SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/19/2020 11:04 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “Treasure
in Heaven”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
6:19-24
Message of the verses: “19 "Don’t
pile up treasures on earth, where moth and rust can spoil them and thieves can
break in and steal. 20 But keep your treasure in Heaven where there is neither
moth nor rust to spoil it and nobody can break in and steal. 21 For wherever
your treasure is, your heart will be there too! 22 “The lamp of the body is the
eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if
your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If all the light
you have is darkness, it is dark indeed! 24 “No one can fully serve two
masters. He is bound to hate one and love the other, or be loyal to one and
despise the other. You cannot serve both God and the power of money” (Philips).
I
hope to finish this introduction in our SD for today. One of the things that people in Jesus’ day,
and probably in our day too have been mistaken about is that if people have a
lot of material things here on earth that they are truly more spiritually blessed
by God. Not true at all. Even the disciples of Jesus were mistaken by
this lie. One of the ways that the
Pharisees thought this to be true was from a passage in Deuteronomy 28:1-3 “1 "Now
it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all
His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high
above all the nations of the earth. 2 “All these blessings will come upon you
and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God: 3 “Blessed shall you be
in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.” In this very long chapter in Deuteronomy and
I believe also in Leviticus chapter 26, what we find is what is called “The Palestinian
Covenant.” God was telling Israel that
if they obeyed the Law that He had given them that He would bless them, and if
they did not then curses of the Law would come upon them. They did not follow the law and as a result
were sent into captivity for 70 years.
John
MacArthur writes about what the Pharisees thought about being rich and being
blessed by God: “Those blessings are
clearly and repeatedly contingent on obedience to the Lord. Material or other earthly benefits that are
accumulated by greed, dishonesty, deceit, or in any other immoral way are not
to be conceived as blessings from the Lord.
To claim God’s approval simply on the basis of one’s wealth, health,
prestige, or any other such thing is to pervert His Word and use His name in
vain.”
One
of the many warnings found in the Old Testament about accumulating wealth can
be found in Proverbs 23:4 where we read “Do not weary yourself to gain wealth,
cease from your consideration of it.”
MacArthur
mentions in his commentary that economic problems such as inflation,
recessions, and depressions do involve complex factors such as monetary, political,
military, social, climatic and other problems that contribute to these issues. However we can be sure that greed is the real
problem with these issues. John Stott
writes “Worldly ambition has a strong fascination for us. The spell of materialism is very hard to
break.” I totally have to agree with
what Mr. Stott says here. Paul told
Timothy the following in 1 Timothy 6:6-8 “6 There is a real profit, of course.
It is peace of heart for those who live as God would have them live. 7 We brought nothing with us when
we entered this world and we can be sure we shall take nothing with us when we
leave it. 8 Surely then, as far as physical things are concerned, it is
sufficient for us to keep our bodies fed and clothed.” Paul goes on to say the following in verse
ten: “For loving money leads to all
kinds of evil, and some men in the struggle to be rich have lost their faith
and caused themselves untold agonies of mind.”
(Philips)
MacArthur
concludes “In the present passage Jesus looks at materialism—particularly in
regard to luxuries—from three perspectives of treasure, vision, and master.” Lord willing this is what we will be looking
at over the next few days.
12/19/2020 11:32 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment