SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/17/2022 10:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Parable”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 12:33
Message of the verse: “33 "Either
make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad;
for the tree is known by its fruit.’”
What Jesus is doing is giving his audience a
warning, (mostly the Pharisees), and He does it with a short parable in order
to illustrate and obvious truism which is a tree and its fruit correspond. We know that a good tree produces good fruit,
and of course a bad tree produces bad fruit.
“17 “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad
fruit” (Matt. 7:17). 43 “For there is no
good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which
produces good fruit. 44 “For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do
not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush” (Luke
6:43-44).
John
MacArthur writes the following: “Poieo (make) is used here in a
figurative sense. As in English, the
term can refer physically to creating or constructing—as in making a clay pot
or a chair. Also as in English, it can
refer metaphorically to considering, evaluating, or judging—as in making up one’s
mind about something.”
Let
us look at Jesus’ general point here: “You must make up your minds about Me and
My work. Either I am evil and do evil
work, or else I am good and do good work.
I cannot be evil and do good works or good and do evil work. If I do good works, it is by God’s power; and
if I do evil works, it is by Satan’s.
God empowers noting evil, and Satan empowers nothing good, and it is as
simple as that.”
Jesus
is making a specific point here and that is “Sickness and death are the result
of sin, as yourselves recognize. Demon
possession is obviously Satan’s doing and an evil thing. So, healing the sick and also raising the
dead, and also casting out demons could not be other than something that is
good, and the deliverance of men from the destructive work of sin. So consequently, My casting out demons must
be by God’s power, and not the power of Satan.
Because you are accusing Me of doing good by Satan’s power, then you
attribute to Satan the work of the Holy Spirit, and that is the supreme and it
is also the unforgivable blasphemy in which no one can be forgiven for.”
So
what we see here is that Jesus once again trapped those self-righteous
Pharisees in their perverted thinking, and doing it in public as He exposed
their hard-heartedness and their absurd logic.
He has pointed out to them on other occasions, no matter what they
thought of Him personally, that His works indisputably testified to His
goodness and to His divine power as seen in a number of verses from the gospel
of John and also recently in Matthew 11:4-5.
2/17/2022 10:56 AM
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