SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/28/2021 12:20 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “The
Rejecting Religionists”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 9:34
Message of the
verse: “34
But the Pharisees were saying, "He casts out the demons by the ruler of
the demons.’”
This statement will be seen later
on, and one thing that I learned about this statement is that this comes near
the middle of Christ’s ministry on earth, and the Scribes and Pharisees have
gone about as low as they could go to make such a statement like this. The statement is no doubt blasphemous, as
they are telling the God of all creation, come in human flesh in order to save
sinners that all of the miracles that He is doing is powered by Satan. The Scribes and Pharisees had gone so far
away from true Judaism in order to stay in control of the people that they
truly believed that Jesus was the true enemy of God, when in fact He was truly
God incarnate.
John MacArthur writes “Because they
could not deny the fact of Jesus’ miracles, they chose to deny the source. And because they refused to recognize Jesus
as the Messiah of God, they declared Him to be an agent of Satan who ‘casts out
the demons by the ruler of the demons.’
They could not assail the miracles themselves, because they were too
numerous, public, and provable; instead, they foolishly assailed the One who
performed them.”
I
have mentioned that we will see this kind of statement later on found in the 12th
chapter of Matthew, as we read that He “casts out demons by Beelzebul the ruler
of the demons” (Matt. 12:24). Now
Beelzebul was probably a form of Beelzebub and this means “lord of the flies”
which is the pagan Philistine deity considered to be the prince of demons, Satan himself.
We will see that Jesus points out later on in verses 25-27 the following
“25 And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them,
"Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house
divided against itself will not stand. 26 “If Satan casts out Satan, he is
divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? 27 “If I by Beelzebul
cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason
they will be your judges.” It was right
after this 12th chapter that Jesus begins to speak in parables as it
seems that He gave up on teaching the truths of the Bible, but taught in hidden
ways, the parables, and then explained them to His disciples.
What
we have here is when an unbeliever is determined not to believe, no fact or
reason, no matter how obvious and convincing, can enlighten him. The person who is sold out to darkness
refuses to recognize the light, and we must remember that Paul wrote that Satan
was the one who has hindered people to see the light. The person who praises the Lord Jesus but
rejects Him or ignores and rejects Him is just as damned as the person who
denounces and rejects Him. There is only
one response that one must give to Jesus and that is that He is the Lord who
came to save sinners, and as Paul states “of whom I am chief.”
Just
to let you know this SD and the one for tomorrow will be rather short, but
since we have been looking at longer ones in the past we will just look at the
shorter ones for a couple of days. 6/28/2021
12:40 PM
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