In teaching Jews of the Kingdom of God;
They had God's covenant grossly abused;
God dulled their insight and left them in fog!
The Jews learned of this in Isaiah's day,
Seven hundred years prior to Jesus' birth;
They didn't like then what he had to say,
Though time has proved the ancient judgment's worth!
They put the prophet in a hollow log
And sawed it and him into pieces two,
But that was no cure for the blinding smog;
No race since has been so dull as the Jew!
Their insight will return when Jesus does;
The parables will clear with no more fuzz!
"The disciples came to him and asked, 'Why do you speak to the people [Jews] in parables?' He replied, 'The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have abundance; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables.'" (Matthew 13:10-12) [Brackets added]
Jesus followed this explanation of why He spoke in parables to the people by quoting God's judgment upon the Jews given by Isaiah before 700 B.C.
"He [God] said, 'Go and tell this people [Israel and Judah]:
Let me say here, that some Jews were saved by the direct election of God in every phase of their history, because of their obedience and loyalty to Him. A great majority was not. In the time of Isaiah, God revealed to the Chosen People, the two nations of Israel and Judah, that He was going to intervene in their destiny by making their spiritual insight unusually calloused. Natural man has always had a callousness toward spiritual truths, but the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were made more dull than the Gentiles in punishment for their recalcitrance toward their responsibilities in the covenant God made with Moses in the desert. God will lift His judgment on Jews when Christ returns to earth, and the majority of them will accept Him then as Messiah, mourning at their previous treatment of Him.
The Jews never accepted this judgment of God. When Jesus cited it as His reason for teaching in parables; when Paul reminded his fellow Jews of it in Acts 28 and Romans 11, they became infuriated at him and (in Acts) left his preaching service en masse; together with Judaism's obstinacy toward Jesus as Messiah to this day (November 2009); all these inform us of their refusal to accept the just sanction of God upon them. However, the curse will be lifted, and a remnant (those still living at the time Jesus returns) will be saved.
A very interesting statement by Jesus in Matthew 13 is that whoever has (meaning whoever has learned of Jesus and wants to learn more) will be given more, and whoever has not (meaning he has learned something of Jesus but refuses to learn more), even what he has will be taken away. The reason it is important is that it is a direct reference to the "quenching" of the Holy Spirit's soul-winning effort in the heart of a person who fails to "listen" to His advice. Repeated rejection by a person will result in fewer and gentler nudges to move in the Lord's direction; finally, the Spirit will give up His futile battle with the devil; He will leave that person to fend for himself. This can be classified as the "unpardonable" sin, which the Bible says is "blasphemy" against the Holy Spirit (See Mark 3:20).
No comments:
Post a Comment