SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/11/2023 12:27 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The
Response to Jesus”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
19:20-22
Message of the verses: “20 The young man said
to Him, "All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?" 21 Jesus
said to him, "If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions
and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come,
follow Me." 22 But when the young man heard this statement, he went away
grieved; for he was one who owned much property.
The first thing I want to say is that we will be
looking over these verses for a fairly long period of time. The second thing I want to say and that is
verse 22 is one of the saddest verses found in the Word of God, and the things
talked about in verse 21 and 22 are still going on in our world today and that
too is very sad.
We
see in the verse 20 that the man said to Jesus "All these things I have
kept; what am I still lacking?" What
he was saying to Jesus was probably sincere but it was far from being
true. His problem is like most of the
scribes and Pharisees, and that was that he was convinced in his mind that he
had kept all of God’s law as son he tells Jesus “Teacher, I have kept all these
things from my youth up” (Mark 10:20).
One of the things that I continue to think about as I go through this
section of Matthew 19 goes back to what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount
where Jesus was saying what is going on in the mind of a person is more
important than the actions that the person is taking. I have mentioned before that Jesus said that
if a man looks at a woman with lust in his heart he has already committed
adultery with her, and this is the things that the scribes and the Pharisees
did not get, and it is not just the scribes and the Pharisees who did not get
this as people throughout the church age have not gotten it either. I have read that when a Muslin man wants to
go to a brothel that there is a short marriage ceremony with the woman and him
so what they do makes it all right with the Muslin faith. All I can say is that it may be all right
with the Muslin faith but not ok with God as His Word makes that clear.
John
MacArthur writes “Because the commandments concerning attitudes toward God were
just as familiar to the man as the one’s Jesus quoted, he obviously thought he
had fulfilled those as well. His view of
the law was completely superficial, external, and man-oriented. Because he had not committed physical
adultery or murder, because he was not a liar or a thief, and because he did
not blaspheme the Lord’s name or worship idols, he looked on himself as being
virtually perfect in God’s eyes.” I
would say that this man, and many others had a false sense of security. I have to go back to what this man visited
Jesus in the first place, and I believe that he realized that he knew that
there was still something wrong in his heart but when he gets the solution he
goes back to what he thought he was doing right and won’t look at what he will
not be able to give up to receive eternal life.
Now I am not saying that a person can earn salvation, because the Bible
makes that clear that you cannot, but there are “road blocks” in a person that
when told about them will not give them up.
Remember the story of the slave and the slave owner I spoke about in our
last SD.
3/11/2023 12:56 PM
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