Thursday

Related Verses
Matt. 3:15-16
15 But Jesus answered and said to him, Permit it for now, for it is fitting for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. Then he permitted Him.
16 And having been baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him.

Matt. 11:29
29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

2 Tim. 1:6-7
6 For which cause I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
7 For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of sobermindedness.

Rom. 8:2, 4, 6, 10-11, 16
2 For the law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death.
4 That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.
6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.
10 But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
11 And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.
16 The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.

Related Reading
As the first God-man, Christ lived on earth in a particular way for the accomplishing of God’s eternal economy, which ultimately consummates in the New Jerusalem. The very center of the four Gospels is Christ. Matthew 1:18 and 20 say that this God-man’s conception was of the Holy Spirit. The God-man was one person but of two sources. The first source is divine, and the second source is human. He was one person of two natures—human and divine. 

Christ’s ministry commenced through His baptism (3:13-17). Before He carried out any part of His ministry, the first thing He did was to be baptized to fulfill the righteousness according to the way of righteousness brought in by John (v. 15; 21:32). 

The Lord Jesus recognized that, according to His flesh (His humanity—John 1:14; Rom. 1:3; 8:3), He was good for nothing but death and burial. Jesus needed to be baptized because He became flesh, and the flesh, in the eyes of God, is good for nothing but death and burial. To bury such a dead person by baptism is the way of righteousness. (CWWL, 1994–1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” pp. 473-475) 

—

In the performing of the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, He trained His disciples…In Matthew 11:29 the Lord told the disciples that they needed to learn from Him, indicating that He was their pattern. 

Matthew 14:19 says that He took the five loaves and two fish and when He was going to bless them, He looked up to heaven…Looking up to heaven indicates that He was looking up to His Father in heaven. This indicates that He realized the source of the blessing was not Him. He was the sent One…The sending One, the Father, should be the source of blessing. 

Here is a great lesson for us to learn. Most readers of the Bible would pay attention to the miracle of creating something from nothing performed by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 14. But we need to see the pattern that the Lord set up for us here. We need to remember that He looked up to the Father in heaven and blessed the five loaves and two fish in front of His disciples. After His blessing in this way, He told the disciples what to do. No doubt, what He did was a pattern for the disciples to learn from Him. According to this pattern, we have to realize that we are not the Sender but the ones sent by the Sender. Regardless of how much we can do, we should realize that we still need the blessing from the source, from our Sender, that we can pass on to the benefited ones. This is a big lesson that I want to stress. 

After performing the miracle, the Lord went up to the mountain privately to pray (v. 23; cf. Luke 6:12). 

The Lord did not remain in the issue of the miracle with the crowds but went away from them to be with the Father privately on the mountain in prayer. If we go to a certain place and have a great success, would we leave right away, or would we remain in this big success to enjoy it? We need to see and follow the pattern of the Lord Jesus…The word privately is very meaningful. This means He did not let the people know that He was going to pray. Otherwise, they would have followed Him…I like these three phrases: to be with the Father, on the mountain, and in prayer. We should learn from the Lord’s pattern here by exercising to be with Him on the mountain in prayer. His looking up to heaven means that He had no trust in Himself. His going up to the mountain means that He wanted to be with the Father in prayer. (CWWL, 1994–1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” pp. 561, 564-565) 

Further Reading: CWWL, 1994–1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” chs. 1, 4—6, 8, 10, 13—14, 16