SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/21/2021 10:12 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Healing the
deaf man
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 9:33a
Message
of the verse: “And after the demon
was cast out, the dumb man spoke.”
We come to the conclusion of the
section in Matthew from 9:27-33a as we look at the healing of the dumb man (the
man who can’t hear or speak because he was possessed by a demon).
Matthew tells us that Jesus touched
the man, in a similar way that He touched the two blind men that he was healed
and the demon was cast out. We don’t
hear what Jesus said to the demon in order to cast him out but we did see how
He did it in 8:32 “And He said to them,
"Go!" And they came out and went into the swine, and the whole herd
rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters.”
Another thing
we don’t know about and that is the man’s faith, whether or not he had true
faith in order to be saved or not, so this is a mystery to us. MacArthur writes “As far as we know, he made
no profession of faith in Jesus and received nothing from Him except physical
healing. Perhaps through the continued witness of his two friends, he may later
have placed his faith in Christ and received eternal life. But at this time his healing seems only to
have been physical.”
Now we
want to go back to the primary focus of the passage we have been looking at and
that has to do with the blind men, and in this story we see a beautiful analogy
of the pattern of salvation. First their
physical blindness is a picture of spiritual blindness, and so first they did
acknowledged their sinfulness.
Next we
see that the blind men acknowledge Jesus as the Son of David, the Messiah, in
the same way that the saved person must acknowledge Him as Lord and
Savior. Third, they came seeking God’s
mercy as they understood that what they needed they did not deserve. A sinful person must realize that there is
nothing on their own that they can do in order to have eternal life and must
ask the Lord for His mercy in order to be saved. Fourth, these men trusted in Jesus for
healing, just as the lost must trust in Him for salvation. So it was on the basis of faith that they
were converted. Fifth, by disobeying the
Lord, they displayed the well-meaning weakness that often follows
conversion. When a person is saved they
are a baby in Christ and these men were undiscerning and careless, placing
their own judgment above the Lord’s, something many new believers do. Sixth, and last we find that they were also
useful to the Lord because they brought others to Him. The following is a quotation from George
Lansing Taylor who wrote:
O Saviour, we are blind and dumb,
To Thee for sight and speech we come;
Touch Thou our eyes with truth’s bright
rays,
Teach Thou our lips to sing Thy praise.
Help us to feel our mournful night,
And seek, through all things, for Thy
light,
Till the glad sentence we receive,
“be it to you as you believe.”
Then swift the dumb to Thee we’ll bring,
Till all Thy grace shall see, and sing.”
Our next section to look at is from
Matthew 9:33b-35, and MacArthur’s 9th chapter from his second book
on his commentary on Matthew is entitled “Responding to Jesus’ Power.” I look forward to look at this section.
6/21/2021 10:34
AM
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