SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/25/2023 10:58 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Supernatural Privilege”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
20:32-34
Message of the verses: “32 And Jesus
stopped and called them, and said, "What do you want Me to do for
you?" 33 They said to Him, "Lord, we want our eyes to be
opened." 34 And moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes; and
immediately they regained their sight and followed Him.”
I mentioned that we would begin to talk about
spiritual blindness in today’s SD, and spiritual blindness is a very important
thing to know about. Spiritual blindness
is certainly more common than physical blindness as all people who do not come
to Christ for salvation are suffering from spiritual blindness.
As
we look at these two blind beggars I think that they were looking for both
kinds of healings from the Lord, healing from their spiritual blindness and
their physical blindness.
The
Lord Jesus Christ was born into a world of people who, with few exceptions,
were totally blind spiritually. I want
to now look at two different Scriptural references to make this point. “9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world,
enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him,
and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His
own did not receive Him” (John 1:9-11). “Then
Jesus again spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in
the darkness, but will have the Light of life’” (John 8:12). It is true that men are just as blind today
as in the days when Jesus walked on the earth.
The problem is that people do not want to see God’s truth. Jesus said the following to Nicodemus: “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).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said the
following: “22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if
your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. 23 “But if your eye
is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in
you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23). There is another problem men face other than
their natural spiritual blindness and that is that Satan adds his own, found in
2 Cor. 4:4. “in whose case the god of
this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see
the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” To this double blindness God may add still
more. MacArthur writes “When men
persistently refuse to hear His Word and believe in Him, God may choose to
judicially reinforce their willing hardness of heart. To Isaiah, the Lord gave the unenviable task
of telling his fellow Israelites, ‘Keep
on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.’ He was, in fact, told to ‘render the hearts
of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their hearts, and return and
be healed’ (Isa. 6:9-10).
“The minds of unbelieving Jews were blinded to the
full meaning of God’s Word because ‘their minds were hardened; for until this
very day,’ Paul said, ‘at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains
unlifted, because it is removed in Christ’ (2 Cor. 3:14; cf. Rom. 11:25). The epitome of the spiritually blind were the
hypocritical, unbelieving scribes and Pharisees, the leading religionists of
Israel whom Jesus called ‘blind guides’ (Matt. 23:16, 24).”
It
is my desire to finish this section in our next SD as we continue looking at
spiritual blindness.
5/25/2023 11:31 AM
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