SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/5/2014
9:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: God Declares
War
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
6:1-5
Message of the
verses: We begin today looking at
chapter six of Jeremiah, and this is the 4th main point from Dr.
Wiersbe’s outline on Jeremiah, and the last main point from his second chapter
of his commentary. There are four
sub-points under this last main point and we will look at the first one in
today’s SD. He writes the following at
the beginning of this last point which will help us better understand what this
section is all about a section he entitles “Retribution: God Sends His Judgment.” “This closing section of Jeremiah’s sermon
focuses on the invading Babylonian army and the devastation they will bring to
the kingdom of Judah. In that critical
hour, the prophet told the nation what God was doing.” God is doing four different things and that
will be our subject in the next few days.
When we finish these last four sub-points we will go back for a review
of the book of Daniel, looking at some more things that we can gleam from that
wonderful book. As far as what we will
study in the month of March, that is doing one chapter of a Bible book beginning
in March, I still have not made up my mind and continue to pray about it. I have settled in on doing something from the
New Testament, but as far as a particular book I have not yet picked it out.
God Declares War (Jeremiah 6:1-5): “1 "Flee for safety, O sons of Benjamin,
From the midst of Jerusalem! Now blow a trumpet in Tekoa And raise a signal
over Beth-haccerem; For evil
looks down from the north, And a great destruction. 2 “The comely and
dainty one, the daughter of Zion, I will cut off. 3 “Shepherds and their flocks will come to her,
They will pitch their tents around her, They will pasture each in his place. 4
“Prepare war against her; Arise, and let us attack at noon. Woe to us, for the
day declines, For the shadows of the evening lengthen! 5 “Arise, and let us attack by
night And destroy her palaces!’”
As we look at verses one through three we see a warning
comes from the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, a warning telling the people
to leave because of what is about to come upon them. In verse one we see two of the ways that
warning were given to the people of Jerusalem, and for that matter in other
cities in Israel. We see that a trumpet
is to be blown and also a fire (signal) is to burn to give a warning too. There is one more way and that is seen in
verse seventeen “"And I set watchmen over you, saying, ’Listen to the
sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ’We will not listen.’” The watchman on the wall is the third way
that warnings are given to the people.
Jeremiah was from the city of Anathoth, a city in Benjamin,
and so he begins to warn his neighbors so that they will get out of Jerusalem,
those who were in that city. Jerusalem
was the city of David, and the capital of Judah, the most important city on
earth, for it was there that the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, although it
may have been outside the gates of Jerusalem.
Dr. Wiersbe writes the following about Jerusalem: “Jerusalem is compared to a ‘beautiful and
delicate woman,’ but she will end up like a ‘widow’ (Lam. 1:1) with all of her
beauty gone (v-6). Foreign ‘shepherds’
(soldiers) would invade the beautiful pastures and set up their tents only to
slaughter the flock.”
In verses four through five we see that these verses
speak of the Babylonians who would be the interments that God would use to
punish the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
In these verses we see that the Lord shared what would happen to
Jerusalem through a surprise attack at noon on the city, this is the hottest
time of the day and so no one would expect that they would be attacked at this
time of the day. We also see that this
attack would continue throughout the night, and this too is not the way that
battles usually happened at that time in history. Dr. Wiersbe points out that the word “prepare”
actually means “to sanctify or consecrate” and the fact was that the Babylonian
people were fighting for their god, as this was a crusade for their god.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I live, along
with all believers, in a time of war, a spiritual war that the Bible points out
in different places. I can think of two
places where this is pointed out very clearly in the NT, and one in the
OT. We just finished studying Daniel and
in the tenth chapter of Daniel we see something about the spiritual battle that
was going on. In Ephesians 6:10-18 the
Apostle Paul speaks of our spiritual battle not being against flesh and blood,
and then goes on to list the spiritual armor that all believers are to put
on. In 2 Corinthians Paul writes about
taking every though captive.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Proverbs 3:5-6.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Media and Persia” (Daniel
8:20).
Today’s Bible
question: “What king prayed to the Lord
when he was very sick?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/5/2014 10:51 AM
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