PT-5 "The Precepts Of True Greatness" (Matt. 20:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/14/2023 8:13 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                   Focus:  PT-5 “The Precept of True Greatness”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matt. 20:26-27

 

            Message of the verses:  “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;”

 

            Today is Mothers Day 2023 and so I want to wish all the mothers who read this SD today “Happy Mother’s Day.”  Also because it is Sunday morning this SD will be rather short.

 

            In our last SD we were talking about the apostle Paul, and I want to begin this SD by talking about Paul some more.  Paul greatly desired to be exalted and to receive glory, but the exaltation and glory he sought were God’s and he sought them in God’s way, through the suffering of servanthood and the bondage of slavery. Now it has been said of one leader in the early church that “He belonged to that class of early martyrs whose passionate soul made an early holocaust of the physical man.”

 

            John MacArthur quotes a poem from Amy Carmichael:

 

Hast thou no scar?

No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?

I hear thee sung as mighty in the land

I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star;

Hast thou no scar?

 

Hast thou no wound?

Yet, I was wounded by the archers, spent.

Learned me against the tree die, and rent

By ravening beasts that compassed me, I

Swooned:

Hast thou no wound?

 

No would? No Scar?

Yes, as the master shall the servant be,

And pierced are the feet that follow Me;

But thine are whole.  Can he have followed far

Who has no wound? No Scar

 

            I have chosen to finish this section in our next SD, although it too will be short.

 

5/14/2023 8:30 AM

PT-4 "The Precept of True Greatness" (Acts 20:26-27)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/13/2023 11:53 AM

 

My Worship Time                                          Focus:  PT-4 "The Precept of True Greatness"

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                    Reference:  Matthew 20:26-27

 

          Message of the verses:  “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;”

 

            I want to begin this SD with a couple of quotes that come from John MacArthur’s commentary.

 

            “In his book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, William Law writes,

 

‘Let every day be a day of humility; condescend to all the weakness and infirmities of your fellow-creatures, cover their frailties, love their excellencies, encourage their virtues, relieve their wants, rejoice in their prosperities, compassionate their distresses, receive their friendship, overlook their unkindness, forgive their malice, be a servant of servants, and condescend to do the lowliest offices of the lowest of mankind.’”

 

            “Another great saint of past years, Samuel Brengle, wrote,

 

‘If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes.  He does use me.  But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done.  The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down.  I could do nothing but for the woodsman.  He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it.  The moment he throws it aside, it becomes only old iron.  O That I may never lose sight of this. (Quoted in Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership [Chicago: Moody, 1967], p. 58.)’”

 

            In verse 27 we can see that Jesus reiterated and intensified His description of God’s way to greatness as He says “whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave;”  The position and work of a slave were much lower and demeaning even than those of a servant.  It is true that a servant was to some degree his own person.  A servant often owned little more than the clothes on his back, but he was free to go where he wanted and to work or not work as he pleased.  However a slave and the Greek word for slave is doulus did not belong to himself but he was owned by his master and could go only where the master wanted him to go and do only what the master wanted him to do.  He did not belong to himself but was the personal property of someone else.

 

            Now I want to quote from the letter that Paul wrote to the Philippians in what is a very famous section of the second chapter, which Paul writes about the Lord Jesus Christ.  “5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7  but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9  For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10  so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11  and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:5-11).”  Now in Matthew 20:27 we stated that the word in the Greek for slave is doulus and in the highlighted portion of Phil. 2:7 we see the word bond-servant.  The Greek word for “bond-servant” is doulus, same as in Matt. 20:27.  Now I have written about the fact that most English versions of the Bible do not translate the word doulus as slave, which is what it means.  I believe that the reason that it is not translated as slave is because of the history of slavery in our country’s earlier history.  There is a difference between slaves in our countries history and slaves during the time of the Roman Empire as slaves then were actually important people in a lot of cases.  Slaves could even be doctors.  I have read that the population of slaves during the Roman Empire was in fact more than the regular population.  I read a book a number of years ago written by John MacArthur on slavery and that is where I got most of this information from.  I believe that there is only on translation of the English Bible that translates the word doulus as slave in all the times that doulus is in the Greek.

 

            John MacArthur writes from his commentary on Matthew the following.  “In several of his letters Paul identified himself as Christ’s slave (doulus) even before identifying himself as His apostle.  He greeted the Romans with the words ‘Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle’ (Rom. 1:1; cf. Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:1).’  That is why he could say, If we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s (Rom. 14:8).  Slaves were the property of their owners and could therefore be bought and sold.  Like such a slave, Christians ‘Have been bought with a price’ (1 Cor. 6:20; cf. 7:23) and are the property of the Lord who bought them with His own precious blood (1 Pet. 1:18-19).

 

            Lord willing we will continue looking at this section in our next SD.

