SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/28/2014
8:11 AM
My Worship Time Focus: More
Pictures
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
3:1-10
Message of the
verses: The second main point from
Dr. Wiersbe’s outline is entitled “Repentance:
God Pleads for His People to Return to Him” and this section covers
chapters three and four from the book of Jeremiah. We again will be looking at pictures that
Jeremiah paints for us, four pictures in this first sub-section.
Picture One: The
Unfaithful Wife (Jeremiah 3:1-10): “1 God
says, "If a husband divorces his wife And she goes from him And belongs to
another man, Will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely
polluted? But you are a harlot with many lovers; Yet you turn to Me,"
declares the LORD. 2 “Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see; Where have
you not been violated? By the roads you have sat for them Like an Arab in the
desert, And you have polluted a land With your harlotry and with your
wickedness. 3 “Therefore
the showers have been withheld, And there has been no spring rain. Yet you had
a harlot’s forehead; You refused to be ashamed. 4 “Have you not just now called
to Me, ’My Father, You are the friend of my youth? 5 ’Will He be angry forever?
Will He be indignant to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken And have done evil
things, And you have had
your way."
“6 Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king,
"Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green
tree, and she was a harlot there. 7 “I thought, ’After she has done all these
things she will return to Me’; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
8 "And I saw that for all the
adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her
treacherous sister Judah
did not fear; but
she went and was a harlot also. 9 “Because of the lightness of her harlotry,
she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. 10 “Yet in
spite of all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but rather in deception,"
declares the LORD.”
In this section of two paragraphs we see that God
divorces Israel for their unfaithfulness to Him, we see that God calls Judah
back to Himself, and because of the “revival” in the time of Josiah was not one
from the heart it can be seen that God is still not pleased with them. In the Law a man was permitted to divorce his
wife, but not to remarry her (Deut. 24:1-4), and so as God divorced Israel (The
Northern Kingdom) He would not take her back.
At this point I want to remind you that during the split of the kingdoms
of Israel, ten going with the Northern Kingdom, and two with the Southern
Kingdom, that many of the people from the Northern Kingdom migrated to the
Southern Kingdom because of the idolatry that was going on in the North. Some people have believed that ten of the
tribes of Israel were lost, but this is not the case for in the book of
Revelations we see that God calls 12,000 men from each of the twelve tribes of
Israel to be a witness to Him during the tribulation period.
I believe that it is because of Judah being in the
Southern Kingdom, and the fact that all of the tribes were represented in the
Southern Kingdom that God continues to bring them back to Himself. Now we know that Judah eventually fell to
Babylon, but while they were in captivity they had prophets to teach them what
was going to happen, and they had faithful men to lead them back to their land
so that in God’s perfect timing He would bring the Messiah into the world in
the way that He had spoken through the prophets that He would.
The biggest problem (sin) that all of Israel had
committed was idolatry and that is the reason that God would send them into captivity. God desired them to worship only Him, and
when they put up their shrines in the high places they were not worshiping Him,
and this brought about the fierce anger of the Lord on them. It should be noted that when Israel returned
to their land that they never again worshiped the types of idols that they
worshiped before they went into captivity.
What we have seen in this section is that both Israel and
Judah were like unfaithful wives to the Lord, and for this they paid a very
heavy price.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Idols came in all
kinds shapes and sizes in the time when Israel and Judah worshiped them. Today idols are not made up of wood and stone
where people bow down to them, but they do come in things like TV sets, I pads,
Smart phones, cars, boats, and other things like this that take first place in
our lives when it is God who is suppose to take first place in our lives.
My Steps of Faith for Today: God is to be first place in my life.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Nicodemus” (john 3:4).
Today’s Bible
Question: “By what river was Ezekiel
held captive?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/28/2014 8:45 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment