SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/16/2014
8:43 AM
My Worship Time Focus: God’s
Discipline & Correction do no Good
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
7:27-8:3
Message
of the verses: 27 “You shall speak
all these words to them, but
they will not listen to you; and you shall call to them, but they will not answer you.
28 “You shall say to them, ’This
is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God or accept correction; truth has
perished and has been cut off from their mouth.
“29 ’Cut off your hair and cast it away,
And take up a lamentation on the bare heights; For the LORD has rejected and
forsaken The generation of
His wrath.’ 30 “For the sons of Judah have done that which is evil in My
sight," declares the LORD, "they have set their detestable things in
the house which is called by My name, to defile it. 31
"They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley
of the son of Hinnom, to
burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and
it did not come into My mind. 32
"Therefore, behold, days are coming," declares the LORD,
"when it will no longer be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of
Hinnom, but the valley of the Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth because
there is no other place. 33 "The
dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the
beasts of the earth; and no one will frighten them away. 34 "Then I will make to cease from the
cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of joy and the
voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for
the land will become a ruin.
“1 "At that time," declares the
LORD, "they will bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones
of its princes, and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets, and
the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves. 2 “They will
spread them out to the sun, the moon and to all the host of heaven, which they
have loved and which they have served, and which they have gone after and which
they have sought, and which they have worshiped. They will not be gathered or
buried; they will be as dung on the face of the ground. 3 "And death will be chosen rather than
life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family, that remains in all
the places to which I have driven them," declares the LORD of hosts.”
When we look at verses like Proverbs
3:11-12 “11 My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD Or loathe His
reproof, 12 For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the
son in whom he delights,” and also Hebrews 12:5-13 we see that those who belong
to the Lord will at times be disciplined by Him in order to move them back to
the Lord. However we see in this passage
that God was punishing the people of Judah since they did not belong to the
Lord. Now I have mentioned before but
worth repeating that God always has a remnant from those of the children of
Israel, even to this day there is a remnant and Paul writes that there will
come a day when all Israel will be saved, so God’s punishment of these people
in Jeremiah’s day in no way broke any unconditional covenant that He had with
them.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Topheth is an Aramaic
word meaning ‘fireplace,’ and it sounds much like the Hebrew word meaning ‘shameful
thing.’ Topheth was the place in the
Valley of the Son of Hinnom where the people sacrificed their children to idols
by throwing them into the fire (Isa. 30:33).
King Josiah had defiled Topheth and turned it into a garbage dump (2 Kings
23:10), but after his death the gruesome pagan rituals were reinstated. The Greek word ‘gehenna, meaning hell, comes from the Hebrew ge’hinnom, the valley of Hinnom Hell is
a garbage dump where Christ-rejecting sinners will suffer forever with the
devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). “Jeremiah
announced that the day would come when the Valley of Hinnom would become a
cemetery too small for all the people who would need burial after the
Babylonian invasion. The army would
plunder the graves and tombs, and the bones of the great leaders and kings
would be desecrated on the altars like so many sacrifices to the gods they
worshiped. Gehenna would again become a
garbage dump, and the corpses of the Jerusalem citizens would be the garbage!” This surely was not a pretty picture that
Jeremiah was painting, but even after speaking these words to the people it did
not good.
This is the end of the first main
point from the third chapter of Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on Jeremiah which
he entitled “False Worship: The Temple,” and in our next SD we will begin to
look at the second main point “False Prophets: The Law” which will be the rest
of chapter eight of Jeremiah.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I see
similar things happening in our country today as people believe lies that come
straight out of the pit of Hell instead of believing the Truth which comes
right out of the Word of God. I am
speaking of, what is to me, the greatest lie and false religion that is in our
world today which is evolution.
Evolution is impossible and has been proved that it is impossible, yet
people believe it so that they do not have to be accountable to God, and yet
they still are all accountable to God for Paul writes in Philippians 2:10-11 “so
that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and
on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” I want people to listen to the Word of God,
for what is found in the Word of God shows people how they can be saved from
their sins and spend eternity in heaven with our Lord Jesus Christ.
My Steps of Faith for Today: “But
sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks
you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and
reverence (1 Peter 3:15).”
Memory
verses for the week: Philippians 2:5-6
5. Have this attitude in yourselves which was
also in Christ Jesus 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God a thing to be grasped
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Mercy
and grace” (Hebrews 4:16).
Today’s
Bible Question: “Who did Jesus say was
like the foolish man who built his house upon the sand?”
This
question goes along with what we have been studying in our lesson from Jeremiah
in today’s SD, and we will give the answer in our next SD.
2/16/2014
9:21 AM
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