SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/15/2023 7:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 "False Leaders Are Cursed For
Their Exclusion"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 23:13
Message of the
verse: “13
"But woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven
from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are
entering to go in.”
This is the first curse that Jesus gives and it is
to the scribes and Pharisees for their exclusion of men from the kingdom of
heaven. This is the chief evil of every
false religion as it is that which shuts people out of God’s kingdom.
I don’t know for sure if these
leaders of all the false religions know that they are sending people to hell
for believing their false teachings, but I do know that if people follow the
teachings of false leaders that they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. The Bible makes it very clear on how one gets
to heaven, and it is not by people’s own works, but by confessing their sins
and then accepting the work that Jesus did on the cross to save them, and then
according to Ephesians 2:10 that God has planned good works for all believers
to do, and He planned them in eternity past.
I have mentioned before and that is that those who follow false leaders
do what false leaders tell them to do, and that is always wrong.
MacArthur writes “You do not enter the
kingdom yourselves,” Jesus said, “nor do you allow those who are entering to go
in.” In their hypocrisy, the unbelieving
scribes and Pharisees pretended to know God but did not, pretended to be His
spokesmen but were not, pretended to be in His kingdom but were not. In their boundless pride they even believed
they themselves were the doorkeepers of the kingdom.
“In his letter to the Roman church,
Paul said:
“If you bear
the name “Jew,” and rely upon the Law, and boast in God, and know His will, and
approve the things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, and are
confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are
in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in
the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you, therefore who teach
another, do you not teach yourself?...You who boast in the Law through your
breaking the Law, do you dishonor God.
For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
(Rom. 2:17-21, 23-24).”
“The scribes and Pharisees, and all other Jews who
followed their hypocritical traditions, lived under the delusion that , because
they were His called People and the receivers and human custodians of God’s law
(Rom 3:2; 9:4-5), they were somehow automatically destined to live under God’s
approval. In their darkness they
confused merely knowing the law with keeping it, and merely knowing about the
light wit livening in it.
“But Jesus declared that they had no
part in God’s kingdom. Which is the sphere of His reign and power and, in this
context, especially refers to the sphere of salvation in which He redeemed
people live.”
With that we will end our SD for
today, but Lord willing will continue on this very important subject in our
next SD.
10/15/2023 8:14
AM
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