Seize the Moment – Day 1140
Discern a Right Relationship with God!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Monday, May 1.
Do you have a right relationship with God, or are you just acknowledging Him with your religious observances? David discerned the distinction in Psalm 40:6-8:
Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired; my ears You have opened; Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, “Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.”
These words might be familiar to you because they are applied to Jesus Christ in Hebrews 10:5-10. It was Jesus’ obedience on the cross which “once for all” fulfilled the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant. Today’s psalm highlighted the biblical principle that obedience takes priority over sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22; Isaiah 1:10-17; Jeremiah 7:21-26; Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6-8). This principle was made visible through the obedience of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross (Philippians 2:5-11). Paul stated in Romans 5:19, “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”
God desires for His people to have a right relationship with Him. He wants you to know Him intimately, walking with Him in His way, not acknowledge Him through your religious activity as you walk in your own way. Today’s psalm prophesied of how we would have a right relationship with God. Jeremiah 31:33 makes the way clear, “‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (cf. Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26).
Seize the moment and pray Psalm 40, meditating upon the promise of a right relationship with God, written on your heart by the “Spirit of the living God” (2 Corinthians 3:1-4).
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YOUTUBE:
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Videos are posted about a week after the devotion appears in the blog.