Episode 2170 Lesson 1 - Wednesday October 2 - Hard Hearts

Signs, wonders, and miracles, in and of themselves, don’t prove that something is of God. But, on the other hand, when they are of God, it’s a dangerous thing to reject them. Read John 5:10–16. What lessons can we take away from the amazing hardness of the religious leaders’ hearts in regard to Jesus and the miracle He had just performed? ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ When Jesus revealed Himself to the man who had been healed, the man immediately told the religious leaders that it was Jesus. One would think this would be a time to praise God, but instead, the leaders “persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath” (John 5:16, NKJV). Healings were allowed on the Sabbath only in an emergency. This man had been disabled for 38 years; thus, his healing was hardly an emergency. And then, too, what was the necessity of having him take up his bed? One would think that someone with the power from God to perform such a miracle would also know if it was permissible to carry a mat home on the Sabbath day. Clearly, Jesus was seeking to take them to deeper biblical truths beyond the man-made rules and regulations that had, in some cases, stifled true faith. What do these other accounts teach about how spiritually hard people can become, regardless of the evidence? (Read John 9:1–16; Mark 3:22, 23; Matt. 12:9–14). ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ How could these religious leaders be so blind? The likely answer is that it was because of their own corrupt hearts, their false belief that the Messiah would deliver them from Rome now, and their love of power and lack of surrender to God. All these helped cause them to reject the truth that stood right before them. Read John 5:38–42. What was Jesus’ warning? What can we learn from these words? That is, what could be in us that blinds us to the truths we need to know and apply to our own lives? ______________________________________________________