SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/15/2021 7:57 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Cry of the Men”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
9:27-32
Message of the verses: “27 As Jesus went
on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out, "Have mercy on us,
Son of David!" 28 When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him,
and Jesus said to them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?"
They said to Him, "Yes, Lord." 29 Then He touched their eyes, saying,
"It shall be done to you according to your faith." 30 And their eyes
were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them: "See that no one knows about
this!" 31 But they went out and spread the news about Him throughout
all that land. 32 As they were going out, a mute, demon-possessed man was
brought to Him.”
We
want to continue “The Right Attitude Toward Jesus” as we begin this SD.
As
these two blind men came to Jesus we can see that they did it not only with a
right understanding of His great worthiness but also with a right understanding
of their own great unworthiness, something all believers have done before they
became believers. MacArthur adds “That
is the attitude of heart that the Lord honors and accepts. Again it is made clear that the person who
comes before God declaring his own goodness is rejected by Him, whereas the one
who mourns over his sin and humbly cries out, ‘God be merciful to me, the
sinner!’ is justified by the Lord (Luke 18:10-14).”
MacArthur
goes on to write the following, something that he wrote earlier which he quotes
here concerning Jesus Christ was mercy incarnate.
“He
was the most merciful human being who ever lived. He reached out to the sick and healed
them. He reached out to the crippled and
gave them legs to walk. He healed the
eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, and the mouths of the dumb. He found prostitutes and tax collectors and
those that were debauched and drunken, and He drew them into the circle of His
love and redeemed them and set them on their feet.
“He
took the lonely and made them feel loved.
He took little children and gathered them into His arms and loved
them. Never was there a person on the
face of the earth with the mercy of this One.
Once a funeral procession came by and He saw a mother weeping because her
son was dead. She was already a widow,
and now she had no child to care for her.
Who would care? Jesus stopped the
funeral procession, put His hand on the casket, and raised the child from the
dead. He cared. (Kingdom Loving Here and Now [Chicago: Moody, 1980], 107)
We
will now look at some different passages about the Lord’s compassion.
Daniel 9:18 “"O
my God, incline Your ear and hear! Open Your eyes and see our desolations and
the city which is called by Your name; for we are not presenting our
supplications before You on account of any merits of our own, but on account of
Your great compassion.” Jeremiah writes
in Lamentation 3:22-23 these very familiar words “22 The LORD’S lovingkindnesses
indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning;
Great is Your
faithfulness.” Hebrews 2:17 “Therefore,
He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a
merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people.”
Ephesians 2:7 “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing
riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Titus 3:5 “He saved us, not on the basis of
deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the
washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.” “Ours is a God of mercy, for healing and for
saving.”
It
is interesting that at the beginning Jesus showed no response to the pleas of
these two blind men, however they continued to cry out even as the entire crowd
moved along with Jesus, they would not give up their cry to Jesus. It seems that Jesus may have been testing
their faith, letting it run to the extremity that would prove that they were
sincere.
It
is not told to us which house that Jesus entered, although it is possible that
it was Peter’s house as that seems to be where He was staying while He was in
Capernaum. “When Jesus came into Peter’s
home, He saw his mother-in-law lying sick in bed with a fever” (Matthew
8:14). This was a really long day for
Jesus as He had been teaching and preaching so it is likely that this is the
house He went to as mentioned it is believed He stayed there while ministering
in Capernaum. While in Judah it is
believed that Jesus was staying at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus in
Bethany, very close to Jerusalem.
MacArthur concludes “Our Lord endured three years of almost total lack
of privacy. Not only were His disciples
His constant companions, but throngs of people followed Him wherever He went.”
Our
next sub-section will be “The Confrontation of the Men” found in these same
verses.
6/15/2021 8:46 AM
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