FBC Daily Devotional – May 7, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:06

Well, good Friday to you, wrapping up the first week of May, work week and so forth, looking forward to the weekend, and I trust you're going to be able to get to the

00:17

Lord's house on Sunday, be able to gather together to worship the Lord and and trust it'll be a good day of assembling and hearing from the

00:28

Lord and serving Him with our sacrifices of praise and offering and submission, hearing

00:37

His Word and submitting to His Word. Well, I hope you can do that on the

00:43

Lord's Day. If not, I encourage you to tune in to the live stream at well, we're doing the

00:49

Sunday school at 930 and then 1030 a morning service and then should be starting this

00:56

Sunday live streaming the evening service at 6 o 'clock. So look forward to that if you can make it.

01:04

If you can't, I mean if you can't make it in person, at least you can make it online for those services.

01:10

Well, I remember when I was a kid, there was a there were a couple of guys in my grade, sixth grade,

01:20

I believe it was, and on into seventh grade actually, who were, you know, they were just plain bullies.

01:29

You probably have experienced this as well, but one of them in particular was this a little guy.

01:35

I mean, he he wasn't big at all. He's just a scrappy little kid. I was bigger than he.

01:43

I was never much of a fighter, if you can imagine that, but this guy, his name was

01:51

Vince, and he was he was shorter than I and he just wasn't that big of a guy. But he had a couple of friends who were much bigger.

02:01

In fact, one of them, I think, should have been should have been two grades ahead of us.

02:07

He was that much bigger and he was, yeah, you get what I'm saying. But anyhow, when those guys ran together in a pack, they were pretty fearsome, you know.

02:22

They could get their way pretty easily with just about anybody. But when you get get them alone, and particularly the little guy, he was he was pretty mild.

02:33

He was pretty meek. He didn't cause too much trouble when he was by himself. Well, I mentioned that.

02:40

I was I was reminded of that when I read a couple of different phrases in today's reading in Mark's chapters 11 and 12.

02:51

And in this in this passage, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees.

02:56

And the Pharisees were the religious bullies of the day, if you will. What they had to say carried pretty heavy weight with the people.

03:07

So if the Pharisees said, you needed to wash your hands in this particular way, and so forth, and people, okay, we need to wash our hands in this particular way, etc, etc.

03:16

All right, so they were they were kind of the ones who could throw their weight around with the rest of the crowd.

03:22

And and everybody, you know, they kind of respected the Pharisees and thought they were the thought they were the you know, they were the pious ones and better listen to them.

03:35

But for all of their bravado and for their hostility even expressed toward Jesus and his disciples, these

03:43

Pharisees were really a rather fearful lot. And and I say that because when they confronted

03:51

Jesus about his authority, remember that they came to Jesus and they said, By what authority do you do this?

03:57

Who gives you the right to do this? Jesus turned the tables on him and said, well, let me ask you a question.

04:05

The the ministry of John, was it from heaven or from men?

04:11

Then the Pharisees, you know, they got together with themselves and said, oh, you know, how do we answer this? You know, because if we say he's from, that John's authority was from heaven, then he'll ask us why didn't we listen to him?

04:23

And we don't really believe it was from heaven anyway. But we can't say it was from men because, here's the key, here's the deal.

04:31

Verse 32 says, if we say from men, they feared the people.

04:38

They feared the people because all the people counted John to have been a prophet indeed.

04:44

So these were men who showed a lot of bravado and expressed like, we got power.

04:52

But in reality, they were afraid of the people. They didn't want the people coming back against them and denouncing them.

05:01

So they were, showed some fear of the people. Well then, as this, the story goes on here, the passage continues.

05:11

Jesus then tells a parable that is very clearly directed at these, at these

05:18

Pharisees. It's the parable of the wicked vine dressers and they don't like it.

05:24

The Pharisees don't like this parable. They don't like it at all because they recognized very easily, very quickly, that Jesus was targeting them.

05:35

And they didn't like that and they didn't like Jesus' teaching. They didn't like to hear anything that made them look bad.

05:42

And Jesus had a lot of things to say that made the Pharisees and the Sadducees and so forth look bad.

05:49

So, their response to that was, we got to get rid of this guy. We got to get, we got to get a hold of him, seize him and somehow get him out of the way, get him out of the picture, shut him up.

06:04

But, we see in verse 12, that when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them.

06:18

So, they left him and went away. They wanted to take Jesus. They wanted to seize a hold of him, but they were afraid.

06:27

They were afraid of the multitude. Well, you know how, how easy it is for the bullies to be really bold when they're in the majority, and they can pretty much have their way.

06:43

But these bullies, these Pharisees at least, they weren't really religious leaders after all, were they?

06:52

Because if they had been truly religious leaders, they wouldn't have cared what the multitude said.

06:58

They wouldn't have cared what the crowd had to say. If they really had this conviction in their heart that these things ought to be, then they ought to be.

07:10

This is the way it needs to be, regardless of what happens to me. Ah, but no, bullies are afraid of the crowd.

07:19

Bullies are afraid when they're outnumbered. And so these men were. Well, I'm not sure if you face any bullies in your life, and that's not really,

07:30

I guess, the point here. But I guess the emphasis is, the idea is, that we shouldn't be allowed, we shouldn't allow ourselves to be bullied by the religious zealots who want to oppose biblical truth, biblical truth, for their own agenda.

07:52

And regardless of whether they're afraid, it doesn't much matter. Well, I trust this has been insightful in some way today, for these, giving us some insight into the real nature of these religious leaders, quote -unquote, who really, really, were kind of a fearful lot.

08:13

Well, Father, I pray today that as we look forward to this weekend, we would look forward to worshipping you in spirit and in truth.

08:21

And I pray that you would bless your word to our hearts today, and we ask it in Jesus' name.

08:28

Amen. All right. Well, have a good Friday, a wonderful weekend, and I trust that God will give you some rest this weekend, and especially give you a blessing as you worship