46 - Escaping Unbelief

Jesus was gentle with common people and sinners, but He became quite confrontational when He dealt with people who were very religious. In the passage we’re reading today it’s obvious He was very frustrated with the unbelief in this group of Pharisees who were confronting Him. We know from statements He made elsewhere (Mt 23:1-36) that He felt the Pharisees were damaging people, not helping them. But He was also angry about what they were doing to themselves. They had ended up in a condition in which they could no longer see what God was doing, even when He was powerfully at work in front of their own eyes. In fact, they had become so spiritually blind it was almost miraculous. How could people who were very religious have so little faith? As we listen to their dialogue with Jesus, He makes several observations that reveal the sources of their unbelief. One by one He points to the real reasons they were rejecting Him, and as we’ll soon discover, those reasons had nothing to do with the arguments they were using to try to discredit Him. Their unbelief didn’t come from a disagreement over certain passages in the Bible; it came from much more human sources.  Today we’ll examine the three sources of unbelief to which Jesus pointed in the hearts of His opponents. And as we consider each one we’ll discover that they are just as common today as they were then, and just as dangerous. If we recognize any one of them in our own hearts, it must go, but if, as we listen to Jesus, we find none, then seeing them for what they are, enemies of faith, will help us refuse those impulses when they come to tempt us, because all of us have to deal with the flesh, the world and the devil.