Second Visit to Galilee; Healing of the Blind and Dumb Demoniac; Seeking a Sign; True Kinship

Notes

Healing the Demoniac.

Notes

Seeking a Sign.

Notes

True Kinship.

Notes

1. How clear, how simple, how mighty was His argument! It appealed to common sense, and to the practise of their own disciples. Admitting that He must cast out demons by the Spirit of God, as every consideration proved, then the kingdom of God had come nigh to them. Why would they not enter in? He was demonstrating to them that He was stronger than Satan. He had entered Satan's own domain, and had released his captives. The Jews were taking their stand against Christ, and at the same time they were taking their stand with Satan. The term "devils" in the plural ought always to be "demons." There is but one devil; namely, Satan, the prince of the demons, or evil angels.

2. The unforgivable sins are the unrepented sins. The Holy Spirit is the great operative agency in God's work, in creation (Gen. 1:2; Job 26:13) and in regeneration (John 3:3-5). By the Spirit men are convicted of sin. John 16:8-11. If men, with sin-benumbed faculties, ascribe the work of the Spirit of God to Satan, God has no other agency by which to soften their hearts. When the heart comes to that condition where the beneficent operations of the infinite power of the Spirit are counted unholy, the heart becomes hardened and unimpressible, and its sins unrepentable. So the Jews came to that awful place where they could say that Jesus, who was doing only good, had an unclean spirit. Mark 3:30.

"The most common manifestation of the sin against the Holy Ghost is in persistently slighting Heaven's invitation to repent. Every step in the rejection of Christ is a step toward the rejection of salvation, and toward the sin against the Holy Ghost. In rejecting Christ the Jewish people committed the unpardonable sin; and by refusing the invitation of mercy we may commit the same error."—"Desire of Ages," page 324.

3. O, the idle words; the cheap, trashy, foolish words; the silly, senseless words; the vapid, empty words; the low, base words; away with them all. Let Jesus Christ come into the heart and fill it. Then out of the abundance of the heart let the mouth speak. Mark well the great and solemn truth expressed in these verses that the decision of eternity turns on our words.

4. Professed scientists and higher critics regard as untrue the account of Jonah and the whale. But the Saviour, in replying to the cavils of unbelievers in His day, endorsed this story. He said that "Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly." No one can discredit the divine narrative given in the book of Jonah without rejecting the words of Christ.

5. God may have accepted us as His people; He may have cast out the unclean spirit. We can not pause then. If we cherish self, if we consult selfish ease, pleasure, profit, if we refuse to let reign the great ⟦salve?⟧ principles of God's life, the spirit which once sapped our vitality will return to the empty, negative heart, and will bring a brood of even more wicked ones to enter and dwell there. It was the privilege of the Jews to accept of Jesus and let Him fill with life the empty house. They would not admit Him, but they admitted the demons of destruction.

"Sinners, when awakened, if they grieve away the Spirit of God, become worse than before. They are never as they were before. Their hearts are harder, their consciences are more seared, they have a more bitter hatred of religious men, and they plunge deeper and deeper into sin. Seven devils often dwell where one did, and God gives the man over to blindness of mind and hardness of heart. This shows also the great guilt and danger of grieving the Holy Ghost."—Barnes.

6. "Christ loves the heavenly beings that surround His throne; but what shall account for the great love wherewith He has loved us? We can not understand it, but we can know it is true in our own experience. And if we do hold the relation of kinship to Him, with what tenderness should we regard those who are brethren and sisters of our Lord. Should we not be quick to recognize the claims of our divine relationship? Adopted into the family of God, should we not honor our Father and our kindred?"—"Desire of Ages," page 327.