MORNING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/8/2026
9:15 AM
My
Worship Time Focus: Intro
to “Lord of the Sabbath”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
6:1-11)
Message
of the verses: “1Now it
happened that Jesus was passing through some grainfields on
a Sabbath, and His disciples were picking the
heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. 2But some of the
Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not
lawful on the Sabbath?” 3And
Jesus, answering them, said, “Have you not
even read what David did when he was hungry, he
and those who were with him, 4how he entered the
house of God, and took and ate the consecrated bread,
which is not lawful for anyone to
eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his
companions?” 5And He was
saying to them, “The
Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
6On another Sabbath He
entered the synagogue and taught; and a man was there whose right hand was
withered. 7Now the
scribes and the Pharisees were watching Him closely to
see if He healed on the Sabbath, so that they
might find a reason to accuse Him. 8But He knew what they
were thinking, and He said to the man with the withered hand,
“Get up and come forward!” And he
got up and came forward. 9And Jesus said to them,
“I ask you whether it is lawful to do good on the
Sabbath or to do harm, to save a life or to
destroy it?” 10And
after looking around at them all, He said to him,
“Stretch out your hand!” And he did so; and his
hand was restored. 11But
they themselves were filled with senseless rage, and began discussing together what they
might do to Jesus.
This morning I begin studying the
book of Luke through John MacArthur’s second commentary book on the gospel of
Luke. I will quote from MacArthur’s
introduction for this morning’s SD.
“The initial reaction to the Lord
Jesus Christ was generally positive.
Speaking of His early ministry in Galilee, Luke noted when ‘He began
teaching in their synagogues [He] was praised by all’ (4:15). The Lord was so popular that when He ‘left
[Capernaum] and went to a secluded place…the crowds were searching for Him, and
came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them’ (4:42). After Jesus healed a leper, ‘the news about
Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and
to be healed of their sickness’ (5:15).
In the aftermath of His healing of a paralytic, the people ‘were all
struck with astonishment and began glorifying God; and they were filled with
fear, saying ‘We have seen remarkable things today’ (5:26). Even the religious leaders were unable to
restrain their curiosity at first (5:17).
“But curiosity eventually turned to
hostility, which by the time the events in the sixth chapter of Luke’s gospel
occurred was escalating severely. The
religious leaders had come to view, Jesus as the most dangerous man in Israel,
the biggest threat to their religious power and prestige. Their fears were well-founded. Jesus was the most powerful teacher the world
had ever seen or ever will see, and He was assaulting their ritualism,
legalism, and prideful hypocrisy. Even
worse, while attacking them, the Lord was associating with the tax collectors,
prostitutes, and other riffraff of society.
When Jesus showed concern about their sins, since He came ‘to call…sinners
to repentance’ (5:32), some of them responded with repentance and faith. But when He confronted the Pharisees and
scribes, because they were the leaders of the religious establishment and the
proud, unrepentant purveyors of the damning lie that God was pleased by
self-righteousness, legalism, and ritualism, they found the Lord’s discrediting
of them to be intolerable and infuriating.
They also found His choosing of common men instead of members of the
religious elite as His apostles insulting.
“The Lord did not escalate the
conflict by being insensitive or ungracious, but by His uncompromising proclamation
of the truth. The truth of God is the most important thing in
the world (cf. Prov. 23:23).”
(cf. Prov. 23:23)
“23 Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom,
instruction, and understanding.
“It is the
message of sin, forgiveness, salvation, and the hope of eternal life. All the truth must be proclaimed no matter
what the effects are, whether people embrace it, or are offended by it; whether
they accept it and are saved, or reject it, and are eternally lost. There is no common ground between the truth
and error.
“Jesus spoke the truth in every situation,
not under compulsion or against His will, but by His deliberate choice. By doing so, He exposed error both to those
who taught it, and to anyone else who might have been attracted to it. The Lord never minced words when dealing with
either false religion, or the wicked false teachers who purvey it (cf. Matt.
7:15-20; 23:1-36). His bold preaching of
the gospel, which was incompatible with the Jewish religion of His day (Luke
5:36-39), forced people to choose between the gospel of grace and the
works-righteousness system of contemporary Judaism.
“At the heart of Jesus’ conflict with
the Pharisees and scribes was the Sabbath. Much of their self-righteousness
attempt to earn salvation by good works focused on keeping the sabbath
regulations. Because its observance was
the mainstay or anchor of first-century Judaism, the Sabbath inevitably became
a major point of contention between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. In this section of his gospel, Luke records
two incidents in which Jesus boldly confronted their false view of the Sabbath,
and established Himself as Lord over the Sabbath. The first incident took place in the
grainfields; the second in a synagogue.”
Spiritual
meaning for My life Today: As I look at the statement “The truth of God
is the most important thing in the world,” I realize that when I write my
Spiritual Diaries that I must do my very best to follow that statement so that
I do not ever lead anyone astray. I
totally agree with that statement and nothing can ever change my mind about it.
My
Steps of Faith for Today:
I am trusting the Lord to continue to give us wisdom to fight the devilish disease
of cancer that has invaded my wife’s body, to allow the Lord to give us wisdom
on the steps that we must take to defeat it.
6/8/2026
9:51 AM
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