SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/27/2022 7:57 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “To Conceal”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
13:13-15
Message of the
verses: “13
“Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see,
and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 “And in their
case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but
will not understand; and you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; 15 for
the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely
hear, and they have closed their eyes unless they \should see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I
should heal them.’”
The quotation from Isaiah comes from 6:9-10 and it
perfectly describes the unbelieving Jews of Jesus’ say. Isaiah was writing during a time of sweeping
judgment on Judah, as Isaiah had just pronounced a series of curses on the
people of Judah, which because the people were drinking, and other things like
debauchery, immorality, dishonestly, injustice, and also hypocrisy, and this
kind of sounds like our country at this time in our history. John MacArthur writes “While Isaiah was
preaching his message of doom, King Uzziah died (6:1) and the nation was
plunged into some of its darkest days.
They were on the verge of captivity by Babylon as part of God’s
judgment, yet they refused to turn to Him for mercy and help.
“The people kept on hearing, but
they did not understand; and they dept on seeing, but they did not perceive, because
they had intentionally closed their eyes an their ears to God and refused to understand
with their heart and return to Him in order for Him to heal them. Because they chose to ignore God and His
word, God judicially locked them up in their unbelief so that they would fear
His judgment.
Now as mentioned Isaiah was telling
them that judgment was coming, and so the first fulfillment of his warning came
in the judgment of the Babylonian captivity, which is exactly what Isaiah had
promised. Then there was a second
fulfillment, as Jesus declared, was about to happen or to be accomplished as Israel
once again turned her back on the Lord and so they would face the judgment of
many centuries of darkness and despair.
As we look at Jesus’ parables we can
see that they were a similar form of judgment on unbelief. The ones who would not accept His clear and
simple teachings, things like what He taught on His Sermon on the Mount would not only be able to understand
His deeper teachings but would lose the benefit of the teaching and miraculous witness
they had been given.
MacArthur concludes: “The gift of languages in the early church
was still another form of judgment on unbelievers. Quoting from Isaiah 28:11, Paul wrote, ‘In
the law it is written, ‘By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers
I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to Me,’ says the
Lord. So then tongues are for a sign,
not to those who believe, but to unbelievers’ (1 Cor. 14:21-22). Tongues were manifested in an astounding and
dramatic way on the day of Pentecost and continued to be manifested from time
to time during the apostolic age as a form of testimony against those who
refused to believe. The Lord first gave
His truth to Israel in simple, clear teaching; and when that was ignored, He
spoke to them in parables, which, without explanation, were no more than
meaningless riddles. Finally He spoke in
intelligible languages that could not be understood at all without translation.”
3/27/2022 8:23
AM
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