SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/12/2022 10:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Curse the Light”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 16:1-4
Message of the verses: “1 And the
Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Him asked Him to show them a sign
from heaven. 2 But He answered and said to them, "When it is evening, you
say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 “And in the morning,
’There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do
you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern
the signs of the times? 4 “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a
sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah." And He
left them, and went away.”
In today’s SD we begin to look at the second
characteristic of the willfully blind which is the other side of the
first: they curse the light. The person who is content with his spiritual
blindness has no use for spiritual light, and the reason is it intrudes into
his darkness and when it does that it exposes his sin, and sinfulness. “19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has
come into the world, and
men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light
for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who practices the truth
comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought
in God’” (John 3:19-21).
I don’t think that these people expected Jesus to
produce a sign as Jesus had already done many great miracles which they were
familiar with. Even if Jesus would have
produced another sign that would not have made any difference to these people whose
hearts were very cold and blind to the light.
These people did not deny His supernatural power but refused to
recognize it as being from God having even accused Him of working as an agent
of Satan as we have already looked at in Matthew 12:24.
John
MacArthur writes “Popular Jewish superstition held that demons could perform
earthly miracles but that only God could perform heavenly ones. From heaven indicates the desire to see a
miraculous sign in the sky. The
Pharisees and Sadducees demanded a miracle they thought was beyond Jesus,
hoping to prove that His power, and therefore His message, were not divine. He would be publicly discredited, and they
would be vindicated.”
There
is no doubt that these Pharisees and Sadducees were blind and so in their
blindness they could not see that Jesus Himself was a sign from heaven. I can remember back when I was a rather new
believer and my thoughts were that if Jesus would have produced a sign in the
heavens for these men that they would actually believe in Him. I know now that my thoughts were immature and
youthful, that is youthful in the Lord. These
men could not see that they themselves were helping to fulfill that sign, that
sign which the godly Simeon spoke of as he held the infant Jesus in his arms
when he would prophesy “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise
of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed” (Luke 2:34). Now it was because these unbelieving
religious leaders refused to recognize God’s supreme Sign, His only Son that
they could not accept His lesser signs, despite the evidence that they saw with
their own eyes. When a person has
physical sight it is no help to spiritual blindness, and the truth is that if those
leaders had seen a hundred more miracles a hundred times more dramatic, they would
simply have been driven to deeper darkness, and it is because their rejection
of the miracle Jesus’ resurrection proved.
In Luke 16:31 we read something that Abraham said “‘If they do not
listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone
rises from the dead.’" Another
example would be something that happened after Abraham and that was the
hardness of Pharaoh’s heart after he saw nine signs from God, but still would
not let the children of Israel go. There
would be more heavenly signs come in the future, and blind people would still
not believe. I just want to talk about
what happened to some blind people who witnessed the raising of Lazarus from
the dead, as he had been dead for four days.
Some of the spies of the Pharisees ran to tell them what had just
happened. Think about how great their
blindness was when they saw with their own eyes a man raised from the dead who
had been dead four days, and they still could not see what happened, they still
could not understand that they were in the very presence of the second Person
of the Godhead.
MacArthur
adds “If a person’s heart is set on darkness, when the light comes he curses
it. Proudly confessing that very
disposition, the French atheist Voltaire declared, ‘Even if a miracle should be
wrought in the open marketplace before a thousand sober witnesses, I would
rather mistrust my senses than admit a miracle.’ Unbelief will always find a way to reject the
truth, even to the point of denying the undeniable.” Such was the case of all who saw the miracles
that Jesus performed.
8/12/2022 11:33 AM
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