SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/26/2014
10:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Redemption: A New Beginning PT-3
Bible Reading & Mediation Reference: Jeremiah
30:18-24
Message of the
verses: We will look at the third
sub-point under this first main point from the 9th chapter of Dr.
Wiersbe’s commentary on Jeremiah.
The Calm After the Storm (Jer. 30:18-24): “18 "Thus says the LORD, ’Behold, I will
restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob And have compassion on his dwelling
places; And the city will be rebuilt on its ruin, And the palace will stand on
its rightful place. 19 ’From them will proceed thanksgiving And the voice of
those who celebrate; And I will multiply them and they will not be diminished;
I will also honor them and they will not be insignificant. 20 ’Their children
also will be as formerly, And their congregation shall be established before
Me; And I will punish all their oppressors. 21 ’Their leader shall be one of
them, And their ruler shall come forth from their midst; And I will bring him
near and he shall approach Me; For who would dare to risk his life to approach
Me?’ declares the LORD. 22 ’You
shall be My people, And I will be your God.’" 23 Behold, the
tempest of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, A sweeping tempest; It will burst on
the head of the wicked. 24 The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back
Until He has performed and until He has accomplished The intent of His heart;
In the latter days you will understand this.”
As we look at the end of verse eighteen we see the
following statement “And the city will be rebuilt on its ruin.” Dr. Wiersbe has a interesting endnote that
helps explains what this means: “Visitors
to the Holy Land visit Tel Aviv and various other ‘tells’ and learn that the
Hebrew word tel means ‘a mound of
ruins.’ Cities devastated by war or
natural calamities rarely relocated; the survivors simply rebuilt the city on
the ruins of the old one, thus giving future archeologists something to do.”
We have been talking about two different horizons as we
study this chapter in Jeremiah and also in the next three chapters we will see
this too, that is that part of Jeremiah’s prophecy is for the return of the
exiles to Jerusalem after the 70 years of captivity and then the other horizon
is that of the end times as Jeremiah writes in verse twenty-four. We have also
seen in this chapter and in particular in verse 20 of today’s verses that the
Lord will punish all those who have done harm to Israel. Let’s look at the promise that God gave to
Abram in Genesis 12:1-3 “1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your
country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land
which I will show you; 2 And I will make you a great
nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a
blessing; 3 And I will bless those who
bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families
of the earth will be blessed."
We see in these verses a number of things that the Lord will do for
Abram and his future family. He promises
to make him a great nation, and this has and will continue to be fulfilled
through the family of Abraham (God changed his name from Abram to Abraham). God has blessed the name of Abraham and made
his name great. We see that the religion
of the Jewish people have Abraham as their founder, and also the Muslim
religion has Abraham as their founder, and we know that the Christian “Religion”
came through Abraham and his greatest Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in verse three God says that those who
bless the Jews He will bless and those who curse them He will curse. I have heard that you can take the major
empires of the world and chart their rise and fall by how they treated the
Jewish people. We begin with the
Assyrians and the Babylonians who destroyed the towns and cities of Israel but
were then destroyed themselves. What we
see in this promise is that those, either nations or individuals, who hate the
Jews just because they are Jews will be cursed by the Lord. As we look at our current administration in
this country we see this very thing happening, and along with how our country is
not looking at homosexuals we must be fearful of the very existence of our
country, a country that was built on the principles of the Judeo-Christian
religion. How fast we have fallen.
I want to focus in on verse twenty-one: “21 ’Their leader shall be one of them, And
their ruler shall come forth from their midst; And I will bring him near and he
shall approach Me; For who would dare to risk his life to approach Me?’
declares the LORD (NASB).” “Their leader
will be one of their own; their ruler will arise from among them. I will bring
him near and he will come close to me, for who is he who will devote himself to
be close to me?’ declares the LORD (NIV).”
“21 Their nobles shall be from among them, And their governor shall come
from their midst; Then I will cause him to draw near, And he shall approach Me;
For who is this who pledged his heart to approach Me?’ says the LORD (NKJV).” This
verse is speaking of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fact that He
will be their King and their Priest, for we read that He will draw near to the
Lord, and only a priest can do that. Now
as true born-again believers we too are priests who can come into the presence
of God in prayer, but Dr. Wiersbe writes “This is the language that applies
especially to the Jewish high priest, who alone entered the, Holy of Holies on
the annual Day of Atonement (Lev. 16).
Only Jesus Christ, who is both King and Priest (Heb. 7-8), can qualify
to fulfill this prophecy.”
Now we will conclude with the conclusion of Dr. Wiersbe’s
commentary on this first main point: “To
summarize: The people of Judah and
Jerusalem will experience terrible trials at the hands of the Babylonians. They will end up wearing the Gentile yoke,
bearing the wounds caused by their sins, and having endured the storm of God’s
wrath. But God would eventually deliver
them, breaking the yoke, healing the wounds, and bringing peace after the
storm. All of this will be a
foreshadowing of what will happen to the Jews in the end times as they go
through the Tribulation, meet their Messiah-King, and enter into their kingdom.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: As I wrote a few
days back that learning all of these things about the end times should give me
an urgency to tell others about how it is that they can avoid what the Bible
calls the tribulation period, by trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior
and Lord. God gives this promise in
Revelations chapter three to the church of Philadelphia “’Because you have kept
the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing,
that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell
on the earth (Rev. 3:10).”
My Steps of Faith for Today: Proverbs 3:5-6.
Memory verses for the
week: Philippians 2:5-10.
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, 10
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those in heaven and on the
earth and under the earth
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Stephen” (Acts 7:58-59).
Today’s Bible
question: “Which book states that Jesus
is ‘heir of all things.’?”
Answer in our nest SD.
6/26/2014 11:22 AM
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