SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/2/2020 9:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Righteousness God Gives”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:20
Message of the verse: “20 For I tell you
that your goodness must be a far better thing than the goodness of the scribes
and Pharisees before you can set foot in the kingdom of Heaven at all!” (Philips)
As
one looks at the holiness of God, the perfectness of God and then thinks that
the only way to get into heaven when life on earth is over is to have that same
kind of holiness and perfection that God has, one could get very
discouraged. Jesus’ disciples asked Him
a question in Matthew 19:25 “Then who can be saved?” The only answer to that question is seen in
the next verse “And looking at them Jesus said to them, "With
people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
The
One who is demanding perfect righteousness is the one who gives perfect
righteousness. Jesus tells us the way
into the kingdom of heaven, and He is the way “"I am the way, and the
truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’” Jesus is
saying that the King not only is the One who sets the standard of perfect
righteousness, but He will Himself bring anyone up to that standard who is
willing to enter the kingdom on the King’s terms.
Let
us now look at Galatians 2:16 “nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ
Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of
the Law; since by the
works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” (Notice the highlighted portions of this
verse.) Paul is saying to the Galatians that
to be justified is to be made righteous, and to be made righteous by Christ is
the only way to become righteous.
Paul
writes the following in Romans 3:21-22 “21 But now apart from the Law the
righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the
Prophets, 22 even the
righteousness of God through
faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no
distinction.” Faith has always been God’s
way to righteousness as can been seen perfectly in the OT, for example we will
look at a verse from Genesis “Gen. 15:6 Then he believed in the LORD; and He
reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Paul repeats this verse in Romans 4:3 “What
does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him
as righteousness.’” The Scribes and
Pharisees spent their whole lives reading and studying the OT, but failed to
understand it. I have always said that
you truly have to be a believer to understand the Word of God, otherwise you
are reading someone else’s mail in a different language. Let us look at Romans 4:10 “How then was it credited? While
he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while
uncircumcised.” Let us move onto
verse 11: “and he received the sign of
circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father
of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be
credited to them.”
I
will conclude this SD with a quotation from John MacArthur: “The uncircumcised includes those before as
well as after Abraham. He was the father
of the faithful, but he was not the first of the faithful. ‘By faith Able offered to God a better
sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was
righteous’ and ‘by faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death;
and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that
before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. (Heb. 11:4-5). It was also only by faith that Noah found
salvation (v. 7).” By faith Noah, being
warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark
for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became
an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
8/2/2020 10:26 AM
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