SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2016
7:29 PM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-2 Trust God’s Word (The Just)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Habakkuk
2:4-5
Message of
the verses: “4 “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is
not right within him; But
the righteous will live by his faith.
5 "Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man, So that he does not
stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, And he is like death, never
satisfied. He also gathers to himself all nations And collects to himself all
peoples.”
We continue to look at these two very important
verse in the Word of God and we trust that the Holy Spirit will teach us from
them. Now I have mentioned that verse
four is quoted three times in the New Testament, in the book of Romans and in
1:17 where the emphasis is on the just, or in case of our use of the NASB it is
on “the righteous,” and then in the book of Galatians where it is found in 3:11
where the emphasis is on “shall live,” and then in the book of Hebrews where it
is found in 10:38, where the emphasis is on “by faith” which should cause no surprise
to us for the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews is many times called the “faith
chapter.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes “This is the first of three
wonderful assurances that God gives in this chapter to encourage His
people. This one emphasizes God’s grace, because
grace and faith always go together.
Habakkuk 2:14 emphasizes God’s glory and assures us that, though this world is now filled
with violence and corruption (Gen. 6:5, 1-13), it shall one day be filled with
God’s glory. The third assurance is in
Habakkuk 2:20 and emphasizes God’s
government. Empires may rise and
fall, but God is on His holy throne, and He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
“The just shall live by his faith’ was the watchword
of the Reformation, and they may well be the seven most important monosyllables
in all of church history. It was verse
4, quoted in Romans 1:17, that helped to lead Martin Luther into the truth of
justification by faith. ‘This text,’ said Luther ‘was to me the true gate of
Paradise.’” I have to say that I had
kind of a watered down situation a few years back that reminds me in a very
small way what Luther was talking about here.
The church I attended for many, many years, in my opinion and a lot of
others opinion was heading the wrong way and I put up with it for five years
before going the first time to the church I now attend. I remember the first Sunday that I attended
this new church, and to me it was like wondering around in the desert for five
years and suddenly coming upon an oasis.
Martin Luther’s experience was far longer and far more reaching than
mine, but from my experience I can better understand his.
Now we need to talk about justification as there are
some who would say that it means “just as if I have never sinned,” but this is
a weak way of talking about it. First of
all justification is a legal term, and “it is the gracious act of God whereby
He declares the believing sinner righteous and gives that believing sinner a
perfect standing in Jesus Christ” writes Dr. Wiersbe. A person is in no ways just by doing all the
requirements of the Law to make God satisfied for we read “For by the works of
the law shall no flesh be justified” from Gal. 2:19 “But to the one who does
not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited
as righteousness, (Romans 4:5).” Gal.
2:21 says “"I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness
comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.’” No one can ever receive justification on his
own, it is impossible. When we were
studying the 3rd chapter of John as Jesus was talking to Nicodemus
He stated to him “"He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not
believe has been judged
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God John 3:18.” This highlighted portion tells us that every
person who has been born, as soon as he or she comes into the world has been
judged already. Why? Because every person that is born is born a sinner,
and so the only way to be justified by God is to accept the payment that Christ
offers when He died on the cross. One
must realize that they are a sinner, and repent of their sins and then they
must believe that Jesus died in their place to care for their sin problem, and
then at that moment they will be justified by God.
2/9/2016 8:39 PM
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