SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/1/2013
12:14 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The
Invasion Crisis PT-IV (Reply)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Isaiah 37:21-35
Message of the
verses: 21 Then Isaiah the son of
Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, "Thus says the LORD, the God of
Israel, ’Because you have
prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, 22 this is the word that
the LORD has spoken against him: "She has despised you and mocked you, The
virgin daughter of Zion; She has shaken her head behind you, The daughter of
Jerusalem! 23 “Whom
have you reproached and blasphemed? And against whom have you raised your voice And haughtily
lifted up your eyes? Against
the Holy One of Israel! 24 “Through your servants you have reproached
the Lord, And you have said, ’With my many chariots I came up to the heights of
the mountains, To the remotest parts of Lebanon; And I cut down its tall cedars
and its choice cypresses. And I will go to its highest peak, its thickest
forest. 25 ’I dug wells and drank waters, And with the sole of my feet I dried
up All the rivers of Egypt.’ 26 “Have you not heard? Long ago I did it, From
ancient times I planned it.
Now I have brought it to pass, That you should turn fortified cities into
ruinous heaps. 27 "Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength,
They were dismayed and put to shame; They were as the vegetation of the field
and as the green herb, As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown
up. 28 “But I know your sitting down And your going out and your coming in And
your raging against Me. 29 “Because of your raging against Me And because your arrogance has come
up to My ears, Therefore
I will put My hook in your
nose And My bridle
in your lips, And I
will turn you back by the way which you came. 30 "Then this shall be the sign for you:
you will eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what springs
from the same, and in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards and eat their
fruit. 31 “The surviving
remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear
fruit upward. 32 “For out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant and out of Mount
Zion survivors. The zeal
of the LORD of hosts will perform this."’ 33 "Therefore, thus says the
LORD concerning the king of Assyria, ’He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; and he will not
come before it with a shield, or throw up a siege ramp against it. 34
’By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he will not come to
this city,’ declares the LORD. 35 ’For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and
for My servant David’s sake.’"
In answering the prayer of Hezekiah we see three things
in the Lord’s reply to Hezekiah. A.
Jerusalem would not be destroyed by the Assyrians, B. The Assyrians would leave
the area, and C. The people would have enough food to eat.
We see that the Lord calls them, “The daughters of Zion,”
for they were being ravaged by the Assyrians, but God would care for them. John MacArthur writes, “Jerusalem, portrayed
as a virgin helpless before a would-be rapist, had the ‘last laugh’ against
Sennacherib.”
Some may wonder why the Lord delivered His people at this
time, for some or should I say many were not faithful to Him. We see by doing this that it would bring
glory to His name, (vs. 28 & 35). Hezekiah
desired that this would bring glory to the Lord and it did, so his prayer was
answered. God also delivered Jerusalem
for His name’s sake, and we see at the end because of His promise to His
servant David. We know from the history
of Israel that God would allow the Babylonians to conquer them and take a
remnant to Babylon for seventy years.
This happened soon after Hezekiah’s son ruled Judah for fifty years and
led them back into idolatry. It seems to
me that God planned to have Judah go into captivity to Babylon, for reasons of
His own. Let me make just one small
point on why the Lord chose Babylon. God’s
servant Daniel was in Babylon from 605 BC until the time of his death, and
Daniel did many things there to preserve the nation of Israel. God used him greatly as we are seeing in our
study of Daniel, which we will pick up later this month as we look at the 8th
chapter. I believe that when we look at
the story of the birth of Jesus Christ into this world, and in His early life
we see that there were three wise men that came from the East and gave to Him
gifts that were very valuable. Many
believe that these men came from Babylon and they believe this because of what
Daniel did there many years before the birth of Christ. They would have known when the Messiah would
be born by looking at Daniel’s writings.
Many believe that Jesus was around two years old when these men and gave
Him gifts, for Herod killed the boys two years old and younger when these men
did not come back to see him. Herod
asked them when they first saw the star.
Right after they came to see Jesus, Joseph had a dream which instructed
them to leave and go to Egypt. Now they
were known to be a poor family, but now they had just received gifts that would
pay their way to Egypt. This was one of
the reasons that Babylon was the nation that would take Judah captive and not
Assyria.
We see in verses 23-29 that the Assyrians would leave,
and this too was part of the answer of Hezekiah’s prayer. We have discussed pride on different
occasions in these SD’s, and we know that God hates pride, and also pride was
the first sin ever committed by a created being, for we saw the five “I will’s”
in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, as Lucifer said “I will” five times, and
this was the first ever sin. Adam and
Eve would later sin, but they were human beings not like Lucifer who was an
angel. Sennacherib boasted much in his
letter to Hezekiah and also through his commander when he spoke to the leaders
of Judah.
Let us look at the third response of God’s answer to
Hezekiah’s prayer and this had to do with food.
I will quote John MacArthur again in this section: “The two years in which they were sustained by
the growth of the crops were the two in which Sennacherib ravaged them (cf.
32:10). He left immediately after the
deliverance (37:37), so in the third year, the people left could plant again.” Dr. Wiersbe remarks that Psalm 126 could go
along with the deliverance of Judah from Assyria.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Pride is
something that I think all believers do from time to time, and I certainly fall
into that category. Pride is leaving God
out, and saying that you can live your life without Him, and that you have no
need of Him. This is surely true of
Satan after his fall. Satan’s tactics
are still the same that were used on Eve, for he said that God was holding out
on you, and that you really don’t need God, for you can do it on yourself. WRONG!
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to give victory over Satan as
he would love to disrupt my meeting this coming weekend. “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in
the world.”
Memory verses for the
week: 2 Peter 1:1-6
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 of 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. 5 Now for this very reason also
applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your
moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge self-control, and in your
self-control perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
Question: “So he could judge the people”
(1 Kings 3:9).
Today’s Bible
Question: “By what were the believers
sealed?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/1/2013 1:20 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment