SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/16/2022 9:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“They Regress Deeper Into Sin”
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.”
We begin today by looking at the third
characteristic of the spiritually blind, those who will never see in that they
continue to regress deeper and deeper into darkness. These become more and more hardened and
blinded, and the very things they suppose make them more pleasing to God
actually were driving them further from Him, which is a very bad situation for
them. “Pr 14:12 There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.”
There was no doubt in the mind of Jesus that the
Jewish leaders were out to trap Him, as this was the true motives of the
Pharisees and Sadducees, as because of their blindness they were not convinced
that He was their Messiah. Jesus also
knew that another sign, no matter how astonishing, would not convince them
about that which they were determined to reject. I guess we can say that because of their
darkness that they have made up their mind, and made up their mind
wrongly. You may remember that the
reason that Jesus began to speak in parables found in chapter 13 was because
they had accused Him of doing miracles in the power of Satan, and we saw that
in Matthew 13:13-15. He would not give
way to their hypocritical and wicked demand as He said to them “An evil and adulterous
generation seeks after a sign,” then he told them “and a sign will not be given
it, except the sign of Jonah.”
“The sign
of Jonah” was the final sign Jesus gave to the
world, and that was the sign of His victory over sin, death, and Satan through
His resurrection. As Jesus had declared
to a group of scribes and Pharisees on and earlier occasion, Just as Jonah was three
days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man
be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this
generation at the judgment, and shall condemn it because they repented at the
preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matt.
12:39-41).
We know as we study more Scripture in the book of
Matthew that this sign of the resurrection would also be rejected by the Jewish
religious leaders. When they heard the
truth of His resurrection they bribed the soldiers who had been guarding the
tomb of Jesus to say that His body was stolen by His disciples (Matt.
28:11-15).
THEY WERE ABANDONED BY GOD
This
is the fourth and final characteristic of those who persist in their love of
darkness and rejection of the light and that is that they are finally abandoned
by God, given over by Him to their lusts, impurities, degrading passions, and
depraved minds as seen in Romans 1:24, 26, and 28. MacArthur writes “That which is willful,
sinful, and Satanic blindness becomes God’s sovereign blindness.”
MacArthur
continues in this very short sub-section:
“Because the unbelieving Pharisees and Sadducees would not have Him as
Lord and Savior, Jesus left them and went away.
Kataleipo (left) means to
leave behind, and it often carried the idea of forsaking or abandoning (see 2
Peter 2:15).
“The
event marked an important transition in Jesus’ ministry. Henceforth the Lord spent most of His time
with His disciples and little time with the crowds or religious leaders. He turned away from those who rejected Him
and focused His attention on His own. He
gave no more arguments or signs for unbelievers, only additional truth for
those who believed.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I believe that this section that we actually
began in the 13th chapter of Matthew ends here. That section was actually speaking of the
results of the parables that Jesus spoke to the crowds beginning in Matthew 13
as we have been seeing fulfillment of some of those parables, especially the
parable about the different seeds going in different places and also the
parable about the seeds and the darnel (bad seeds) that were planted together,
which actually this parable goes throughout the Church age. We also see in this long section the finality
of the Lord giving up on the Jewish leaders as I can only think of one
Pharisees would be saved, and that is Paul.
There are a few priests who came to know the Lord as spoken Acts.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: but sanctify
Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to
everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with
gentleness and reverence;” (1 Pet. 3:15).
8/16/2022 9:44 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment