![]() Alas! how many thus spend their youth! and how many weep when it is too late! God gives them over, and “laughs” at their “calamity,” and mocks when their fear comes, Proverbs 1:26. ![]() “There is” a place where you cannot laugh, and there you will see the folly of having passed the “proper time” of preparing for such scenes in levity and folly. In sickness, in calamity, in the prospect of death, in the fear of eternity, your laughter shall be turned into sorrow. Shall mourn and weep - The time is coming when you shall sorrow deeply. That laugh now - Are happy, or thoughtless, or joyful, or filled with levity. You shall feel your want and wretchedness, and shall “hunger” for something to satisfy the desires of a dying, sinful soul. Ye shall hunger - Your property shall be taken away, or you shall see that it is of little value and then you shall see the need of something better. They have no anxiety for the riches that shall endure forever. They desire nothing but wealth, and a sufficiency to satisfy the wants of the body. ![]() Many, alas! are thus “full.” They profess to be satisfied. Satisfied with their wealth, and not feeling their need of anything better than earthly wealth can give. Woe unto you that are full! - Not hungry. Alas! how poor and worthless is such consolation, compared with that which the gospel would give! All the consolation which they had reason to expect they had received. ![]() They were proud, and would not seek it satisfied, and did not desire it filled with cares, and had no time or disposition to attend to it. It implies, farther, that they would not seek or receive consolation from the gospel. They loved them they had sought for them they found their consolation in them. They seem to have been spoken to the Pharisees. These verses have been omitted by Matthew. That hunger now - Matthew has it, “that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Matthew has expressed more fully what Luke has briefly, but there is no contradiction. See this passage fully illustrated in the sermon on the mount, in Matt. The scribes could only repeat the regulations of Judaism, but Jesus interpreted the law with an authority that came from God ( Matthew 7:28-29). The scribes referred to respected teachers of the past for their authority, but Jesus spoke on his own authority. The difference between Jesus’ teaching and the teaching of the scribes was obvious to all. They are like a person who builds a house that looks solid but has no foundation, and so is destroyed when the storm of testing comes ( Matthew 7:24-27). If people hear Jesus’ teaching but do not act upon it, they are deceiving themselves and heading for disaster. They may even preach in Jesus’ name, but if they have never had a personal experience of God through faith and repentance, they too will go to the place of destruction ( Matthew 7:21-23). They think that because they attach themselves to Jesus’ followers they will enter Jesus’ kingdom. A bad tree produces bad fruit, and wrong teaching produces wrong behaviour ( Matthew 7:15-20).Īnother reason why people do not follow the narrow way is that they deceive themselves. The teachers appear to be as harmless as sheep, but actually they are as dangerous as wolves. Their teaching at first sounds reasonable, but in the end it proves to be destructive. One reason why many do not follow the narrow way is that they are deceived by those who teach their own views on how people can find meaning in life. The other is the narrow way of denying self for Jesus’ sake, which leads to life ( Matthew 7:13-14). One is the easy way of pleasing self, which most choose and which leads to destruction.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |