SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/5/2021 9:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “Empty Words”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
7:21-23
Message of the verses: “21 "Not
everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he
who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 “Many
will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and
in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And
then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO
PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’ 24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and
acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
We
begin with a quotation from John MacArthur:
“A good tree not only can but will bear good fruit, and a life that
professes to be Christian, but in no way reflects Christ’s righteousness, has
no part in Him. That kind of profession
comes from the kind of faith that has no works and is dead (James 2:17). It is the demon faith James refers to (James
2:19), which is orthodox and accurate, but unholy. In the ultimate and most tragic sense such a
false profession is to take the Lord’s name in vain. ‘The blasphemy of the sanctuary,’ G. Campbell
Morgan observed, ‘is far more awful than the blasphemy of the slum.’ Mere professed devotion to Christ is but
another Judas kiss.”
I
have mentioned that the Lord only has sinners to work with; He has no others on
this earth to work with for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God.” The Lord know everything,
including that true believers will fall and stumble. “‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have
forgiven our debtors (Matt. 6:12). When
true believers sin they are to go to 1 John 1:9 which reads as follows “If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.” Don’t forget
the cleansing part. I heard a story from
J. Edwin Orr who was talking about his young son who was told not to play in
the mud puddles, but he did in disobedience to his parents. The young lad stayed outside as long as he
could until hunger pains drew him inside to receive his punishment. His parents forgave his actions, but then his
mother had to take her young son upstairs and give him a good cleansing in the
bath tub. We certainly need forgiveness,
but we also need to be cleansed clean so we can continue to serve the
Lord. None of us are sinless, and thus
we all need the Lord forgiveness when we sin.
Matthew 5:6 says“"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
This verse is evidence that we belong to God. “God’s will may not be the perfection of the
true believer’s life, but it is the direction of it” writes John
MacArthur. On my other blog for today I
placed a fairly long SD about sanctification that goes along with this truth,
something that in time I want to also put onto my FB story.
Now
we have to go the other way and talk about those who continually “practice lawlessness.”
These however certainly give evidence that they do not belong to Christ. A main reason is that they do not recognize
their sins and are unwilling to confess them before the Lord, and certainly don’t
hunger and thirst for righteousness, and the reason is that they do not have
any part of Christ. MacArthur adds “All
religious activity, not matter how orthodox and fervent, that does not result
from obedience to the lordship of Christ and the pursuit of His glory is
rebellion against the law of God, which demands heart conformity.”
As
we look at our verses they are even all the more amazing when we take the time
to consider the impressive that those professing believers claim to have
accomplished. This is what they tell the
Lord “Did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and
in Your name perform many miracles?”
Seems like they knew the things that needed to be done, yet we know that
they are not true believers.
It
is my desire to finish this section in our next SD.
3/5/2021 10:05 AM
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