March 10: Matthew 5:17-20
 
Key Verse: Matthew 5:20
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
 
Devotion:
If we set rigorous rules to follow, we have to live by those rules and keep them to the best of our ability otherwise we will look like law breakers instead of law keepers. When Jesus stood up to the Scribes and Pharisees, it was because their laws kept on growing and changing according to what they though should be good enough for God, not what God wanted them to keep!
 
When we live in a land which has laws, it is our job to keep those laws and not re-invent them as we go along. When Jesus came to live amongst us, it was no to set aside all the laws God had given to Moses, but to uphold them and to set the laws of the land right once again. Jesus came to make sure God’s Word was brought back to being the ultimate law and not what mankind had though should be best.
 
No matter how hard we try to make laws we think are good enough for God, we will always fall short of the mark. The more complex the laws we come up with, the more difficult it is for us to keep them and to be righteous according to them. Jesus came to be the ultimate sacrifice for our sins so we would not have to try and give bigger and better sacrifices all the time as we got deeper and deeper into our pits of sin we dig!
 
God wants us to remember all of the laws and do our best to keep them; but Jesus came to cover all those laws we are not able to keep and protect. God knew we would not be able to keep them all, just as man sinned in the very beginning, so too do we continue to break the rules – because we just are not righteous enough to keep them all. This is why Jesus came – to cover those we cannot keep. We try and try, yet we do falter, trips up and sin... it is our nature. But that does not make it ok...
 
Points to Ponder:
How well do you keep God’s commandments?
 
Will you allow Jesus to take on your sin debt which you cannot hope to keep?