SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/2/2022 8:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Superficial Hearer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
13:20-21
Message of the verses: “20 "And the one on whom seed was sown on the
rocky places, this is the man who hears the word, and immediately receives it
with joy; 21 yet he has no firm
root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or
persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away.”
This person after the affliction and persecution
because of the word will immediately fall away.
It seems that as fast as he seemed to accept the gospel he will turn
from it just that fast, however this may take years before that severe testing
comes. This superficial believer may
even be baptized, serve in the church, and he may apparently function as a
model member for a long time. However
the testing will eventually come that will expose his lifelessness.
MacArthur
writes “The affliction and persecution Jesus is talking about does not have to
do with the ordinary hardships and troubles of life but specifically with problems
that result because of the word. When
the cost of discipleship becomes too high, this person falls away and becomes
lost to the visible church just as he was always lost to the spiritual.
“Falls
away is from skandalizo, which means
to cause to stumble or fall and is the term from which we get scandalize. It is sometimes translated with the idea of
causing offense—as in the Authorized Version of this verse. All of those meanings are appropriate here,
because the superficial Christian is scandalized, offended, stumbles, and falls
away when his faith is put to the test (cf. John 8:31; 1 John 2:19).”
When
this person is being ridiculed by his friends, family, fellow students,
coworkers, or employers or put pressure on him to renounce his faith, this
person will do that because he really did not have any true faith in the first
place. When this happens he will be
ashamed of the gospel and the One he had so joyously proclaimed as Lord, and because
his profession had no conviction or even sincerity, he would have never
experienced the new birth and new life in Christ that He gives, the result is
his sham faith soon withers.
John
MacArthur quotes William Arnot again: “If
the law of God has never rent the ‘stony heart’ and made it ‘contrite,’ that
is, bruised it small, you may, by receiving the Gospel on some temporary,
superficial softness of nature, obtain your religion more easily and quickly
than others who have been more deeply exercised; but you may perhaps not be
able to hold it so fast or retain it so long…He that endureth to the end shall
be saved; but he that falls away in the middle shall not.”
A
true believer’s profession of Christ has to have a deep conviction of sin, a
genuine sense of lostness, a strong desire for the Lord to cleanse and purify,
an hungering and thirsting for rightesness and a love of His Word, along with a
genuine willingness to suffer for the cause of Christ, and if that is not there
then perhaps that person is not truly a believer at all.
MacArthur
concludes this section by writing: “It
is encouraging however, that the same persecution that makes the false believer
wither will make the true believer stronger.
‘All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (2
Tim. 3:12); but ‘after you have suffered for a little while,’ Peter assures us,
‘the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will
Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you’ (1 Pet. 5:10).”
4/2/2022 9:01 AM
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