SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/5/2016
10:16 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Now the People Replied to God
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Micah 6:6-7
Message of
the verses: “6 With what shall I come to the LORD And bow
myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, With
yearling calves? 7 Does the LORD take delight in thousands of rams, In ten
thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
We have been talking about this section of the book
of Micah as being a courtroom scene and in the first scene God was talking to
the children of Israel, and not the people are responding to God in these
verses which we will be looking at tonight.
What I want to do is give one example of what these
people were from a New Testament section and then I want to give an example of
what they should have been with another New Testament example. First we will look at a story from the book
of Mark in chapter 10:17-27: “17 As He
was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and
asked Him, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 18 And Jesus said
to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 "You know the commandments, ’DO NOT
MURDER, DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, Do not
defraud, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’" 20 And he said to Him,
"Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up." 21 Looking
at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, "One thing you lack: go
and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven; and come, follow Me." 22 But at these words he was saddened, and he went away
grieving, for he was one who owned much property. 23 And Jesus, looking
around, said to His disciples, "How hard it will be for those who are
wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!" 24 The disciples were amazed at His
words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, "Children, how hard it
is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 “It is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." 26 They
were even more astonished and said to Him, "Then who can be saved?" 27
Looking at them, Jesus said, "With people it is impossible, but not with
God; for all things are possible with God.’”
We can compare the heart of the people of Israel as
seen in this section of Micah with the heart of this rich young ruler. I want to first of all say that it is not a
sin to have money, but when you depend upon your money instead of depending on
God then that causes a lot of trouble as it did with this rich young
ruler. It has been said that at the
heart of every problem is the problem with the heart and the children of Israel
were not confessing their sins to God, but were wanting to get out of them
without repenting and turning to God just as this rich young ruler wanted to
do. If that rich young ruler would have
told Jesus that he realized that it was his love for his money that was
standing between him and the Lord he would not have had a problem getting rid
of his money and following Jesus.
Now we want to look at the book of Acts and chapter
2:37 “37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to
Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?’” What we see here is what happened after Peter’s
sermon on the day of Pentecost, and these people were under conviction knowing
that they were in need of being saved and Peter tells them how this is to be
done.
Now back to our verses in the book of Micah and as
we look at them we get the feeling that these people were trying to buy off the
Lord with sacrifices and even perhaps money.
The Law spoke how Israel was to offer sacrifices with their animals, but
these were pictures of what was coming with Messiah, and these people did not
realize this, but as stated they were used to buy off the Lord. Offering sacrifices had to be done with the
right heart, realizing that theses sacrifices could not take away their sin,
but looked forward to One who was coming who could and did do that if they
would believe.
We conclude with Dr. Wiersbe’s ending comments on
these two verses: “Doing penance’ without
truly repenting and trusting God’s mercy only multiplies the sin and deadens
the conscience. Thinking they were good
enough to please God, the people asked Jesus, ‘What shall we do, that we may
work the works of God?’ He replied, ‘This
is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent’ (John 6:28-29
NKJV). True saving faith comes from a
heart that’s been broken in repentance and realizes that no amount of good
works can atone for sin (Acts 20:21; 26:20; Eph. 2:8-9).”
1/5/2016 10:39 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment