SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/18/2022 9:54 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Principle Violated”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
15:12-14
Message of the verses: “12 Then the
disciples came and said to Him, "Do You know that the Pharisees were
offended when they heard this statement?" 13 But He answered and said,
"Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be rooted up. 14
"Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man
guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
We have been looking at the awful sin of hypocrisy,
and in God’s eyes it is so reprehensible that Jesus condemns the sinner along
with the sin. As one looks through the
gospels they will find that Jesus’ most constant and repeated charge against
the scribes and Pharisees was their hypocrisy.
This group was so far from the kingdom and such intransigent enemies of
the kingdom that our Lord, the King said, Leave them along, and this could be translated
“Keep away from them and have nothing to do with them.” There is a similar statement in the Old Testament
which speaks of when Ephraim had joined itself to idols that God said “Let them
alone” (Hos. 4:17), as if the people were abandoned to judgment. This shows me that people can go too far and
then God gives up on them and nothing could then be done to obtain salvation,
however the problem is that we as believers do not always know what is in the
heart of people and therefore do not know when a person has gone too far. I have a song that I listen to some times and
the title is “Over the Deadline.”
1 O sinner,
the Saviour is calling for thee,
Long, long has he called thee in vain;
He called thee when joy lent its crown to thy days,
He called thee in sorrow and pain.
Chorus:
O turn, while the Saviour in mercy is waiting,
And steer for the harbor light;
For how do you know but your soul may be drifting
Over the dead-line tonight?
2 O sinner,
thine ears have been deaf to his voice,
Thine eyes to his glory been dim;
The calls of thy Saviour have so wearied thee,
Oh, what if they should weary him? [Chorus]
3 O sinner, the
Spirit is striving with thee;
What if he should strive never more
But leave thee alone, in thy darkness to dwell,
In sight of the heavenly shore? [Chorus]
4 O sinner,
God's patience may weary some day,
And leave thy sad soul in the blast;
By willful resistance you've drifted away,
Over the dead-line at last. [Chorus]
I
really had not planned to put this song on this Spiritual Diary, but it seems
to me that this is something that he Lord has desired me to do.
John
MacArthur writes “It is spiritually dangerous to stay around apostates and
others who steadfastly reject and oppose the gospel of Christ. If there is opportunity to witness to them,
it should be done with the greatest of caution, ‘snatching them out of the fire,’
as it were, and being careful not to get burned ourselves in the process (Jude
23). We should not even listen to ‘the
opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge’ (1 Tim. 6:20). Exposing ourselves to such people and such
teaching risks spiritual disaster (cf. 2 John 8-11).” A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call that
seemed to start out fine as the person asked me some questions about what was
going on in our world today and was I surprised about what was going on. The conversation was okay until she asked me
to go to the JW website to which I told her that she was involved in a cult and
then hung up the phone. I suppose that
I could have stayed on the phone and talked to her longer but it is my
experience that the great majority of these people are brainwashed similar to
the scribes and Pharisees of our Lord’s day.
It is true that Jesus did not even debate with these ungodly scribes and
Pharisees, and so I did not want to debate for the sake of debating with this
lady. “When He responded to their
questions or accusations, it was always in the form of correcting their
doctrinal error and of condemning their spiritual and moral wickedness”
(MacArthur).”
I
have mentioned that when we looked at the different parables found in Matthew
13 that there are two parables that Jesus seems to be giving us more light on
as we move through chapters 14 and 15 and part of 16, and those parables were
the parable of the seeds or ground that the seeds fall into and then the
parable of the wheat and the tares. We
are told in that parable that the owner of the field where the wheat and tares
were planted to leave the tares alone until they grew up and then they would be
cut down and burned up. It surely seems
that Jesus is including the majority of the scribes and Pharisees as being
tares.
Next
we learn that hypocrites always lead others to disaster. Now in my study of Hebrews I remember studying
about how the apostates whom were thought to be believers would actually turn
into persecutors of the church. So were learn something similar here as Jesus
speaks of how these blind people are trying to guide other blind people and in
the end will both fall into a pit. The
pit is speaking physically of holes that were dug in a field or pasture and
filled with water for use as drinking troughs for animals.
MacArthur
concludes “Jesus’ calling the Pharisees blind guides was a play on their own
description of themselves as ‘leaders of the blind.’ Jesus was saying, ‘Yes, you are leaders of
the blind, but you are in the same condition as those you lead. You yourselves are blind.’”
Spiritual meaning for my life today:
Over the past four Sunday’s I have been teaching about apostates in our
Sunday school class from the 10th chapter of Hebrews, and over the
past week or so I have been studying about hypocrites in our study of
Matthew. It has been difficult for me to
think about what is going to happen to these people, but as we mentioned they
are a part of the tares and will one day be judged. Sometimes it is hard for me to distinguish
between these two attributes of God, His love and His justice.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust that the Lord will give me wisdom in
preparing my lesson on the 11th chapter of Hebrews on faith, which
is a much more pleasant subject.
7/18/2022 10:49 AM
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