SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/26/2014
9:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Breaking God’s Covenant
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Jeremiah 11:1-8
Message of the
verses: In today’s SD we begin
looking at the forth chapter of Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of
Jeremiah in which he titles it “Voting With God,” and it covers chapters eleven
through thirteen of the book of Jeremiah.
He mentions at the end of his introductory commentary “In this section
of his prophecy, Jeremiah recorded the sins of the nation and pleaded with the
people to return to the Lord while there was yet time.”
The section we are going to look at this morning is “Breaking
God’s Covenant” and this covers the first eight verses of chapter eleven of
Jeremiah, however we need to first of all look at some of the covenants that
God made with the children of Israel beginning with the Abrahamic Covenant
which was also reinforced by also giving it to Isaac in Genesis 26:1-5 and then
with Jacob in Genesis 35:1-15. God first
gave this covenant to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 where we read “1 ¶ Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth
from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the
land which I will show you; 2 And I will
make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so
you shall be a blessing; 3 And I will
bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you
all the families of the earth will be blessed.’” He later confirmed this covenant to Abraham
in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis. I
have mentioned that this covenant is an unconditional covenant made with the
people of Israel and is still in effect today.
God later gave an unconditional covenant with the nation of Israel after
bringing them out of Egypt and stopping at Mt. Sinai and this covenant is what
is called the Mosaic Covenant, having the Ten Commandments in it. However in this covenant God told them if you
obey me and keep this covenant then I will bless you, but if you don’t then I
will punish you. They did not obey the
covenant and God did punish them as He brought the Babylonians in to conquer
them beginning in 605 BC and finishing the job in 586 BC. Jeremiah is speaking to the people before
this happened and at that time the people were supposed to be in what we call “Josiah’s
Reformation” which is found in the book of 2 Kings 23:2 where we read The king went up to the house of the LORD and
all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the
priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great; and he read
in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in
the house of the LORD.” The book of the
Law or the covenant from Moses was found in the temple and thus Josiah had it
read to all of the people, the problem was that Josiah truly had revival, but
most of the people did not have it for the were not truly worshiping the Lord, for
they would still go to the high places to worship their idols and when Josiah
was killed it did not take long for the nation to go right back into idolatry.
The problem with them, and with some believers today is
their lack of love for the Lord. Jesus
said “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” Jesus knew that if a person loved Him that
they would want to keep the commandments that He gave them. Dr Wiersbe points out that in the book of
Deuteronomy which means the renewing of the Law, for in it Moses gave again the
Law to the next generation that came out of Egypt for all of the first
generation had died because of their failure to believe that God could use them
to conquer those who were in the Promised Land.
In the book of Deuteronomy we find that the word love is used twenty
times. Dr. Wiersbe points out “Note the
emphasis on love in the Book of
Deuteronomy. The word is used twenty
times, and love is presented as the motive for obedience to the Lord (6:4-5;
10:12; 11:1, 13, 22). The word ‘heart’
is used nearly fifty times in Deuteronomy.
In this ‘second edition ‘ of the Law, Moses moved the emphasis from mere
outward obedience to inward love and a desire to please God. Why we obey God is a mark of maturity in the
Christian life.” This was the problem
with the people of Israel during the time when Jeremiah was alive and
ministering to them, and is also a great problem in the Church today, as it
seems to me that the people of God care more about the gifts that God has given
them than the Giver of the gifts.
Jeremiah 11:1-8 “1 The word which came to Jeremiah from
the LORD, saying, 2 "Hear the words of this covenant,
and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem;
3 and say to them, ’Thus says the LORD, the God of
Israel, "Cursed is the man who does not heed the words of this covenant
4 which I commanded your forefathers in
the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, ’Listen to
My voice, and do according to all which I command you; so you shall be My
people, and I will be your God,’ 5 in
order to confirm the oath which I swore to your forefathers, to give them a
land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day."’" Then I said,
"Amen, O LORD." 6 And the LORD said to me, "Proclaim all these words in the
cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, ’Hear the words of this covenant and do them.
7 ’For I solemnly warned your fathers in
the day that I brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day,
warning persistently, saying, "Listen to My voice." 8 ’Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked, each one, in
the stubbornness of his evil heart; therefore I brought on them all the words
of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not.’"
God is telling Jeremiah to remind the children of Israel to
remember the covenant that He had made with them and wanted them to repent and
begin again to follow this covenant of God would bring about all the curses
that are found in it. Of course they did
not obey it and God did bring the curses of the covenant upon them. Is it any wonder for as soon as God gave the
covenant to them at Mt. Sinai and they told them that they would follow all
that was in it that a few days later they had Aaron make an idol and began to
worship it while Moses was on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments.
The “iron furnace” that we see in verse four is the
nation of Egypt.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: There were a few
people in the OT and in the days when Jesus walked on planet earth that knew
that it was more important to love the Lord than bringing the sacrifices to the
Lord. There are two commandments that
were given by the Lord Jesus, “Love the Lord with all your heart” and “love
your neighbor as yourself.” Out of these
flowed the Ten Commandments and out of them flowed the other Laws given by the
Lord as found in the early OT books.
Loving the Lord is the most important thing for me to do and out of that
love for the Lord will come love for my neighbors, those who God brings onto my
path. I am convicted in my heart and
desire to love the Lord and my neighbors as God desires me to do so.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Love the Lord and love my neighbors.
Memory verses for the
week: Philippians 2:5-7
5 Have this attitude in
yourself which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form
of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied
himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of
men.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Syria” (1 Kings 20:1).
Today’s Bible
question: “What Old Testament told
Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/26/2014 9:55 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment