Daily Devotions – God’s Lawsuit

Daily Devotions – God’s Lawsuit

 

 

Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:

Matthew 5:40 (NIV)

40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.

Luke 18:18-30 (NIV)

The Rich and the Kingdom of God

18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’” 21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” 27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world makes this statement from Jesus shocking! But he is not just talking about money. He is suing and stripping this “rich young ruler” of the thing that he believes protects him and gives him life. Jesus is confronting this man with God’s lawsuit against us: you don’t actually own anything!, not even yourself. We, like this man, are confronted by the cross of Jesus, God’s lawsuit, that strips away everything in which we hope. But the good news is that in that same moment Jesus takes the lawsuit against us and makes it his own! He stands in our place and pays our debt. “It is finished.”  We owe nothing more. We are set free from all the stuff of this life that will never give us what we want or desire. We are loved.