SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/12/2021 9:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Response of Criticism”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
11:16-19
Message of the verses: “16 "But to
what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market
places, who call out to the other children, 17 and say, ‘We played the
flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ 18
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ 19 “The
Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man
and a drunkard, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is
vindicated by her deeds.’”
We want to begin by looking at the second charge
that Jesus was “a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners,” was true, but not in
the sense that His critics meant as we will see. In identifying Jesus with those social and
moral outcasts, the critics also intended to identify Him with the outcasts’
sin and wickedness. However when Jesus
associated with sinful people, He not only did not participate in their sin,
but He is the One who offered deliverance from it, and that is because that is
why He came to earth as seen in Matthew 9:12-13.
MacArthur
quotes William Barclay who points out:
“The plain fact is that when
people do not want to listen to the truth, they will easily enough find an
excuse for not listening. They do not
even try to be consistent in their criticism.
They will criticize the same person and the same institution from quite
opposite grounds and reasons. If people
are determined to make no response, they will remain stubbornly and sullenly
unresponsive no matter what invitation is made to them.” (Quotation from
Barclay’s Gospel of Matthew commentary.)
As
we read through not only the gospel of Matthew, but all of the gospels we will
see that our Lord’s unnamed critics were not interested in truth or justice but
in condemnation. We know that John the
Baptist and Jesus were the enemies of traditional religion, with its elevation
of human wisdom and disregard for divine wisdom. Now because John and Jesus could not be
reasoned down, they would be shouted down; and if no truth could be found
against them, falsehood would be eagerly used.
This is the exactly the same thing that is going on in the world today
to those who stand up for the gospel of Jesus Christ as there are many enemies
against this from around the world.
We
read “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” something that Jesus said. Corrupt human wisdom produces corrupt human
deeds, such as the false accusations against John and Jesus, and then on the
other hand, the righteous, divinely empowered wisdom of John and Jesus produced
righteous deeds that resulted in repentance, forgiven sin, and redeemed lives,
which is so much better that the things that their critics were offering.
MacArthur
concludes “Through the centuries the church’s detractors have found it easy to
criticize its people and its work. Yet
they are hard-pressed to explain how so many lives have been changed from
wickedness to righteousness, and from selfishness to self-giving by the power
of Christ.
“Jesus
rebuke of His critics was serious, but it contained a certain restraint, a
restraint not seen in the brief series of withering rebukes He proceeded to
give those who treated Him with indifference.”
12/12/2021 9:42 PM
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