SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 8/28/2012 9:45:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Service
Leads to Honor
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Mark
9:30-40
Message
of the verses: As mentioned in
yesterday’s SD we will once again look into the 9th chapter of the
book of Mark. I have mentioned in an
earlier SD that one of my goals this year was to look at a whole chapter of
Mark each month by listening to it and then listen to sermons on it from John
MacArthur and then break up the chapter into sections and comment on it. I actually began to look at the Gospel of
Mark in December of 2011. Today we will
pick up our study of Mark’s Gospel in the 9th chapter at verse
thirty.
Service
Leads to Honor: (Mark 9:30-50): I want to begin by just looking at Mark
9:30-40 and then see how far we can get.
“30 From there they went out and
began to go through Galilee, and He did not want anyone to know about it.
31 For He was teaching His disciples and
telling them, "The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men,
and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days
later." 32 But they did not understand this statement, and they were
afraid to ask Him. 33 They came to Capernaum; and when He was in the house, He
began to question them, "What were you discussing on the way?" 34 But
they kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which of
them was the greatest. 35 Sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them,
"If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of
all." 36 Taking a child, He set him before them, and taking him in His
arms, He said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one child like this in My name
receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent
Me." 38 John said to Him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons
in Your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following
us." 39 But Jesus said, "Do not hinder him, for there is no one who
will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of
Me. 40 “For he who is not against us is for us.”
I suppose that humanly speaking it
would have been hard for Jesus and His disciples to just disappear from the
crowds for Jesus was so to say “the only show in town” and what I mean by that
is that no one had ever seen anything like the miracles that He had done and no
one had ever heard a man speak like this before, and for that matter no one has
since either. Jesus wanted to make some
time to just teach His disciples things that they would need to know for in
just a few short months He would be gone from them, and He was the one that
they relied on for everything, so the lessons had to begin with more intensity
for His disciples. Now when we read
through this Gospel and we look at some of the things that His disciples did
and said we sometimes kind of shake our heads wondering why they would say and
do things like they did. Then when we
get to the book of Acts we see the disciples in a whole different light, doing
things by faith, stepping out on faith and even being tortured for the cause of
Christ. What was the difference? For the answer to that question let us look
at several verses from the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John. “18 "I will not leave you as orphans; I
will come to you. 25 "These things
I have spoken to you while abiding with you. 26
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My
name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said
to you.” We see that Jesus tells His
disciples that He would not leave them alone, but that His Father would send
them the Holy Spirit to give them the strength that they need in order to do
what Jesus wanted them to do. We also
see that the Holy Spirit would cause them to remember things that they would
need to remember, and that is why we have the four Gospels. I want to look at one more section of
Scripture from the book of Acts that will shed a bit more light on this
subject: “6 So when they had come
together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are
restoring the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said to them, "It is not for
you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8
but you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part
of the earth."
We see in verse thirty-two that the
disciples did not know what raising from the dead meant, and when we look at
the book of Acts we see this as one of the major themes, if not the major them
of the book of acts. Paul writes a whole
chapter on the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15, for without the hope of the
resurrection we as believers have no hope at all. Paul says “If we have hoped
in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” (1Cor. 15:19)
Paul writes to Titus saying “looking for the blessed hope and the
appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, (Titus
2:13) The believers hope is the return
of Jesus Christ, but in order for Him to return He had to have been raised from
the dead. The point in all of this is
that His disciples had their lives transformed through the coming of the Holy
Spirit, and everyone who is a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as their
Savior and Lord has the very same Holy Spirit in them to lead them and to guide
them into the life that God desires you to live.
The next thing we see in this
section is arguing amongst the disciples, so even though they were grieved
because they did not understand about the resurrection they still had time to
argue among themselves as to who would be the greatest. It looks like they got over their grief in
kind of a hurry. Jesus had just told
them that He would suffer and die and they wanted to know which of them would
be the greatest. This may all have come
about because Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John up on the mountain with
Him and left the others behind. How
would Jesus teach them humility? Well He
would use a child to teach them, and there was a time when mothers brought
their children to see Jesus and the disciples tried to stop them from seeing
Him, so it seems that there record with children was not a good one.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “To teach them
(and us) a lesson on honor, Jesus set a child before them and explained that
the way to be first is to be last, and the way to be last is to be the servant
of all. The unspoken child is an example
of submission and humility. A child
knows he is a child and acts like a child, and that is his secret of attracting
love and care. The child who tries to
impress us by acting like an adult does not get the same attention.
“True humility means knowing yourself, accepting yourself,
being yourself—and giving of yourself for others. The world’s philosophy is that you are
‘great’ if others are working for you, but Christ’s message is that greatness
comes from our serving others. Since the
words ‘child’ and ‘servant’ are the same in the Aramaic language, it is easy to
see why Jesus connected the two. If we
have the heart of a child, we will have little attitude of servants, we will
welcome the children as the representatives of Jesus Christ and the Father.”
At first glance it seems that verses
38-40 do not fit into the context of what is going on, but we see that John
takes it upon himself to defend all the disciples by talking about a person
that they had seen casting out demons by doing it in the name of Jesus. Now we must remember that the disciples whom
Jesus left while going on the mountain could not cast out the demon in the deaf
boy. Dr. Wiersbe points out “To use the
name of Jesus is the same as working under His authority so the men had no
right to stop the man.”
We see a similar statement by Jesus
in Mark 12:30 as the one in Mark 9:40, “’He who is not with Me is against Me;’”
What we see in these verses is a dividing line, you are either for and with
Jesus or you are not with Him and therefore against Him. We don’t know when the disciples saw the
casting out of demons by these men, but Jesus said that they were with Him.
We don’t have to perform great
miracles to prove our love for Jesus, as seen by the example of the child that
Jesus uses as an illustration. When we
lovingly receive a child or in compassion give a cup of cold water to those who
need it we are showing our love for Jesus Christ, we are giving evidence that
we have a humble heart of one who is a servant.
In tomorrow’s SD we will learn that
Jesus did not treat the statement made by John lightly, but in fact, He goes on
to explain the danger of causing others to stumble, and this will cause them to
stop serving the Lord.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Humility
is not really something that you can work on, for once you think you have it,
then it is lost from you. The theme
verse in the book of Mark is truly about humility as it states: “"For even the Son of Man did not come
to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.’” (Mark 10:45)
Sometimes it is hard to help others because you really don’t feel like
it but when you go past your feelings and help you feel better that you have
done it.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Do thing in the power of the Lord that I know that I should do.
Memory
verses: Continue to review 2Peter 1:1-11
8/28/2012
11:37:08 AM
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