SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/13/2014
10:20 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Jeremiah’s
Daily Peril
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
20:10-13
Message of the
verses: “10 For I have heard the
whispering of many, "Terror on every side! Denounce him; yes, let us
denounce him!" All my trusted friends, Watching for my fall, say:
"Perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him And take
our revenge on him." 11 But the LORD is with me like a dread champion;
Therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will be utterly
ashamed, because they have failed, With an everlasting disgrace that will not
be forgotten. 12 Yet, O LORD of hosts,
You who test the righteous, Who see the mind and the heart; Let me see Your
vengeance on them; For to You I have set forth my cause. 13 Sing to the LORD,
praise the LORD! For He has delivered the soul of the needy one From the hand
of evildoers.”
There is a change in the words of Jeremiah as we begin to
look at these verses compared to the verses we looked at in yesterday’s SD. Jeremiah is upset by the whisperings that people
are saying about him, and this is very understandable for no one wants people
to talk bad about them, especially since the ones who were doing this were
suppose to be in the same boat as Jeremiah.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Faith doesn’t ignore problems; it faces them
honestly and seeks God’s help in solving them.
No matter how much he was constrained to preach God’s Word, Jeremiah had
to deal with the fact that many people wanted him to keep quiet and would take
the necessary steps to salience him.”
In Jeremiah 20:3 we see that the Lord had given Pashhur a
new name “Magor-missabib,” and that name means “terror on every side,” so Dr.
Wiersbe points out that it is possible that the enemies of Jeremiah were using
this name as a nickname for Jeremiah. It
was God who changed Pashhur’s name and not Jeremiah who changed it, for
Jeremiah was only telling Pashhur what the Lord had told him. The enemies of Jeremiah were watching him closely
as they did to David and to our Lord during His earthly ministry, watching to
see if anything he said could be used against him. This type of thing still goes on today as we
see it in the candidates for elections wait to see what their opponent says so
they can use it against them.
As we look at verse eleven where there is another change
in Jeremiah’s prayer I want to use a different translation to help us better
understand what the verse means. “But
the Lord is with me as a
great one, greatly to be feared: so my attackers will have a fall, and
they will not overcome me: they will be greatly shamed, because they have not
done wisely, even with an unending shame, kept in memory for ever (Bible in
Basic English).” Jeremiah must have been
remembering what God had told him when He called him as he said these
words. In doing this Jeremiah remembered
that the Lord promised to care for him and “would deal effectively with his
enemies.” “Instead of dishonoring him,
his enemies would themselves be dishonored.
Since his words in verse 12 are almost identical to his prayer in 11:20,
perhaps it’s on he prayed often.” “But,
O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, Who tries the feelings and the heart,
Let me see Your vengeance on them, For to You have I committed my cause,” (11:20). As I have made it a practice to listen to one
chapter a day in the book of Proverbs I can remember that there are verses in
the book of Proverbs that speak of the same thing that Jeremiah is talking about
here, verses that speak of the righteous being victorious while the unrighteous
will fall and fail.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I can relate with
how Jeremiah felt, even though I have never gone through what he went
through. There have been times when I
don’t understand what the Lord is doing in my life, and if I had the power to
change things I would do it, but then after thinking about it for a while I
come to the conclusion that God knows the best for me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Proverbs 3:5-6 “5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and
lean not unto thine own understanding. 6
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths (AV).”
Memory verse for the
week: Philippians 2:5
Have this attitude in
yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus,
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “The Resurrection.”
Today’s Bible
question: “From what two animals could
the Passover sacrifice be taken?”
Answer in our next SD.
5/13/2014 11:34 AM
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