SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/2/2014
8:50 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Ignoring God’s Warnings PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
12:7-17
Message of the
verses: In today’s SD we will begin
the last of the three main points that are found in Dr. Wiersbe’s outline. In his commentary on this last main section
Wiersbe writes “Note the eight vivid images that depict the judgment that was
about to fall.” We will be looking at
these eight images over the next several days.
The rejected Inheritance (Jeremiah 12:7-17): “7 "I have forsaken My house, I have
abandoned My inheritance; I have given the beloved of My soul Into the hand of
her enemies. 8 “My inheritance has become to Me Like a lion in the forest; She
has roared against Me; Therefore
I have come to hate her. 9 “Is My inheritance like a speckled bird of
prey to Me? Are the birds of prey against her on every side? Go, gather all the
beasts of the field, Bring them to devour! 10 “Many shepherds have ruined My
vineyard, They have trampled down My field; They have made My pleasant field A
desolate wilderness. 11 “It has been made a desolation, Desolate, it mourns
before Me; The whole land
has been made desolate, Because no man lays it to heart. 12 "On all the bare heights in the
wilderness Destroyers have come, For a sword of the LORD is devouring From one
end of the land even to the other; There is no peace for anyone. 13 “They have sown wheat and have
reaped thorns, They have strained themselves to no profit. But be ashamed of
your harvest Because of the fierce anger of the LORD."
14 Thus says the LORD concerning all My wicked neighbors who strike
at the inheritance with which I have endowed My people Israel, "Behold I am about to uproot them
from their land and will uproot the house of Judah from among them.
15 "And it will come about that after I have uprooted them, I
will again have compassion on them; and I will bring them back, each one to his
inheritance and each one to his land. 16
"Then if they will really learn the ways of My people, to swear by
My name, ’As the LORD lives,’ even as they taught My people to swear by Baal,
they will be built up in the midst of My people. 17 “But if they will not
listen, then I will uproot that nation, uproot and destroy it," declares
the LORD.
First we need to remember that the Promised Land belonged
to the Lord and was just on loan to the children of Israel. ’The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently,
for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me (Lev.
25:23).” God made a covenant with the
children of Israel that if they continued to worship Him and trust Him then
they could stay in the land that belonged to the Lord. (Lev. 18:25, 27; Deut. 21:23). The children of Israel were God’s special
inheritance as seen in Ex. 19:5-6; Deut. 4:20; 32:9). Now we know that Israel did not keep the
covenant that God had made with them as they worshiped foreign gods like Baal
and other gods so God was about to remove them from the land, but the people
did not believe the preaching of Jeremiah, but believed the false prophets and
the corrupt priests.
As we read through the verses from today’s lesson we can
hear the anguish that is in the Lord’s words as He speaks them through
Jeremiah. I want to quote an end note on
verse eight where we read that God hates His inheritance: “The statement in Jeremiah 12:8 that God ‘hated’
His inheritance means that He had to treat them as though they were not His
beloved. He withdrew His love by
abandoning them to their enemies. God’s
love for His people is unconditional, but their enjoyment of that love is conditional
(see 2 Cor. 6:17-18; John 14:21-24).”
The enemies of Israel were like birds of prey that circle
their next meal from the air, or like beasts of the field which hide and wait
for an animal to come by that is not as fit as the others, for because of the
sin that is being committed in the land of Israel their spiritual condition
would make them weak and venerable to an attack by their hungry neighbors and
it would come.
We see in this section that not only Judah would be
captured but also some of their neighbors would also be attacked and captured,
nations like Syria, Moab, and Ammon who had attacked Judah in the past would
also be punished by the Babylonians.
The statement “I will return, and have compassion on
them, and will bring them again, every man to his heritage, and every man to
his land as seen in verse fifteen of Jeremiah 12 means that as we have looked
at before, the people would go into captivity for seventy years and then God
would bring a remnant back to the land.
We will see this number of seventy years in two different chapters in
Jeremiah’s writings. As a result of this
captivity the people of Israel would not worship false gods again.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: In the statement
about God having an unconditional love for His people, but because of sin his
people will not be able to enjoy this love has spoken to my heart as I desire
to enjoy the unconditional love that God has for me as one of His children who
has been bought by the blood of the Lamb.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Proverbs 3:5-6.
Memory verses for the week:
Philippians 2:5-8
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, 7 but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the
likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by
becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Paul” (Ephesians 3:8).
Today’s Bible
question: “What were Nathanael’s first
words about Jesus?”
Answer in our next SD. 3/2/2014 9:26 AM
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