Willingness and Persuasion

In a sermon on Hosea 8, C.H. Spurgeon made an excellent point he saw no need for him to resort to worldly arguments in an attempt to "prove" to skeptics God wrote the Bible--though he could supply many persuasive reasons from the Scripture to demonstrate this.  He said, "I am a Christian minister, and you are Christians, or profess to be so; and there is never any necessity for Christian ministers to make a point of bringing forward infidel arguments in order to answer them. It is the greatest folly in the world. Infidels, poor creatures, do not know their own arguments till we tell them, and then they glean their blunted shafts to shoot them at the shield of truth again."  Since faith in God and submission to Him is a matter of reason and the will, facts alone will not persuade a stubborn soul.  They will often choose to cling to a blunted arguments than surrender their lives to Jesus Christ as LORD.  Praise the LORD what is impossible for mankind is possible with God. :)

An example of this tendency is found in John 7 when people disputed if Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah.  Some people were convinced Jesus was a prophet, and John 7:41-43 tells us:  "Others said, "This is the Christ." But some said, "Will the Christ come out of Galilee? ⁴² Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" ⁴³ So there was a division among the people because of Him."  While some believed Jesus was the Saviour God sent to seek and save His people from their sins, others were stumbled that He resided in Galilee--a place that did not have a great reputation.  We read in 1 Kings 9 King Solomon gave Hiram 20 cities in the land of Galilee, but they did not please him.  After King Hiram visited them from Tyre he expressed his disgust over them in 1 Kings 9:13 and called them "Cabul" which means displeasing or dirty.  Skeptics of Jesus divine nature said there was no mention of a prophet arising out of Galilee in the Law, so they claimed this proved Jesus could not be the Christ.

What is ironic about these skeptics is they asserted the Christ would be the son of David and come from the town of Bethlehem, and this was true concerning Jesus (if they cared to investigate).  The Jewish rulers in Jerusalem explicitly told sojourning wise men from the east in Matthew 2 a king would arise from Bethlehem, and these men who travelled far found the babe Jesus who was born there according to God's promise--and of a virgin as well (Is. 7:14).  The skeptics also overlooked Jesus spent a portion of His childhood in Egypt, and Matthew 2:15 explains:  "...and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, "Out of Egypt I called My Son."  Upon the return of Jesus from Egypt, His family settled in Nazareth which Matthew also said fulfilled words spoken by prophets in Matthew 2:23:  "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, "He shall be called a Nazarene."

It is remarkable those who devoted themselves to the study of the Law of Moses overlooked passages Jesus fulfilled and justified their unbelief in Jesus by what the Law did not say.  Instead of being convinced by the wisdom and miraculous power of Jesus who was unlike any other man, they gathered up the blunted shaft that Moses or any other prophet said a prophet would arise from Galilee.  When the Pharisee Nicodemus suggested they ought to listen to what Jesus said before writing him off as a fraud, John 7:52 tells us their sharp response:  "They answered and said to him, "Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee."  The words Abraham said to the rich man in the story Jesus told is true in Luke 16:31 concerning skeptics:  "...If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead."  Again, notice how being persuaded is a matter of yielding the will.  For those who will not submit to hear and receive the word of God, every miracle Jesus has done--even rising from the dead--can all be explained away.  This passage illustrates those who claim to be objective and rational can be the opposite.  Those who believe their doubts are greater and more attractive than the Truth will not part with them until they are willing.