SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/13/2022 9:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Warning”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 16:26b
Message of the verse: “and will then recompense every man according to his deeds.”
I want to begin by talking a bit about any
unbeliever, and the truth is that no genuinely righteous works can be manifest
in the life of an unbeliever, and the reason is because he has no indwelling
Holy Spirit to produce them and has no godly new nature through which the
holiness of the Spirit can be expressed.
It is very, very much different in the life of the believer as it is characterized
by righteous works, because he has God’s own life and Spirit within him as the
source and power for those works that he performs for the cause of Christ. MacArthur adds “A person who has no evidence
of righteous behavior in his life has no basis for assurance of salvation, no
matter how long and vocally he may have professed being a Christian.”
Now this next quote from John MacArthur truly speaks to
my heart this morning and is something that I have known, but really needed to
hear again. “Yet the honest, humble
believer knows that, no matter how faithfully he studies and obeys God’s Word
and has fellowship with Him in prayer, he still falls far short of the Lord’s
perfect righteousness. But he also knows
that, ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9). He knows that, by God’s gracious Spirit continuing
to work through him, even such confession is verification of his
genuineness. His life is sure to produce
more fruit that is pleasing to God, fruit for which the Lord will say, ‘Well
done, good and faithful slave,…enter into the joy of your master (Matt.
25:21). Because a believer has given his
life to Jesus Christ, His own Spirit produces in him works that are worthy of
God’s reward. For the believer,
therefore the truth that the Lord will then recompense every man according to
his deeds is a wonderful promise.” (To
which I have to say a hardy AMEN.)
Now as we look at this warning to unbelievers the truth
of it is a dire warning, because at Christ’s judgment seat they will have no
acceptable deeds to present to the Lord as evidence of salvation. There will be many professed Christians there
who will say to the Lord “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’
and then [Christ] will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you
who practice lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:22-23).
In the book of Isaiah we read about what the deeds of the
unsaved consists of, the deeds that they actually believed would save their
souls, but Isaiah 64:6 tells us “For all of us have
become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all
of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” The filthy garments that Isaiah speaks of
here are the garments that women use at a certain time of the month, menstrual
cloth, which is a graphic figure used to represent the best that human goodness
can produce. Now at Jesus’ second coming,
Paul warns, He will deal out “retribution to those who do not know God and to
those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal
destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His
power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day” (2 Thess.
1:8-10).
MacArthur concludes this section by
writing “For all men there will be a day of accounting, a day of reckoning. For the cross-bearer, obedient Christian it
will be a day of great rejoicing and glory, because he will have evidence that
the life of God is within him by faith in Jesus Christ. But for the unrepentant, Christ-rejecting
sinner, it will be a day of great terror and torment, because he will have had
no evidence of divine life.”
There certainly is a choice for a
person to make, and the choice is whether or not you are willing to understand
and believe that in and of yourself you can do nothing to one day stand before
the Lord and have Him say well done to you or to stand before the Lord and have
Him say “I do not know you.” Every
person who has been born on planet earth, with the exception of Jesus Christ,
was born a sinner, and they sin because they are sinners. One has to realize that when the Holy Spirit
is working in your heart which means He is getting your attention to show you
that in effect you were born wrong, and the only thing that you can do is to
confess your sinful life to the Lord, and then ask Him to come into your heart
to save you, and if your genuinely want this He will give it to you, and then
will change your life to be able to do genuine works after you become a
believer for the cause of Christ. Think
about this!
10/13/2022
10:11 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment