SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/14/2014
10:16 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Chastening
for the people of Judah
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
25:1-14
Message of
the verses: “1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning
all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah,
king of Judah (that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon),
2 which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to
all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, 3 "From the thirteenth year of Josiah the
son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, these twenty-three years the word of the LORD has come to
me, and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.
4 "And the LORD has sent to you all
His servants the prophets again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your
ear to hear, 5 saying, ’Turn now
everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds, and dwell on the land
which the LORD has given to you and your forefathers forever and ever; 6 and do not go after other gods to serve them
and to worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with the work of your
hands, and I will do you no harm.’ 7
"Yet you
have not listened to Me," declares the LORD, "in order
that you might provoke Me to anger with the work of your hands to your own
harm.
8 "Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, ’Because
you have not obeyed My words, 9 behold, I will send and take all the families
of the north,’ declares the LORD, ’and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon, My servant,
and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about;
and I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a hissing, and an
everlasting desolation. 10 ’Moreover, I will take
from them the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the
bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the
light of the lamp. 11
’This whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will
serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12 ’Then it will be when seventy years are
completed I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation,’ declares the
LORD, ’for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it an
everlasting desolation. 13 ’I will bring
upon that land all
My words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book
which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations. 14 ’(For many nations
and great kings will make slaves of them, even them; and I will recompense them
according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.)’"”
We are beginning to look at a new set of chapters in the
book of Jeremiah as we follow the outline from Warren Wiersbe. He entitles this eight chapter in his
commentary on the book of Jeremiah “Facing Truth and Fighting Lies,” and it
covers chapters 25-29 of the book of Jeremiah.
He writes the following at the end of his introductory commentary: “In these chapters, we see the prophet
involved in four different ministry experiences as he served the Lord and
sought to bring the kingdom of Judah back to God.” In today’s SD we will begin to look at this
first ministry experience which Dr. Wiersbe entitles “Jeremiah Shares a Secret
and this will cover the entire 25 chapter of Jeremiah.
We see in chapter 25 that Jeremiah had been serving as a
prophet for twenty-three years, and had been faithful to the Lord and his
calling for those 23 years. He will
serve the Lord for forty years so he is just past the mid-point of his ministry
at this time. Dr. Wiersbe states that he
began his ministry in 626 B.C. and continued to minister after the fall of
Jerusalem in 587 B.C, and this was a period of forty years. Dr. Wiersbe writes at the end of introductory
commentary for this first main point the following: “He delivered two messages, --one to the Jews
(vv. 1-14) and one to the Gentile nations (vv. 15-38).” We will look at the message to the Jews in
this SD from verses 1-14.
I want to begin by talking about verse four where
Jeremiah talks about how the Lord had sent the prophets to speak to the people
of Judah. It is my belief that we do not
know all of the prophets that the Lord sent to the nation of Israel, and in
this case to the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
We do know those who wrote different books that are recorded in the
Scriptures, and in some of the books of history there are also names of
different prophets, but I don’t believe that we know who many of the prophets
were that ministered to the people of Judah.
With this said I do know that the Lord knew each and every one of those
prophets for it was He who called them to go and to speak to the people of
Israel and also to the people of Judah.
I have highlighted different parts of these fourteen
verses, but we see that there is a theme from these verses that I have
highlighted and that is the statement “but you have not listened,” and I
suppose this could be a theme that goes throughout all of the books of the
Bible starting in the first book and the third chapter where we see that Adam
and Eve did not listen to the Word of the Lord and ate of the fruit of the tree
that they were told not to eat from and the age of innocence was over that
fast. We see that the entire world did not
listen to the Lord with the exception of eight people and so God had to destroy
the earth by a flood. Next we see that
even when God called Abraham that he did not always listen to the Lord and his decedents
surely did not listen to what the Lord had told them to do. Then when we move to the New Testament we see
that the nation of Israel did not listen to their Messiah and not only did they
not listen to Him, but the crucified Him.
Later on in the letters to the different churches we see that a portion
of these letters were filled with writing about how they too did not
listen. It is still true today in the
lives of both believers and unbelievers as the unbelievers do not listen to the
message of salvation, and the believers do not always follow what the Lord
wants them to do. Throughout all of this
not listening God is still at work making sure that His plan is still on
schedule, and as I look at one of the more notable verses in the Scriptures “And
we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love
God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28),” I can see
that our God is so great and so powerful that He can make all things work
together for our good and for His glory, even when at time we are like the Jews
in Jeremiah’s day and not listen to the Lord.
We know that God was angry with the people of Judah and
those around Judah too, and He says through Jeremiah that His servant, Nebuchadnezzar
will come and destroy them, and that is exactly what happened. We have read more about Nebuchadnezzar in our
study of the book of Daniel, and there are some who believe that he actually
became a believer in Jehovah as seen in the fourth chapter of Daniel. Jeremiah writes in verse eleven that the
nation of Judah would be kept in Babylon for seventy years and this is probably
the verse along with a verse in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah that
Daniel was reading as recorded in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel. Why seventy years of captivity? “20 Those who had escaped from the sword he
carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until
the rule of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the LORD
by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All
the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete (2
Chronicles 36:20-21.)” God had told the people of Israel that every seven years
they were to allow the land to rest, and this would take a great deal of faith
on their part, but they failed to keep any of these sabbatical years and so God
allowed the land to rest for seventy years while the people of Judah were in
captivity.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his commentary on this section with
this paragraph: “The end of the seventy
years would mean not only freedom for the Jewish remnant but also judgment for
the Babylonian Empire because of the ruthless way they treated both the Jews
and Gentiles (25:12-14). It was one
thing for Nebuchadnezzar to do God’s work, but when his attitude became proud
and hateful, he overstepped his bounds.
Babylon fell to the armies of the Medes and Persians in 539 B.C. (see
Daniel 5).” When Babylon fell
Nebuchadnezzar had been dead for a number of years and his grand-son was ruling
at the time and threw a great party think that they were safe inside the city,
but thy were not because God, through Daniel told the king that he would die
that very night and he did and mighty Babylon fell in one night.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I don’t want it
to be said of me that I did not listen to the Lord, for I want to listen to
what the Lord has for me to do, and when I fail to confess my failures to the
Lord and dust myself off and begin again.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Trust the Lord to guide my life today
and accomplish whatever He desires for me to do.
Memory verses for the
week: Philippians 2:5-9.
5 Have this attitude in
yourself 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 on 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. 9 For this
reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is
above every name,
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Jesus” (Luke 22:40).
Today’s Bible
question: “Name the city on the north
edge of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus ministered?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/14/2014 11:20 AM
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