SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/21/2020
11:11 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Content”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:2
Message of the verses: “2 And opening His
mouth He began to teach them, saying,”
Now
as we ended our last SD we were talking about a new way of thinking and I
stated that I wanted to continue that thought and so I will just quote a paragraph
from MacArthur to help us better understand more about this new way of
thinking: “Jesus’ new way of living
comes from a new way of thinking, and the new way of thinking comes from new
life. Here are God’s standards for those
created in His own image and recreated into the image of His own dear Son (Rom.
8:29; 1 Cor. 15:49; 2 Cor. 3:18). Those
who do not follow them as a general direction of life have an unacceptable
righteousness (Matt. 5:20).” “20 “For I
say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes
and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” I remember a really long time ago when I was
listening to a sermon by Hal Lindsey, and I believe it was his testimony about
how the Lord saved him that he mentioned this verse and said that he knew that
the scribes and Pharisees were not the best, but he did feel that it would be
pretty hard to have a righteousness better than there’s. Hal
Lindsey was saved while a Tug Boat Captain living in New Orleans and his
testimony was rather unique and in some ways reminds me of mine, in fact it was
his taped messages that I was listening to when I received that effectual call
from the Holy Spirit. Lindsey was saved
as he looked at some verses in the third chapter of John’s gospel that he
opened up his New Testament too one night after he was almost killed on his
boat.
God
is the maker, the Creator of all humans and just like when you buy a new car or
something else new and you want to know more about it you trust the
manufacturer instructions to find out to operate it. God knows more about humans than humans know
about humans so the best place to find out about humans is in God’s Word, He
can best show us what we lack and what we are in need of, and by the way we all
need Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord so we can understand what He wants us
to do, how to live our lives.
MacArthur
writes “As the Sermon on the Mount itself makes clear, internal changes also
bring external changes. When our
attitudes and thinking are right, our actions will fall in line. F our inner life does not make our outer life
better; our inner life is deficient or nonexistent. ‘Faith without works is useless,’ James says
(James 2:20). Paul tells us that we are ‘created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should
walk in them’ (Eph. 2:10).”
David
Martyn Lloyd-Jones makes the following point more understandable and that is
the true outside life can only be produced from a true inside life. He makes this point as he compares the
Christian life to playing music. “A
person may play Beethoven’s Moonlight
Sonata accurately and without a single mistake—yet not really play what the
composer had in mind. Even though the
notes are played correctly, they do not produce the sonata. The pianist may mechanically strike the right
notes at the right time, yet miss the essence, the soul, of the
composition. He may not at all express
what Beethoven meant to be expressed. The true artist must play the right notes at
the right time. He is not exempt from
the rules and principles of music. But
accurate playing is not what makes him a great musician. It is his expression of what lies behind the
notes that enthralls his listeners. In the
same way, faithful Christians are concerned about the letter of God’s Word; but
beyond that they are also concerned about the spirit, the deeper will and
purpose that lie behind the letter. That
concern reveals an obedient heart filled with the desire to glorify the Lord.
“To claim to follow the spirit
without obeying the letter is to be a liar.
To follow the letter without following the spirit is to be a
hypocrite. To follow the spirit in the
right attitude and the letter in the right action is to be a faithful child of
God and a loyal subject of the King.”
Yesterday
while walking on my treadmill I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur that was
an hour long and it was on the third verse of Matthew chapter five. The title of our next section from MacArthur’s
commentary on this third verse is “Happy Are our Humble.” I suppose that after mentioning that I wanted
to learn more about humility for over a year that God is now answering my
prayers to which I am thankful. I also
think that this is a lifelong process to learn and to be humble as in one of
MacArthur’s later sermons from a year or so ago he mentioned his need for
humility.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Check out the highlighted paragraph above
for what my spiritual meaning is for today.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Since
learning humility and also contentment is a lifelong process I desire to
continue to be taught and to learn contentment and humility as the Lord teaches
me. I also desire to have joy in my
heart as I study the Word of God each day.
3/21/2020 11:55 AM
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