SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/18/2020
5:13 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The Condemnation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 3:8-10
Message of the verses: “8 "Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping
with repentance; 9 and do not suppose
that you can say to yourselves, ’We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to
you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 “And
the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that
does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
We
continue to look at what true repentance is in this SD. We begin with stating that true repentance
will include a deep feeling of wrongdoing and of sin against God. We can see from Psalm 51, which is a psalm of
that David wrote because of his sin with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah. This psalm of David is a great penitential
psalm as he cries out in the first verse:
“Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According
to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.” David not only saw very clearly his sin but
he deeply felt his need to be rid of it.
David wrote two psalm out of the horrible experience he had with
Bathsheba and the other one was Psalm 32 where we will look at the third
verse: “When I kept silent about my
sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long.”
We
can see the sorrow of deep repentance from these two Psalms that were written
by David over his sin. I have been
studying the 22nd Psalm which is part of a trilogy about God as our
Shepherd, which also includes Psalms 23 and 24.
Psalm 22 speaks of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and also His resurrection. This Psalm always makes me emotional as when
I think about it my mind goes back to when Jesus was in the garden right before
He went to trials. Jesus was sweating
great drops of blood in the garden as His emotions were stretched perhaps
further than any other human being. What
was the reason for His emotions? I
believe that there were two and the first one was because He was going to be
separated from His Father for the first time in all eternity. Second, I believe it was because He was about
to be made sin and perhaps this was what bothered Him the most. Sin was so entirely awful to Him and He knew that
this was the only way that salvation could be provided for all who would accept
Him, but to be made sin truly affected our Savior. Every human being sins, and probably sins
every day and at times we as believers do not get so upset over our sins,
especially if they are “little ones.”
Jesus sweat great drops of blood, and there is a medical term for that,
over becoming sin. It makes me sad to
think that I am not more upset at times when I sin.
We
see from Psalm 32 and 51 that David was very upset over his sin with Bathsheba
and over his sin against her husband Uriah, and I think this is one of the
biggest reasons that it is said of David that he was a man after God’s own
heart, for we know that God hates sin.
John
MacArthur writes “Even acknowledgement of sin and feeling of offense against
God do not complete repentance. If it is
genuine, it will result in a changed life that bears ‘fruit in keeping with
repentance.’ David, after confessing and
expressing great remorse for his sin against God, determined that, with God’s
help, he would forsake his sin and turn to righteousness. ‘Create in me a clean heart, O god, and renew
a steadfast spirit within me,…Then I will teach transgressors Thy ways, and
sinners will be converted to Thee’ (Psalm 51:10, 13). Fruit is always seen in Scripture as
manifested behavior (cf. Matt. 7:20).
The Great Puritan Thomas Goodwin
called ro repentance with these striking words:
‘Fall down thy knees afore
him, and with a heart broken to water, acknowledge, as Shimei, thy treason and
rebellions against him who never did thee hurt; and acknowledge, with a rope
ready fitted to thy neck by thy own hands, as they Benhadad’s servants wore;
that is, confessing that if he will hang thee up, he may …Tell Him that He may
shew his justice on thee, if he will; and present thy naked breasts, thy
hateful soul, as a butt and mark for him, if He please, to shoot his arrows
into and sheathe his sword in. Only
desire him to remember that He sheathed his sword first in the bowels of his
Son, Zech. 13:7, when he made his soul an offering for sin.’”
Lord
will we will look at another quotation from a Puritan in our next SD.
1/18/2020 5:44 PM
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