SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/26/2022 9:59 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Unbelief Blinds to the Truth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
13:57
Message of the verse: “57 And they took
offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor
except in his home town, and in his own household.’”
Let us begin as John MacArthur explains “Took
offense is from skandalizo, which has
the basic idea of causing to stumble or trip up and is the term from which our
English scandalize is derived. Jesus’
friends and former neighbors were offended by His claims. They were offended by His ordinary
background, by the commonness of His family, the limits of His formal training,
His lack of official religious status,
and many other irrelevant or secondary issues.”
Perhaps the saying they could not see the forest by the trees goes along
with this quotation and the way that Jesus’ friends were acting.
Scripture
does not give us the full account of what Jesus was teaching on either account
when Jesus was in Nazareth. We know that
He offended the people by what He said as that has been made clear. What Jesus did was He unmasked their
hypocrisy by exposing their wicked desire to see Him perform miracles for
miracles sake as seen in Luke 4:23. “And
He said to them, "No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician,
heal yourself! Whatever you heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your
hometown as well.’"” It is possible that He talked to them about
their sinfulness and need to repent. In
any case, they became antagonistic and as we have seen they took offense at
Him, and the reason was that their unbelief blinded them to the truth that He
taught. Here are a couple of verses that
speak to this situation: “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 (Matt. 13:13).” In 1
Corinthians 1:23 Paul declared to the Corinthian believers Christ is “to
the Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness.”
It
is not until a person is willing to have the hard ground of his heart plowed up
by God’s truth and then to confess and forsake his sin, that he will not be
offended by the gospel, and until a person faces his sin in penitence, the
truth of the gospel will be hidden from him, and the blessing of the gospel
lost to him.
MacArthur
concludes “Again (see Luke 4:24) Jesus reminded the people of Nazareth of the
well known proverb that a prophet is not without honor except in his home town,
and in his own household. It is often
difficult for those who have watched a child grow up as a neighborhood kid to
later accept him as a community leader, government official, pastor, or such—to
say nothing of accepting him as the divine Son of God! Even when the man is personally liked, it is
not easy for him to gain the respect that an outsider of the same capabilities
would enjoy. Jesus’ brothers eventually
came to believe in Him as their Savior (Acts 1:14), but several years after He
began His ministry, they did not (John 7:5).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It seems to me that I learned something this
morning that kind of goes along with the situation in Nazareth. I wear a “Fitbit” watch as I have a desire to
walk at least five miles a day. I keep
track of my miles each week and add them all up since the 26th of
March 2020 when I found out that I had Type II Diabetes, so far I have walked
over 4600 miles. I wanted to log my mile
in from last week but when I looked onto the Fitbit page on the computer they
were not there. I found a Youtube page
that explained that I needed to re-sync my watch. As I thought about that I believe that from
time to time that I need to re-sync my walk with the Lord as things get out of
shape with that from time to time. The
friends of Jesus in Nazareth needed to do this and begin to look at the truth,
which probably is something they did not do, but others have done this as they
take another look at the truth of what Jesus did for them, and have come to
know Him as their Savior and their Lord.
Think about re-syncing today.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: Ask the Lord to re-sync my walk with Him beginning
today.
5/26/2022 10:32 AM
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