SPRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/18/2013
8:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Lord
Defends Jerusalem
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Isaiah
31:1-9
Message of the
verses: “1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help
And rely on horses, And trust in chariots because they are many And in horsemen
because they are very strong, But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD! 2
Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster And does not retract His words, But
will arise against the house of evildoers And against the help of the workers
of iniquity. 3 Now the Egyptians are men and not God, And their horses are
flesh and not spirit; So the LORD will stretch out His hand, And he who helps
will stumble And he who is helped will fall, And all of them will come to an
end together. 4 For thus says the LORD
to me, "As the lion or the young lion growls over his prey, Against which
a band of shepherds is called out, And he will not be terrified at their voice
nor disturbed at their noise, So will the LORD of hosts come down to wage war
on Mount Zion and on its hill." 5 Like flying birds so the LORD of hosts will protect Jerusalem. He will protect and deliver it;
He will pass over and rescue it.
“6 Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons
of Israel. 7 For in that day every man will cast away his silver idols
and his gold idols, which your sinful hands have made for you as a sin. 8 And
the Assyrian will fall by a sword not of man, And a sword not of man will devour him. So he will not escape the sword,
And his young men will become forced laborers. 9 “His rock will pass away
because of panic, And his princes will be terrified at the standard,"
Declares the LORD, whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.”
We are looking at the final “woe” in this section of
chapters from the book of Isaiah, and by God’s will we will move on to the next
section of chapters in our next SD, chapters 32-35 which will speak of “Future
Shock and Future Glory.
First of all this “woe” is kind of a review or brief
summary of what Isaiah has already been teaching the people. Dr. Wiersbe points out “Indeed, he was
teaching them ‘line upon line, here a little, and there a little’ (28:10), and
yet they were not getting the message.”
If we look at the history of the Israelites we will see
that before they were even a nation that they had a problem going down to Egypt
for help. Abraham was the first to do it
when there was a famine in the land, and that is where he picked up Hagar and
that is where the Arab race began as Abraham had a child by her named Ishmael. Next Isaac did the same thing, and then the
children of Israel were told by the Lord to go to Egypt where He would make a
family into a nation, as they stayed there 400 years for this process to take
place. Israel was told not to go to
Egypt for horses, but Solomon disobeyed the Lord, and added this too many of
his sins against the Lord. Now Judah
wanted help from Egypt and not from the Lord, for they trusted in horses and
chariots instead of the hand of the Lord.
God does not fear the Assyrians for God does not fear
anything, for everything that we see was created by the hand of God so there is
no reason for Him to fear anything. God
will take care of the Assyrians in one night as we will see in Isaiah 37:36, “Then
the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians;
and when men arose early in the morning, behold, all of these were dead.”
One thing for sure and that is that the children of
Israel would have saved a lot of money, negations, and grief if they had just
trusted the Lord instead of trusting Egypt who would be destroyed by the
Assyrians as some point in the future.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his commentary with these words
that have to do with the Church today: “As
God’s church today faces enemies and challenges, it is always a temptation to
turn to the world or the flesh for help.
But our first response must be to examine our hearts to see if there is
something we need to confess and make right.
Then we just turn to the Lord in faith and obedience and surrender to
His will alone. We must trust Him to
protect us and fight for us.
“A friend of mine kept a card in his office desk that
read: ‘Faith Is Living Without Scheming.’ In one statement, that is what Isaiah was
saying to Judah and Jerusalem, and that is what he is saying to us today.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Not to scheme,
but trust in the Lord, for He does not need my help, just my obedience.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to trust the Lord for my meeting I
have on Saturday.
Memory verses for the
week: Review of 2Peter 1:1-4
1 Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus
Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the
righteousness or our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: 2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the
knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that His divine power has
granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true
knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. 4 For by these He has granted to us His
precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of
the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
Question: “Jesus” (John 4:16).
Today’s Bible
Question: “Where did the Lord tell Jonah
to go?”
Answer in tomorrow’s SD.
9/18/2013 8:41 AM
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