Monday 21 Jul 2014

July 21: Matthew 13:10-15

Key Verse: Matthew 13:10
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

Devotion:
When Jesus came to us in human form it was not a the ultimate professor who would be able to teach everyone everything; He came to fulfil prophecy so that we could see how the scriptures come to life. God is the one behind all of the scriptures because He gave those words to the prophets and He continues to bring those words to life through what He has done and what He continues to do. For those who are willing to believe, the scriptures come to life but for those who refuse to believe, nothing…

When the disciples asked why Jesus seemed to make things complicated by talking in parables instead of just saying the truth, He explained in terms of the scriptures and referred back to the words given to Isaiah. God explains everything we ought to know in our bibles and yet we still choose to ignore the truths or reject them. It is not really through lack of understanding because the parables themselves are quite self-explanatory when we take time to read them; it is people who are rejecting the stories because they don’t want to have to believe it all.

We continue to take the parts that we like and leave the parts that are hard or which we do not care for. That is what mankind has always done, right from the beginning with Adam and Eve, we choose to take what we like and leave the rest for someone else to pick up. Jesus knew this was still happening and made it easy for people to choose! Jesus knew who would reject the word and who would believe so he chose His words to make the believers think about what was being said and for the others to reject easily.

Does that sound as if Christ was giving up on people? Does that sound as if Jesus was not being a good an evangelist as He should have been? I wonder what we would do if we knew who was going to reject us as friends… would we continue to try and make friends or would we walk away from them before they started to talk? Would we make the choice easy for them to reject us or would we give them a huge guilt trip to see if we could change their minds in some way? God continues to give people choices and He leave the door open. If we reject Him, is it not our own problem?

Points to Ponder:
How do you treat potential enemies?

Do you receive all that Christ gives you?