SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 9/23/2012 8:25:12 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
The First Shall Be Last
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Mark 10:17-22
Message
of the verses: Since we took almost
a month to cover the 119th Psalm I have not gotten to the book of
Mark much this month and so I have decided to cover the rest of the 10th
chapter of Mark before returning to the Psalms.
We have already done two messages from the tenth chapter of Mark so far
this month.
17 As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran
up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, "Good Teacher, what shall I
do to inherit eternal life?" 18 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you
call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 "You know the commandments, ’DO NOT
MURDER, DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, Do not
defraud, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’" 20 And he said to Him,
"Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up." 21 Looking
at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, "One thing you lack: go
and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven; and come, follow Me." 22 But at these words he was saddened, and
he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.
When we first began to look at this
tenth chapter of Mark I quoted a section from Dr. Wiersbe’s introductory
commentary that is helpful as we make our way through this chapter: “He (Jesus) could have preached long sermons;
but instead, He gave us these five important lessons that can be expressed in
five concise, paradoxical statements.”
He also made this statement ad he described what a paradox is, “A
paradox is a statement that seems to contradict itself and yet expresses a
valid truth or principle.” Example would
be the statement that Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 2Cor. 12:10, “When I am
weak, then am I strong.” One could ask
how Paul could make a statement like this, but as a believer when we come to
the end of our strength and decide to rely upon the strength of the Lord it is
then that we will be strong.
I remember shortly after becoming a
believer and shortly after becoming a member of the church that I attended for
over 32 years that our Pastor stated one morning that it would make a good sermon
if he would go through the NT and speak of all of the things that happened at
the feet of Jesus, for there are many times when people came to the feet of
Jesus, and we see in this section that a rich young ruler is at the feet of Jesus,
but in all of the incidents when this happened he is the only one who went away
worse than he came, and this man had a lot of things in his favor, and one of
them was that he knew much about the OT.
This was a young man, and yet it is said that he was some kind of a
ruler. John MacArthur speculates that
perhaps he was a synagogue ruler. At any
rate we know that he was young, rich, and that he knew his Old Testament. He surely shows good manners and good morals
and he has these things going for him too.
People today can have these same
qualities and it will do them no good when it comes to eternal spiritual
qualities, for this young man did not have a high value of salvation, for in
his mind he thought that he could do something to earn it, and there are many
today who feel the same way, for they want to put God into a box and bring Him
down to their level, but that will never happen. God never changes for He is the same
yesterday, today, and forever, and this is one of the things that gives me the
desire to worship Him. Like people today
this young man thought that at the end of his life he would have more good
works in his favor than bad works and so he would be ushered into the kingdom
of God on that basis. The problem with
this is it is not true. God only wants
perfect people or should we say sinless people in His presence and that means
that Someone had to pay the price of our sins in order for us to be justified
before a holy God, and this rich young ruler was looking him straight in the
face and did not realize it.
When this man, and people today take
the approach of earning their way to heaven they make salvation cheap, and
although it costs those who accept the death of Jesus in their place free, it
was by no means cheap, especially to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father who
sent Him to accomplish this. Here is
something to think about along those lines.
I want to quote the first thing that we find that the Lord Jesus said
while on planet earth, “He said, "Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you
know that I had to be here, dealing with the things of my Father?’” (Luke 2:49 Message.) We see this theme throughout the Gospels that
Jesus was on a mission and so that is the firth thing that we read that He spoke
of when he was a young man. Now what is
the last thing that we read that Jesus said?
We see that Jesus’ last words from the cross are that “It is
finished.” So when we put these things
together we see that Jesus began His
life on earth to do His Father’s will and at the end of His life fulfilled His
Father’s will for Him.
This young man calls Jesus “Good
Teacher,” and Jesus then remarks at this by asking him why he calls Him good,
for no one is good but God was Jesus’ reply.
By making this statement to Jesus we get the impression that he was
trying to flatter the Lord. Dr. Wiersbe
writes “the Jewish rabbis did not allow the word good to be applied to
them. Only God was good, and the word
must be reserved for Him alone. Jesus
was not denying that He was God; rather, He was affirming it. He just wanted to be sure that the young man
really knew what he was saying and that he was willing to accept the
responsibilities involved.” The rabbis
were right, for Paul writes in Romans 3:12 “THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE
IS NOT EVEN ONE.’”
Jesus points this young man to the
Law for He wanted him to see himself as a sinner. The first part of the Ten Commandments speaks
of how men should view God while the second is about man to man relationships
or people relationships. We must remember
that the Law of God speaks of the holiness of God, and it was there to show us
that God is perfect and we fall short of perfection and thus shows are need for
a Savior. However this young man did not
see himself as a sinner, for He tells Jesus that he has kept the Law. I have been told that the hardest commandment
of the Ten Commandments to keep is the tenth.
“’You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your
neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his
donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Exodus 20:17).’” This commandment is the one that this young
man had broken, and I believe that the reason that it is the hardest to keep is
because it works in a person’s mind. If
a person sees that his neighbor has a beautiful wife, in his mind he may covet
this man’s wife, or perhaps the wife is a hard worker and he desires a hard
working wife the same can be true. A
woman could do the same thing as the man and covet her neighbor’s husband. The point is in this story that this man was
rich, coveted riches and therefore would not follow Jesus for this reason. Paul writes to Timothy “For the love of money
is a root of all sorts of evil (1Tim. 6:10).”
9/23/2012
8:19:58 PM
I did not have a chance to finish
this Spiritual Diary this morning as it took me longer than I thought it would
and we had to leave for church so I decided to add some more this evening. When we got to church our Pastor was
preaching on the parallel passage to this section from the Gospel of Matthew
and so I did get some more insight into this passage.
Jesus is said to have loved this
man, and was probably as saddened as the man was when he left because he could
not give up his riches in order to follow Jesus.
It was during a baptismal service at
our church a few months back that our Pastor allowed a former Pastor who
attends our church to be a part of the baptism of his grandchild. This man was elated to once again be able to
be a part of a baptism and shared a story that goes along with our subject of
this SD, although the outcome is much different. The former Pastor told the story of a young
lady that he had the privilege of baptizing who was told by her father that if
she proceeded in being baptized, which would make her a member of the church
that he would take her out of his will and would not leave to her the one
million dollars that he intended to leave her.
She went ahead with the baptism and after her father died she received
nothing from him. She followed the Lord,
but the rich young ruler decided not to follow the Lord.
It was in the 1950’s that there were
a group of missionaries serving in South America and it was their desire to
communicate with the Aqua Indians, who were a fierce tribe that had little
problems in killing anyone who invaded their territory. The men decided to begin to drop food and
supplies to the Indians in order to make friends with them and then they
decided to land next to a river in order to speak with them. They did make contact with the Indians, but
later that night the Indians killed all of them. Jim Elliot was one of the missionaries who
was killed and he made a statement that is rather famous, and also goes along
with this section. He said “He is no
fool who gives up what he cannot keep, to get what he cannot lose.” The young lady in the story I told did this,
but the rich young ruler did not understand this.
Lord willing we will continue to
look at the rest of the story in the next SD.
9/23/2012
8:40:43 PM
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