SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/14/2016 10:17 PM
My Worship Time
Focus: 2nd Intro. To
Zech. 7
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah chapter Seven
Message of the verses: We are following this seventh chapter of the
book of Zechariah through the comments that John MacArthur spoke in a sermon in
the 1970’s and as we look at this seventh chapter of Zechariah once again we
remember that this chapter is all about traditions and so we want to look at a
parable that our Lord spoke of in the gospel of Luke that has great
significance for the theme of this chapter in Zechariah. Luke 18:9-
“9 And He
also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were
righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple
to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 “The Pharisee stood
and was praying this to himself: ’God, I thank You that I am not like other
people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 ’I
fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13 "But the tax
collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes
to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ’God, be merciful to me, the
sinner!’ 14 "I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than
the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles
himself will be exalted.’”
We are not
going to go into the details of this parable, and I suppose that there are many
we could look at but what we want to look at is that there are two approaches
to worship. One approach is a ritualistic
and the other is an approach of the realist.
The realist approach is seen from the Pharisee for when he worships the
Lord he does it as a ritual. Jesus says
that these two men when up to the temple to pray, but as we look at the prayer
of the Pharisee he is telling the Lord about all of the rituals that he follows
so that he can be approved by the Lord, while the tax collector does not even
look towards heaven when he prays as he asked the Lord to be merciful to him
who is a sinner. We know the correct
approach for Jesus states that the tax collector goes away justified while the
ritualistic Pharisee does not.
MacArthur
writes “And I suppose that if true worship is abstaining from food, rather than
abstaining from sin, in giving money to God rather than giving your heart to
God, then this is a deeply religious man.
But unfortunately, religion is not made of giving your money or from
abstaining from food. So he is anything
but religious, he is a ritualistic. And
in his ritual and his routine and the performance of the prescriptions of
religion, he has alienated himself from the reality of knowing God. And he does not go to his house justified.”
The truth
is that we have ritualistic religion going on today as many people depend on
being baptized, not that we should not be baptized, but baptism does not save
us, and we have other things that people do today in order to cause then to
think that if they did not do these ritualistic things that they would not go
to heaven to be with God. Let us look at
a couple of sections to show us what the Lord wants us to do in order to be in
a right relationship with Him: “8 For by
grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9).” Notice a couple of things about these verses,
first Paul is writing about a person who has already been saved and he tells
them how it happened, “by grace through faith.”
Next look at the word “boast” and remember the parable we just looked
at, a parable that was full of boasting by the ritualistic Pharisee. Now we will look at 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 “1 Now
I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also
you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the
word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to
you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the
third day according to the Scriptures.”
As we look
now at the 7th chapter of Zechariah we see a similar problem that
the parable speaks of as the theme of chapter seven is true worship as opposed
to ritual. 1 Samuel 16:7b gives us another hint as to what we will be looking
at here “for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance,
but the LORD looks at the heart.’” God
tells us that true worship comes from the heart. Remember when we looked at the 4th
chapter of the book of John where Jesus tells the woman at the well about true
worship being of the Jews, as Jesus was a Jew and salvation comes through
Him.
We will
begin looking at this 7th chapter in more detail in our next SD
beginning with “the inquiry” from verses 1-3.”
7/14/2016 10:50 PM
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