The Pharisees Reward

The Pharisees Reward

We are stepping into a time of unprecedented miracles and when we see them we will have two choices. We can either be skeptical, critical, and unbelieving, or we can ask God about it and rejoice by faith that God is moving in our midst. The Pharisees of Jesus day did nothing but try to pick apart and analyze every miracle He performed to the point that in the end they didn't experience any themselves. We have many modern day Pharisees that are doing the same thing today and they are running into the same danger of not only missing God's miracles, but blaspheming and missing Heaven altogether. We can become too analytically minded to be any spiritual good.

^{JN 14:12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will
do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

Some of the greater things we are about to see will be things that we have never seen in the bible
so we will have to ask God about whether what we see and experience is indeed from Him or not, and also match it up to God's
word. But we must be careful that we don't just carelessly label everything as the flesh or the Devil when in fact it could
just be God but we are too blinded by pride to see it. Pharisees get jealous and envious when they see God doing something
in someone else's life that He is not doing in their lives, so they deliberately try to discredit the miracle to save face.
Do we want to rejoice with or persecute people? When things you see are filtered through love and not cynicism you can see
things through God's eyes of faith.

MK 6:5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.
6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith.

Do you want God to be amazed at your lack of faith, or your great faith? The choice is yours, but
you must choose who you consort with. When you hang around critical and skeptical people you will soon become just as critical
and skeptical as they are. We must surround ourselves with people who are full of faith and God's love and then you will be
in a better position to be used by God in power. The truth is that it was the lowly fishermen who experienced all of God's
miracles, not the pharisees, but there is usually a mixture of both in all of us so we need to ask God to purge us of all
unbelief and unrighteous judgment toward the works of the Holy Spirit. This is your day to stand so be the fishermen that
God created you to be and be willing to have true faith.

LK 19:37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd
of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: 38 "Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord!"
"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher,
rebuke your disciples!" 40 "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

Which response will you give to the miracles of Jesus?}