SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/25/2022 9:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Intro to Matt. 12:38-42”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
12:38-42
Message of the verses: “38 Then some of
the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, "Teacher, we want to see a sign
from You." 39 But He answered and said to them, "An evil and
adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given
to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; 40 for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS
AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 “The men of Nineveh
will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because
they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than
Jonah is here. 42 “The Queen of the South will rise up with this
generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends
of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than
Solomon is here.’”
I think a fair question to ask is why was it that
Jesus did not give them the sign that they were looking for? We will talk later on about what sign that
they may have been looking for from Jesus.
MacArthur writes “Had Jesus not come into their midst and declared to them
God’s truth and demonstrated God’s power, their true evil natures would not
have surfaced so dramatically. But Jesus
left them no out as He confronted them with truth and righteousness
incarnate. To reject Him is to reject
truth, and to despise Him is to despise righteousness. To hate Jesus is to hate God; to hate the Son
is to hate the Father (John 15:23).” “"He
who hates Me hates My Father also.’”
Let us look for a moment at 1 Tim. 5:24 “The sins of
some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment; for others, their sins
follow after.” As we look at this verse
we can see that Paul is telling Timothy that a person may successfully hide his
sin for a long time, but when he rejects Jesus Christ, he reveals his true
corrupt nature, and this is the point that we are making here as we also spoke
about this in our last SD. Here is what
a person must do in order to become a child of God and that is to accept the
lordship and saviorhood of Christ, and this proves that that person is a true
believer. No matter how “righteous” a
person acts if he denies the Lord’s provision for his salvation then there is
no hope for him.
We
have been studying the life of Jesus Christ through the pages of Matthew’s
gospel and thus far the Pharisees have not been as aggressive in their hatred
for Him, but as more and more people are following Him then they are losing
their control over the masses and so they are not beginning to confront Jesus
in a harsher way, like saying He does miracles in the power of Satan.
Now
the truth is that the attitude that the scribes and Pharisees had is generally
characteristic of any person who maintains an appearance of godliness but who
does not have saving trust in Jesus Christ, as that was the issue back then and
still is today, and will continue to be the issue until the end of the Millennial
kingdom. I have to say that one of the
verses from John’s gospel which came from the lips of John the Baptist divides
up humanity into two groups, not many groups but two: “"He who believes in the Son has eternal
life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God
abides on him.’” Now as we look at the
truth that is in this verse and think about the many cults that are in the
world today then we will understand that although many of the cults speak of
Jesus they do not stress that one must believe in the Son for eternal life, and
that makes them just like the scribes and Pharisees. The scribes and the Pharisees were showing the
people that they loved God, but in reality they hated Him because they were not
accepting the One that God sent to earth to care for their sin problem, and in
fact as we look at John 14:8-11 we will see that Jesus Christ is showing people
that when they see Him they see the Father.
“8 Philip said to Him,
"Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long
with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen
Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 “Do
you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words
that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding
in Me does His works. 11 “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is
in Me; otherwise believe
because of the works themselves.”
Notice in verse eleven that Jesus is talking about the miracles that He
had done, and as we look at what the scribes and Pharisees were asking Him to
do it is evident that Jesus did so many miracles that just as He told Philip to
“believe because of the works themselves.”
John
MacArthur writes “By the time the scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus to show
them a special sign, their opposition to Him had already hardened into
implacable hatred. Even before Jesus
accused them of blaspheming the Holy Spirit and thereby eternally forfeiting
God’s forgiveness, they had been planning ‘how they might destroy Him
(12:14). He then told them they were corrupt
trees bearing corrupt fruit, were a brood of spiritual vipers, and that the
evil of their words proved the evil of their hearts, for which they faced God’s
condemnation (vv. 33:37). Jesus had
castigated them as strongly and unequivocally as possible.”
The
scribes and Pharisees had been humiliated by Jesus and they certainly did not
like that so they went on to try and prove that He was an imposter by asking
for a sign, which they will be humiliated once again.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I suppose that during my Christian life that
I have asked for a sign from my Lord on different occasions to find out what
His will for my life is at that particular moment, but it is my desire to ask
the Lord’s direction and have faith enough to trust Him to do what He has
planned for me, even though at times I may not be totally happy about it.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord with what is going on in our
world today as we see that things are getting very difficult for believers in
many parts of the world today.
2/25/2022 10:29 AM
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