SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/19/2019
12:12 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Breastplate of Righteousness”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:14b
Message of the
verse: “righteousness
like armor on your chest” (HCSB).
It is my desire to finish this
section on putting on the breastplate of righteousness in this SD, and I think
I mentioned that we were going to talk about the church in our society in this
SD. I have listened to many of John
MacArthur’s sermons and read many of his books and have learned much from his
writings and his speaking. I know that
he is not a big proponent of having a lot of programs and activities in the church
today, and my thoughts are that I have to agree with him for the most part on
this. He believes that the Bible teaches
us, and I totally agree with this, that as believers we need to have on our
Spiritual Armor so that we can live a godly life, and if believers in the
church would do this then the church would operate like our Lord desires it
too. Another problem in our churches
today is that the leaders do not desire to confront sin in the church. I realize that this is one of the most
difficult things to do as a leader in the church, but it has to be done if the
church is going to remain clean.
Next as MacArthur writes is “failure
to be armed with practical righteousness will cause fruitlessness. The disobedient Christian is unproductive in
the things of the Lord. Whatever
accomplishments he may seem to achieve will be sham, hollow hulls that have no
spiritual fruit inside.”
We move to the third which is unholy
living will bring loss of rewards. I have had some thoughts on this subject for
a long time, and my thoughts comes from Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
The verse tells us that we are created to do good works, and then goes
on to say that God has prepared beforehand these good works for us to do for
the cause of Christ, and it is the Spirit who will show us what these works are
that we are to do. If we do them then we
will receive rewards, but if we don’t then someone will have to do them and
they will not receive any rewards. We
can’t just do something for the Lord if the Spirit of God has not prompted us
to do it.
Fourth, unholy living brings
reproach on God’s glory. MacArthur adds “The
greatest evil of a Christian’s sin is its reflection on his heavenly
Father. Unholiness fails to ‘adorn the
doctrine of God our Savior in every respect’ (Titus 2:10).”
As MacArthur ends his commentary on
the breastplate of righteousness he gives a number of Scripture verses which I
will quote at this time: “Beloved,’
Peter implores, ‘I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly
lusts, which wage war against the soul’ (1 Pet. 2:11). Fleshly lusts and every other form of sin are
part of Satan’s arsenal with which he wages war against our very souls. Our armor must therefore include the ‘breastplate
of righteousness,’ the genuine holiness of the genuine Christian whose ‘every
thought [is] captive to the obedience of Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:5) and whose mind
is set ‘on the things above, not on the things that are on earth’ (Col
3:2). ‘The night is almost gone,’ Paul
says, ‘and the day is at hand. Let us
therefore lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light….Put on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its
lusts’ (Rom. 13:12, 14).” I have to say
that the verse from 2 Corinthians 10:5 is a verse that I wish were always true
in my life, but as I read it then it seems to be something that is very
difficult for me to do.
Today’s quotation from “Love in
Action” goes along with our verses from yesterday:
“As a landowner
in Cyprus, we may assume that Barnabas was a wealthy man. We know for sure that he was one of those
rare personalities who thinks life consists of helping and encouraging
others. In fact, in every place where he
shows up in the New Testament record, he is doing just that. He was such an incurable motivator, the
apostles finally changed his name from Joses to Barnabas, which means ‘son of
encouragement.’ Today we’d call him Mr.
Encouragement.”
10/19/2019
12:43 PM
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