 

5/13/2023 12:30 PM

 

 

  

PT-3 "The Precept of True Greatness" (Matt. 20:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/12/2023 9:57 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                   Focus:  PT-3 "The Precept of True Greatness"

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matt. 20:26-27

 

            Message of the verses:  “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;”

 

            The first thing that I want to say this morning is that there is no way that I will be finishing this section today.  I said yesterday that that would happen, but after further looking at what we have in this section I have come to the conclusion that it will take several more days to finish.  I certainly enjoy looking at John MacArthur’s commentaries, and listening to his sermons, of which I have over 2600, and usually listen to them while I am taking my walk each day.  He never gives what is called an “airplane view” as he digs deep into the Word of God to find, as my old friend used to say “nuggets of gold.”  My friend that I am talking about has been with the Lord for a while now and I miss emailing my Spiritual Diaries to him.  He lived most of his life in Brazil, and when we both were younger he stated that he owned a 4 X 6 piece of property in Brazil and that is where he was buried.  He became sick when his children, also living there were coming back to the US and the Lord took him home to be with him before he would have moved.

 

            John MacArthur writes “Servant is from diakonos, from which the term deacon us derived.  The original Greek word was purely secular, referring to a person who did menial labor, such as house cleaning or serving tables.  It was not necessarily a term of dishonor but simply described the lowest level of hired help, who needed little training or skill.

 

            “But Christ elevated diakonos to a place of great significance, using it to describe His most faithful and favored disciples.  He could have chosen any number of more noble words to characterize obedient discipleship, but He chose this one because it best reflects the selfless, humble life that He honors.  It is also the life that He Himself exemplified, as He would go on to say (v. 28).”  “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.’”

 

            The surest mark of the true servant is willing sacrifice for the sake of others in the name of Christ.  The fraud servant avoids suffering, while the true servant accepts it.

 

            As a person studies the New Testament they will discover that Paul had a pure, genuine heart of a servant.  Paul readily acknowledged his apostleship and the divine authority that came with that unique, high office.  However he even more readily acknowledged that his office and authority belonged  to God and were only entrusted to him as a steward as seen in 1 Cor. 4:1 “Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”  Paul wrote earlier to the proud, self-centered, factious, and worldly Corinthians in 3:5 “What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.”  I will conclude this SD with what Paul says in this letter sarcastically in 1 Corinthians 4:8-13.

 

“8 You are already filled, you have already become rich, you have become kings without us; and indeed, I wish that you had become kings so that we also might reign with you. 9 For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are distinguished, but we are without honor. 11 To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed, and are roughly treated, and are homeless; 12 and we toil, working with our own hands; when we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure; 13 when we are slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.”

 

            There is more to say about this subject which, Lord willing we will look at tomorrow.

 

5/12/2023 10:28 AM

 

 

 

 

PT-2 "The Precept of True Greatness" (Matt. 20:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/11/2023 10:11 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                   Focus:  PT-2 “The Precept of True Greatness”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 20:26-27

 

            Message of the verses:  “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;”

 

            In the last SD that I wrote on this subject and I learned that Jesus turned the world’s greatness upside down, and this can be seen in these two verses.  I have to go back and think about what happened to me when the Lord saved me.  I have written about this on different SD’s, but I think that it also fits in here.  I became a believer on the 26^th of January in 1974, and I can say that this was really the last thing on my mind at that time.  I was visiting a friend of mine in Florida by myself, as I had gotten married in August of 1973.  This was my second marriage, as the first one ended in a way that was very difficult and hard on me.  Here I was visiting a friend of mine in the sunny south away from the very cold Cleveland, Ohio.  My friend was a manager of a night club near Orlando, Florida.  When I got there he told me about a series of tapes that he had, which were on the end times.  I began to listen to them, one each day.  It was at that time when the Holy Spirit began a work of salvation in my heart, something that I know now was not something that I could do on my own.  It is called an effectual call from the Spirit of God, which is His part in the salvation of men.  God chose me in eternity past, Jesus came to earth and died in my place and the Holy Spirit gives the effectual call, and once that comes to a person they will accept it and thus realize that they are a sinner, and in need of salvation, something they cannot do on their own, and then confess that they are a sinner and invite the Lord Jesus Christ into their life to save them, which is what will happen.  Now why am I writing about my salvation experience in this SD, and what does it have to do with verses 26 and 27 of Matthew 20?  Well in the human sense of things it does not really make sense, as it really when I first became saved it did not all make sense to me. 

 

            These two verses, in a human sense do not really make sense.  Humaningly a person thinks that they must do something on their own in order to make something out of themselves, (to become great).  That is not the right way of looking at things from a Biblical sense.  Let’s look at two verses from Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians.  “Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others; even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority” (1 Thess. 2:6).  “It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:14).  John MacArthur writes “The way to that divine and eternal glory, which comes from God, is the way of renouncing the worldly and temporal glory that comes from men.  The way to God’s glory is the way of the servant.  Man’s focus must be on rendering spiritual service with consummate excellence and leaving the success of that service to the Lord.”

