Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: 1 Kings 18

This week our focus shifts from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan “Town” to His encounter with the “Theologians” in John 9 – on the occasion of Jesus healing a man born blind.

The theologians in question are the local Pharisees on the one hand, and the man born blind on the other hand. The reason for the encounter was not only that Jesus healed this man but, most importantly, that He healed him on a Sabbath Day. Because of this, the healed man was brought before the Pharisees and examined. When asked his opinion of Jesus, he declared very confidently that Jesus was a prophet.

It is highly likely that he had come to this conclusion because in the Old Testament a prophet was often tested by the signs he could produce. Moses proved his credentials as God’s messenger by the signs and wonders which he performed (Exodus 4:1-17). And in our reading for today, Elijah proved that he was the prophet of the True God by performing a miraculous sign that the prophets of Baal could not do (1 Kings 18). No doubt the previously-blind man was thinking about people like Moses and Elijah when he came to his conclusion about Jesus. If this Jesus was able to heal someone who had been born blind, there was no way he was anything but a prophet of the LORD.

The people who witnessed the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18 had been led astray by King Ahab and his evil wife, Jezebel, for many years. They had been taught to worship the false god Baal with all sorts of occultish, immoral and perverse forms of worship. They and their ancestors had turned away from the true revelation of Yahweh handed down to them by the Law of Moses. But now, through Elijah’s demonstration of Yahweh’s power, they found themselves liberated by the truth and fell down crying out, “The Lord – he is God! The Lord – he is God!” Like the man born blind, they allowed their living experience of God to inform their theology and to draw them to the Truth, rather than only allowing the false theology they had received from Jezebel to shape the way they interacted with their god and the world – which was the mistake the Pharisees would later make. Even when the miraculous evidence pointed so clearly to God’s powerful anointing being on Jesus, the Pharisees refused to believe in Him because He did not operate within the confines of their religious boxes.

Heavenly Father, I trust Your revelation and Your good, pleasing and perfect will for my life. Help me not to exalt man-made theologies over the revelation of Your Word and Your Works. Amen.