SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/21/2020 9:31 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Deliverance”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
5:29-30
Message of the verses: “29 "If your
right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is
better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body
to be thrown into hell. 30 "If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it
off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of
your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.”
I
have to say that the first time that I read this it brought fear to my
heart. I don’t think that I truly
understood, and then a friend of ours stated that Jesus is speaking of
spiritual amputations.
John
MacArthur states that “Here Jesus points the way to deliverance from heart sin.” That is something that all believers need to
know for sure. Now we have been talking
about heart issues since we began looking at this 5th chapter of
Matthew since March 12th of this year, and now we see Jesus talks
about doing something to our bodies in order to take care of a difficult
problem. So if the problem is in the
heart, what good is plucking out an eye or cutting off of a hand? If a person loses his right eye then he will
just lust with the left eye, and the same with losing an arm as one can commit
sin with the other arm.
MacArthur
adds “Obviously Jesus is speaking figuratively of those things, physical or
otherwise, that cause us to be tempted or make us more susceptible to
temptation. In Jewish culture, the right
eye and the right hand represented a person’s best and most precious faculties. The right eye represented one’s best vision,
and the right hand one’s best skills.
Jesus point is that we should be willing t give up whatever is
necessary, even the most cherished thing we possess, if doing that will help
protect us from evil. Nothing is so valuable as to be
worth preserving at the expense of righteousness. This strong message is obviously not to be
interpreted in a wooden, literal way so that the Lord appears to be avocation
mutilation. Mutilation will not cleanse
sinful impulses in us which push us to evil actions (cf. Matt. 18:8-9).” “8 "If your hand or your foot causes
you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter
life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the
eternal fire. 9 “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it
from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two
eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.”
“Skandalizo basically means to cause to
fall, but in its substantive form, as here (‘makes…stumble’), it was often used
of the bait stick that springs the trap when an animal touches it. Anything
that morally or spiritually traps us, that causes us to fall into sin or to
stay in sin, should be eliminated quickly and totally.” An example of this would be that a married
person’s falling in love with someone besides his or her spouse is totally
wrong. That kind of a relationship may
be in fact rewarding or it may be fulfilling and beautiful, but that does not
make it right, it makes it totally wrong.
So
what is Jesus saying here? Jesus is
saying something similar that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:27 which we will
look at in a moment. Jesus is saying in
this hyperbolic statement clearly that sin must be dealt with radically. “But I discipline my body and make it my
slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be
disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27).
I
think that we will look at the rest of these verses and what they mean in our
next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: “Nothing is so valuable as to be worth preserving at the expense of
righteousness.” I surely need to
remember this and think about it often.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Remember how serious sin is as it took the
death of God’s only Son to take care of my sin, something very precious to Him.
8/21/2020 10:00 AM
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