 

            I hope that in once again giving my testimony of my salvation and then giving this quotation from MacArthur’s commentary shows that it is all about the Lord.  I am not saying that we do not work after we are saved, as I have mentioned many times Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  The work comes after we are saved as we depend on the Holy Spirit to show us what work that we are to do for the Lord.  Sometimes, I suppose many times the Bible shows us things that are the direct opposite of human things.  We bring glory to God by doing what He has called us to do, not what we do humaningly on our own. Once again I go back to what I wrote earlier in this SD and what I wrote in my last SD “Jesus turned the world’s greatness upside down.”  If a believer has the desire to bring glory to the Lord then He must do it His way.

 

            Well I have to say that this SD may seem to be a bit unusual, but I hope that the Lord will allow whoever reads this to make sense of what I am trying to say. 

 

            I will close with a quotation from MacArthur’s commentary and then, Lord willing will try and finish this subject in the next SD.  “Jesus was speaking of being a true servant, not a sham.  He did not have in mind the ‘public servant’ who uses his office for personal gain and power.  Godly greatness comes from genuine humility.  Only God knows a person’s heart, and Paul assures us that the Lord ‘will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God’ (1 Cor. 4:5).’”

 

5/11/2023 10:50 AM

PT-1 "The Precept of True Greatness" (Matt. 20:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/10/2023 10:29 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                   Focus:  PT-1 “The Precept of True Greatness”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 20:26-27

 

            Message of the verses:  “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;”

 

            These verses are telling its readers that what they thought about greatness was not the truth.  Jesus turned the world’s greatness upside down.  The self-serving, self-promoting, self-glorying ways of the world are the antithesis of spiritual greatness.  Those have no place in God’s kingdom, and they are not to be so among you Jesus told the Twelve.  Jesus told the Twelve in other places the same thing that He would tell Pilate, and that is “My Kingdom is not of this world.”

 

            John MacArthur writes “The world’s way of greatness is like a pyramid.  The prestige and power of the great person is built on the many subordinate persons beneath him.  But in the kingdom, the pyramid is inverted.  As the great commentator R. C. H. Lenski has observed, God’s ‘great men are not sitting on the top of lesser men, but bearing lesser men on their backs.’

 

            “Unfortunately, however, there are still many people in the church who, like James and John, continually seek recognition, prestige, and power by manipulating and controlling others to their own selfish advantage.  A tragic number of Christian leaders and celebrates have gained great followings by appealing to people’s emotions and worldly appetites.  But that is not to be so among Christ’s disciples today any more than among the Twelve.”

 

            Jesus would go on to explain that it is not wrong to desire usefulness to God, only wrong to seek the world’s kind of greatness.  In the writings of Paul he pointed out that “it is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do” (1 Tim. 3:1). Paul goes on to point out more in verses2-7 “2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. 4 He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity 5 (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), 6 and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. 7 And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.”  From these verses we can conclude that the standards for an overseer in Christ’s church are high.  But the man who is willing to meet those standards for the Lord’s sake and in the Lord’s power will have the Lord’s blessing. 

 

            Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever wishes to become great among you, and He is speaking to be great by God’s standards rather than men’s, shall be your servant.”  Jesus was not, as some have suggested, contradicting what He had just taught.  Jesus is teaching about an entirely different kind of greatness than the sort James and John were seeking and the kind that the world promotes.  This kind of greatness that He is teaching is pleasing to the Lord, because it is humble and self-giving rather than proud and self-serving.  The way to the world’s greatness is through pleasing and being served by men; the way to God’s greatness is through pleasing Him and serving others in His name.  In God’s eyes, the one who is great is the one who is a willing servant. 

 

            While I was listening to MacArthur’s sermon on this subject I learned an interesting thing.  In the church the word deacon speaks of being a servant, being helpful.  This was the word that the Holy Spirit used for this office.  However in the Greek world that word was used of a person doing menial work that they were hired to do, like taking the trash out or cutting the lawn or other things like that.  I think that it can be understood what the Spirit of God chose that word for leaders in the church.  Another word that was used to describe people like this, as Paul described himself, and that word is “underrower,” a slave who was on the bottom of a boat chained to his seat making the boat move through the water.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I desire to remember that the things that I do for the Lord are things that He chose for me to do for Him before the world was made.  Therefore I desire to do them to bring glory to my Lord.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Humility and revival, along with memorization of Phil. 4:8 are things I desire to work on today.

 

5/10/2023 11:28 AM  

"How To Be Great" (Matt. 20:26-28)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/9/2023 9:53 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                Focus:  “How To Be Great”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matt. 20:26-28

 

            Message of the verses:  “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.’”

