SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/12/2016 7:58 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Unbelief Is Inconsistent
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 9:13-16
Message of the verses: “13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who
was formerly blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay
and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he
received his sight. And he said to them, "He applied clay to my eyes, and
I washed, and I see." 16 Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying,
"This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath." But
others were saying, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such
signs?" And there was a division among them.”
In today’s
SD we are looking at the first characteristic of willful unbelief that we will
find in this section of John chapter nine and verses 13-34. Paul writes the following to the Ephesians in
Ephesians 2:1-3. 1 And you
were dead in your
trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to
the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of
the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them
we too all formerly
lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the
mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” The people we are dealing with in this
section fit into that category of being dead in their trespasses and sins and
that is why they have this great problem of unbelief. The man born blind however is beginning to
see the truth that not only was he born physically blind, but spiritually blind
and this was not the case of all of those that Jesus healed.
I suppose
that as we look at this section we wonder why it was that this formerly blind
man was brought to the Pharisees, but he was.
MacArthur writes “Beyond seeking an explanation, those who brought the
man to the Pharisees may have wanted to see how their leaders would react to
this blatant violation of the Sabbath restrictions. Whether or not this was a formal inquiry is
not clear, though the fact that the Pharisees put the man out of the synagogue
(v. 34) suggests that they met in some official capacity. Perhaps the Sanhedrin delegated them to
investigate the incident. Whatever the
technical nature of the enclave, it had an official effect.”
The same
questions that were asked of this blind man in verse ten were asked of him in
verse 15, and the same answer was given to them as those who had brought him to
the Pharisees earlier, probably the day before which was the Sabbath day. The problem was as far as they were concerned
was that Jesus had made clay, for to them that was a violation of their Sabbath
rules, although this surely is not mentioned in the Scriptures that this
violates any law breaking, besides the God who gave them the Law was the One
doing this miracle, but because of their spiritual blindness they did not
realize. This bias look at this case was
controlling their investigation, as they did not care about the facts at all,
they only cared about their non-Biblical man made rules.
John
MacArthur writes the following about some of their rules “For example, the Lord
had made mud from His saliva and some dust, which supposedly violated the
prohibition against kneading on the Sabbath.
The rabbinic regulations, also forbade giving medical treatment on the
Sabbath unless a person’s life was in immediate danger, which was obviously not
the case with the blind man.
Additionally, some rabbis taught that it was not permitted to anoint the
eyes with medicine (saliva was thought to have medicinal qualities) on the
Sabbath, though opinion was divided on that issues.”
As we read
through the gospels we find that this was not the first time that Jesus broke
these kind of non-Biblical laws that these Pharisees had added to what the
Bible teaches, for we can look at the following sections for some other
examples: Matthew 12:1-8; Matthew
12:9-13; Luke 13:10-16; 14:1-6; and John 5:9-18. We see that Jesus was not at all afraid of
doing these kind of things in the faces of the Pharisees for He was showing
them and others around them and those who would read about this that they were
wrong about their Sabbath regulations.
Salvation is a heart issue, and it seems that all these Pharisees were interested
was working their way to heaven by keeping their man-made rules.
However we
do see a second group in this investigation asking the question: “How can a man who is a sinner perform such
signs?” MacArthur adds “they wondered,
countering the first group’s reasoning with a syllogism of their own: Only those who are from God can open blind
eyes; Jesus opened blind eyes; therefore Jesus is from God. As a result ‘there was a division among them,’
just as there earlier had been among the crowd (7:40-43).”
Syllogism “an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion
is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions
(premises), each of which shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a
common or middle term not present in the conclusion (e.g., all dogs are
animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs ).” (Thought you may want to know.)
Spiritual meaning for my life today: The other day I made a mistake by not reading
or understanding the “fine print” and it cost me a small amount of money. The point is that I don’t want to be in any
way like these Pharisees and not investigate spiritual matters and make
mistakes in them.
My Steps of Faith for
Today:
Remember the following “I’m putting on the belt of truth. I ask You to make it very clear to me what I
am to accept into my life and what I am to reject. Help me to see clearly the motives of others
as they deal with me and converse with me.
Let me walk in Your truth, making decisions and choices according to
Your plans and purposes for my life.”
Memory verses for the week: (Romans
6:1-3) “1. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may
increase? 2. May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in
it? 3.
Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus have been baptized into His death.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:
“With the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11).
Today’s Bible question: “Who
said ‘My little daughter lies at the point of death’?”
Answer in our next SD.
7/12/2016 8:48 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment