The j8583 jar contains a simple program to parse ISO8583 messages, using a config file specified in the command line.
To use this program, set up your classpath to include SLF4J and j8583, invoke the com.solab.iso8583.util.SimpleParser and pass it the full path to your j8583 configuration file. For example:
java -cp lib/slf4j-api-1.7.7.jar:lib/slf4j-simple-1.7.7.jar:lib/j8583-1.10.2.jar com.solab.iso8583.util.SimpleParser /tmp/j8583-config.xml
You can paste an ISO8583 message encoded as text and the program will parse it, showing the message type, bitmap and the value of each field.