 

            What we will be doing in this SD is to look first of all at the introduction to these verses and then over the next few days go over the sub-sections as we look further into these verses.

 

            John MacArthur writes the following short introduction to these verses:  “This simple, clear passage is one of the most beautiful in the gospels.  The principle it teaches needs little explanation, but it is in great need of emulation by those who call Jesus Lord.”  Now I have to say that I am not sure as to what the word emulation means and have been trying to understand it so that I can understand where MacArthur is going with these verses.  The word “emulation” is used two times in the Word of God, in the KJV of the Bible.  Let us look at Galatians 5:20 and then look at the Greek word that is translated “emulation” and what its meaning is.

 

 “2205 ζῆλος zelos dzay’-los

 

from 2204; n m/n; TDNT-2:877,297;  {See TDNT 284 }

 

AV-zeal 6, envying 5, indignation 2, envy 1, fervent mind 1, jealousy 1, emulation 1; 17

 

1) excitement of mind, ardour, fervour of spirit

1a) zeal, ardour in embracing, pursuing, defending anything

1a1) zeal in behalf of, for a person or thing

1a2) the fierceness of indignation, punitive zeal

1b) an envious and contentious rivalry, jealousy

 

The following is a sentence that gives an example of how to use emulation:  “At the commencement of his new career he enriched the academical collection with many memoirs, which excited a noble emulation between him and the Bernoullis, though this did not in any way affect their friendship. It was at this time that he carried the integral calculus to a higher degree of perfection, invented the calculation of sines, reduced analytical operations to a greater simplicity, and threw new light on nearly all parts of pure mathematics.”

 

            I hope that this helps us to see where we are going as we look at these verses.

 

John MacArthur then writes the following:  “First Jesus presents the precept and then the pattern.”

 

            It is my hope to begin to look at “The Precept of True Greatness” in our next SD.

 

5/9/2023 10:19 AM

"Dominant Dictatorship" & "Charismatic Control" (Matt. 20:25 a & b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/8/2023 10:45 AM

 

My Worship Time                               Focus:  “Dominant Dictatorship” & “Charismatic Control”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                          Reference:  Matthew 20:25 a & b

 

            Message of the verse:  “But Jesus called them to Himself and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, (20:25a).

 

            We will be looking at two rather short sections from the 29^th chapter of Matthew today and begin with 20:25a. 

 

            It is evident that the other disciples had been standing near to Jesus and they had overheard what He had been discussing with James, John, and their mother.  So He called them to Himself, and He reminded them of another wrong way of achieving spiritual greatness besides the two they had just demonstrated.  This could be called the way of the dominant dictator.  MacArthur writes “Katakwrieuo (lord it over) is a strong term carrying the idea of ruling down on people, the prepositional prefix kata intensifying the verb.

 

            “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their subjects,’ Jesus said.  Virtually every government that day was a form of dictatorship, often of a tyrannical sort.  Gentiles such as the pharaohs, Antiochus Epiphanes, the caesars, the Herods, and Pilate—under all of whom the Jews had suffered greatly.”

 

            In our world today we can see that one of the reasons many countries in the third world are susceptible to the deceitful attractions of Communism is that they have lived so long under oppressive dictatorship.  It was because of many hears under an oppressive dictatorship that they fall to Communist rule. 

 

Charismatic Control: “and their great men exercise authority over them (Matt. 20:25b).

 

            There is a fourth wrong way to achieve spiritual greatness and that is that of charismatic, manipulative control.  MacArthur writes “The expression great men (megaloi) carries the idea of distinguished, eminent, illustrious, or noble.  It represents those who have high personal appeal and have achieved high stature in the eyes of the world and who seek to control others by personal influence.  They can be seen as different in style from those in verse 25a.  Whereas the dominant dictator uses the sheer power of his position and is often hated, the charismatic leader uses the power of popularity and personality.  By flattery, charm, and attractiveness, he manipulates others to serve his own ends.

 

            “Exercise authority over also translates a strong and intensified Greek verb, combining kata (down) and exousiazo (to have authority), and could be rendered “to play the tyrant.”

 

            As we look at church history, including what happens in the church today we can see that it has never been without self-seeking leaders who capture the fascination of the people who willingly follow them while they make merchandise of the gospel in order to feather their nests and build up their reputations.  Let us look at 2 Timothy 4:3 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.”  Perhaps we could say that the time has come, instead of will come.  These kind of people take advantage of selfish gullible believers. I think of a verse in Acts where it talks about the Bereans who were more noble than the Thessalonians for they searched the Bible to see if what Paul was preaching lined up with the truth of the Bible.  This is how you can make sure if a church leader is speaking the truth.

 

5/8/2023 11:14 AM