trouble rather than trusting God
to see them through it. Instead of
trusting the Savior to deliver them, and in so doing to demonstrate His grace
and power they try to avoid trouble at any cost and thereby bring reproach upon
Him.
“A fourth mark of a defective
disciple is carnality. The
disciples typified by Peter, depended wholly on their own fleshly power to
protect them. Because he refused to
trust his Lord’s way and power, Peter had nothing to rely on but his sword,
which was pathetically inadequate even from a human perspective.
“When
believers lose their fleshly weapons of discover those weapons are ineffective,
they sometimes simply flee in desperation.
“The
major participant in this garden scene was Jesus Himself and in Matthew’s
account we see His triumph even while His enemies were taking Him captive. Through their evil plot ot put Him to death
He would accomplish the divine plan for giving men eternal life.
“All
of His disciples deserted Him, and one betrayed Him, yet the divine work of
redemption continued to be fulfilled on schedule, precisely according to God’s
sovereign and prophesied plan. As the
disciples’ faithfulness decreased, Jesus’ demonstration of power and glory
increased. As the plans of His enemies
seemed to prosper, the plan of God
prospered still more in spite of them.
“It
is not clear exactly when it happened, but perhaps right after Judas’s kiss,
Jesus took the initiative and confronted the multitude. To assure His enemies that He was not trying
to hide or escape, and perhaps to strip Judas of any credit for indentifying Him,
He said, Whom do you seek?’ When they replied, ‘Jesus the Nazarene,’ He said, “I
am He,’ and at those words ‘they drew back, and fell to the ground’ (John
18:4-6). ‘I am He’ translates ego eimi, which laterally means ‘I am,’ the
covenant name of God (see Ex. 3:14).”
There
is only a little bit more to look at and I will save it for tomorrow’s SD. I have listened to the two sermons that go
along most of the rest of chapter 26, and I can say that this chapter in MacArthur’s
commentary is at least 20 pages so I guess I will be camped out on that chapter
for some time. These are very important
verses that we are looking at and as one looks at what Matthew has written
about this difficult time in the life of our Lord one has to glance at the
other gospel writers to put the picture together.
I
have to say that the first part of this SD has stepped on my toes and so I need
to do some praying and looking at these things that have effective me in this
way so that by the power of the Holy Spirit and of the Word of God things can
change for the better.
6/14/2024 1:03 PM
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