3/2/18 – Job 30, Job 31, Job 32 Matthew 22:15-46 Psalm 18:16-24
Job 31:1 – “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?
A covenant with his eyes – in other words a firm promise. The eyes are the doorway through which much sin enters the mind. Lust begins with the eyes. Job had made a firm promise with his eyes that no unclean thing would pass by.
In a world that uses lustful and sexual imagery to sell you everything, we need to be on our guard more than every before. Images stay with you – images take up residence. Therefore you need to be the keeper of your eyes.
Every time you turn on the TV or go online, you put yourself in potential harms way. So you need to make a covenant with yourself – with your own eyes. That you will do what you can to protect them.
Matt 22:34-40 – But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Love. That’s the greatest commandment. That’s the key on which everything else hangs. It’s not love in the same way the the world sees it, it’s the choice to put others before yourself. First – you love God with all your heart, soul and mind. That’s every part of you – that’s your emotional and mental centre – every part of you loves God. If we can get that right, then everything else falls into place including our love for others.
This does not mean the other commandments don’t matter. Jesus wasn’t preaching, just love and don’t worry about anything else. No, He preached if you love Him, you will keep His commandments. Obedience becomes an act of devotion rather than an act of trying to please God. The motivation is totally different.
That means if we say we love, but yet we don’t obey we don’t really love at all. Your actions prove the position of your heart.
