SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/27/2021 10:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Jesus
Reassures John”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
11:4-6
Message of the verses: “4 Jesus answered
and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see: 5 the
BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed
and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the POOR
HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. 6 “And blessed is he who does not take
offense at Me.’”
Now as we look at the answer that Jesus gave to the
disciples of John the Baptist it was not just a simple yes or no, and the
reason was that He knew that that would not satisfy John. So He told John’s disciples to present their
teacher the evidence of what was being done “Go and report to John what you
hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the
gospel preached to them.”
We
have mentioned earlier that many of John’s disciples had been with Jesus and
have heard Him preach and teach and also seen Him perform miracles, many
miracles, so part of this report to John would be a reminder of what these
disciples had already seen Jesus do.
John
MacArthur writes “John was a great man of God and beloved by Jesus. As His faithful forerunner languished in
prison facing imminent death, the Lord Jesus determined to give him more direct
and personal report of evidence. Luke
tells us that when John’s disciples asked Jesus if He was ‘the Expected One,’
that ‘at that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and
evil spirits; and He granted sight to many who were blind’ (7:20-21). Right on the spot and before their eyes,
Jesus put on a display of miracles expressly for the personal benefit of John’s
disciples and even more for the benefit of John himself. How it must have thrilled John’s heart not
only to receive fresh confirming evidence of Jesus’ messiahship but to know
that the Lord had performed that plethora of miracles specifically to reassure
him in his time of loneliness and perplexity.”
Jesus
really did nothing to relieve John’s physical confinement and suffering, but He
did send back to John special confirmation that He was indeed performing
messianic works as we see in these verses.
Jesus was in effect saying “This, John, is but a preview, a taste, a
small picture of the coming kingdom. You
can see by what I am doing now that I care, and that I heal, and that I have
power over all things, and when the Kingdom comes there will be many more
things like this done.
11/27/2021 11:12 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment