Saturday, January 16, 2021

An Erroneous View of Others (Matt. 7:2)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/16/2021 11:55 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                             Focus:  “An Erroneous View of Others”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 7:2

 

            Message of the verse:  2 "For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”

 

            Why do you think that people believe that they have the right to judge others?  The main reason is that they think that they are superior to the ones that they are judging.  Think about the religious leaders who were in Judah when Christ was on the earth.  The scribes and Pharisees believed this so much that they crucified Jesus Christ.  I know that there are others who responsible for his crucifixion including me and all other believers who realize that they are sinners saved by grace.  The Roman’s were also were responsible including Herod, and what happened to Herod after giving the authority to crucify Jesus is a very long and sad story.  God the Father was also responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ:  “Isa 53:10  But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”

 

            John MacArthur writes “Jesus says that God will judge us with the same type of judgment with which we judge others.  When we assume the role of final, omniscient judge, we imply that we are qualified to judge—that we know and understand all the facts all the circumstances, and all the motives involved.  Therefore, when we assert our right to judge, we ‘will be judged’ by the standard of knowledge and wisdom we claim is ours.  If we set ourselves up as judge over others, we cannot plead ignorance of the law in reference to ourselves when God judges us.”

 

            I think that what I want to do at this time is to give a quotation from the sermon that I finally got to listen to yester from John MacArthur on these six verses.  It was eye opening to me as it helped me to better understand this passage that has been very difficult for me to understand.  The part that I wish to quote is a review of the things that we have been going on since we began to study The Lord’s Prayer.  The quotation will not be that long but will remind us of what we have been studying for a fairly long time.  Then I will try and finish this section in our next SD.

 

            In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord has touched on all of the areas of a believer’s life, in a wonderful and marvelous summation of all of the areas of truth related to living within the kingdom. We have seen Christ meet us at every point. He began with our perspective on self in the Beatitudes, with our perspective on the world in the statements on salt and light, with our perspectives on the Word of God as He talked about the law and the fact that it was immutable and unchanging, our perspective on the moral law or holiness as He discussed the fact that we are to have an inward commitment as well as an external one. He discussed our religious activity – giving, praying, and fasting. He discussed our perspective, as we have just recently seen, on money and possessions, material goods. And now he comes to a text that deals with our relations with other people. We’ve talked about our relations to ourselves, to God, to His Word, to the world; our relations to religious activity, our relations to the morality of the time and what God wants; and now to human relationships, right relationships. And this is a tremendous passage that you’ll be looking at.

            Now as in all the other elements of the Sermon on the Mount, the perspective here is given in contrast to the view of the scribes and the Pharisees. They were the existing religious influence of the time; and against the background of their perspective, the Lord presents the truth. They came along, and their view of life was to be proud, and the Beatitudes were to be humble. They were a part of the system; Christ said that we are to be salt and light to the system.”

 

1/16/2021 12:21 PM

 

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