GIVING THANKS FOR THE GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

The path of the righteous is level; You, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth. Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for You; Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for You in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for You.

Isaiah 26:7-9a

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If you are becoming a Christian or have been a Christian for some time, then you have to know that the matter of righteousness is central to our faith. God the Father expects us to live right and that means free from sin. To that end, He gave us His one and only Son Jesus who not only came to give His life for us and save us from our sins but came to show us how to live in righteousness. Follow the ways of Jesus and we can be assured we will be living right. It’s a simple equation.

Given this, we need to be in a constant state of praise, praise for the fact that through Jesus God has given us a promise of everlasting life. Death is not the end for Christians but only the start of a glorious eternity spent with our Father and His Son, an eternity free from all that would afflict us in this world. There will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more hardship, no more afflictions, no more brokenness, and no more sin. Instead, there will only be light and love and perfect peace as the righteous inhabit the New Jerusalem, the new holy city created within the new earth and heaven that will come to be when Jesus returns.

We also need to be in praise for the righteousness that God leads us to through Christ Jesus. For if we follow Jesus, we will find ourselves where God wants us to be, living within His will, word, and way. This is because Jesus is the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6). There is no one else who will point us toward righteousness outside of Him. Indeed, Jesus taught us the following regarding living the right way:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13-14

The path of righteousness is straight and narrow. There are no options, no side paths, no off ramps. If you walk straight, living righteously as Jesus did, and you will find life eternal. Choose sin and wickedness instead and you will stray off of the narrow path onto a path that is wide, a path that leads to destruction. It’s a path that none of us want to be on although many are indeed traveling it, even people who profess to be Christian. Yes I said it. There are proclaimed Christians who think they are on the narrow path when they are really on the wide one. No one ever said a Christian can’t lose their bearings. People walk away from Jesus all the time, even His followers.

Friends, we need to be praising God that He provided us a spiritual GPS in Jesus. In the last days, people will be doing just that as we see in our scripture from Isaiah, Chapter 26. Look again at these words:

The path of the righteous is level; You, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth. Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for You; Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for You in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for You. vv. 7-9a

Through Jesus, God has provided us a way to walk level and smoothly as we travel the way of righteousness. All we need to do is ask Jesus to lead and guide us through each and every day, following His will and way. When we do this, we walk in the laws of God and find ourselves more and more in a spirit of reverence and thanksgiving toward the God who gives us all we could ever ask for, all we could ever need. We find ourselves hungering and thirsting for righteousness each and every day, and as a result, we are filled to overflow because Jesus promised it would be so (Matthew 5:6). We discover that our souls and spirits yearn for communion with our Savior as He and He alone becomes the desire of our hearts.

In other words, our entire life revolves around our relationship with the Lord Jesus and God His Father.

That’s the only way there is to truly live. That’s how we will truly find righteousness in life.  

Today and every day, let us give thanks for the gift of Jesus, granted to us by our Creator God who loves us so deeply.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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