SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/1/2020 8:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Righteousness God Requires
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)
We
move into the last main section that comes from this 20th verse from
Matthew chapter five. It is my desire
for this SD, since it is Saturday, that I keep it brief and only go over the
shorter main section and then in our next SD we will begin to look at the
sub-section to this main section. After
that we will move onto an overview of verses 21-48, something different than we
have been looking at. Lord willing that
will begin on Tuesday’s SD as the sub-section is fairly long. I can only plan in my mind what I desire to
do, but trust the Lord to guide me.
In
the past we have looked at verses from different places in the Word of God
telling us that we are to be holy just like God is holy. We live in a world where sin prevails, but
God cannot stand sin at all, any kind of sin for He is perfectly holy. Humaningly speaking that would purpose a great
problem. It was eight years ago
yesterday that my mother passed into glory, and I had the privilege of giving
the message at her funeral. I entitled
the message “Mom’s Hope,” and her hope is the hope of every believer, and that
is the rapture of the church. I knew
that she would want me to give out the gospel at her funeral and one way that I
did this was tell the story of a judge and his son. The son did something that was very wrong and
had to go to court to be tried for his crime that he committed. It just so happened that he went into the
court room of his father. The father had
a dilemma when he was hearing his son’s case as he loved his son very much but
being a judge he had to make sure that the law was carried out. His son was convicted by his father, but his
father because of his love for his son took off his robe and stated that he
would serve the time himself so that his son could go free. This satisfied both his love for his son and
also justice. This is what God the
Father did for us when He sent His Son to die in our place and so anyone who
realizes that they are a sinner and realizes that Christ died in their place
and confesses their sin and then invites Jesus into their lives will be saved
as Christ’s righteousness will be given to them as God’s wrath was satisfied at
the cross for them.
Now
as we look at Matthew 5:20 we can see that the righteousness of God requires
those in His kingdom to far surpass the righteousness of the scribes and the
Pharisees. John MacArthur writes “The
term ‘surpasses’ is used of a river overflowing its banks, emphasizing that
which is far in excess of the normal.
The Lord requires genuine righteousness, real holiness that far exceeds
anything human and that exists only in the redeemed heart. The psalmist wrote, ‘The king’s daughter is
all glorious within; her clothing is interwoven with gold’ (Ps. 45:13). When the inside is beautiful, outward beauty
is appropriate; but without inner beauty, outward adornment is pretense and
sham.”
The
story of how David was anointed to be king by Samuel is a story of what God
looks at in a person as we know that God does look at the inside of a person
and not the outside. Saul, the first
king of Israel was a very tall man, a man who was strong physically, but very
weak spiritually, and unfortunately that was the kind of king that Israel was
looking for, but David was a man after God’s own heart. Samuel looked at all of Jessie’s sons and
found not one of them that the Lord was leading him to anoint as the next king
of Israel. He asked Jessie if he had any
other sons to which Jessie told him about David who was a small teenage boy
attending the sheep. “7 But the LORD
said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his
stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for
man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart’ (1 Samuel
16:7).”
More
from MacArthur: “God not only requires
inner righteousness but perfect righteousness.
‘Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’
(Matthew 5:48). To be qualified for God’s
kingdom we must be as holy as the King Himself.
That standard is so infinitely high even the most self-righteous person
would not dare claim to possess it or be able to attain it.”
8/1/2020 9:26 AM
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