SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/19/2014
9:15 AM
My Worship Time Focus: God’s Word
Rejected PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
37:11-21
Message of the
verses: We will be following the
second sub-point from Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of Jeremiah from
the tenth chapter in that commentary.
“Is There
any Word from the Lord (Jeremiah 37:11-21): “11 Now it happened when the army of the
Chaldeans had lifted the siege from Jerusalem because of Pharaoh’s army,
12 that Jeremiah went out from Jerusalem
to go to the land of Benjamin in order to take possession of some property
there among the people. 13 While he was at the Gate of Benjamin, a captain of
the guard whose name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah the son of Hananiah was
there; and he arrested Jeremiah the prophet, saying, "You are going over
to the Chaldeans!" 14 But Jeremiah said, "A lie! I am not going over
to the Chaldeans"; yet he would not listen to him. So Irijah arrested
Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. 15 Then the officials were angry at
Jeremiah and beat him, and they put him in jail in the house of Jonathan the
scribe, which they had made into the prison. 16 For Jeremiah had come into the
dungeon, that is, the vaulted cell; and Jeremiah stayed there many days. 17 Now King Zedekiah sent
and took him out; and in his palace the king secretly asked him and said, "Is there a word from the LORD?"
And Jeremiah said, "There
is!" Then he said, "You will be given into the hand of the
king of Babylon!" 18 Moreover Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, "In
what way have I sinned against you, or against your servants, or against this
people, that you have put me in prison? 19 “Where then are your prophets who prophesied to you,
saying, ’The king of Babylon will not come against you or against this land’?
20 "But now, please listen, O my
lord the king; please let my petition come before you and do not make me return
to the house of Jonathan the scribe, that I may not die there." 21 Then King Zedekiah gave commandment, and they
committed Jeremiah to the court of the guardhouse and gave him a loaf of bread
daily from the bakers’ street, until all the bread in the city was gone. So
Jeremiah remained in the court of the guardhouse.”
This is the second time in this chapter that the king
wants to know if there is any Word from the Lord as the first time he had asked
Jeremiah to pray for them and then an answer came back that they were not
willing to listen to. Now why do you
suppose that this king did not want to listen to the Word of the Lord as it
came from the mouth of Jeremiah? I wrestle
with this answer, but came up with an answer that I believe is true and will
reveal what I am thinking is the answer to this question and perhaps similar
ones. First of all I do not believe that
Zedekiah was a true believer in the Lord.
Now with this said I think that this is partly the answer to the
question that I prepared. When a non
believer is reading the Bible he will not be able to understand, for the most
part, what the Bible is saying and I have heard that the reason for this is
that he is reading someone else’s mail.
In NT times all true believers have the Holy Spirit in them and He is
the One who has inspired the writers of the Word of God to write it and so
since He lives within the believer He can show us what He wants us to see from
His Word. Another reason or another part
of the answer to the question that I have purposed is that it was God’s plan to
see the nation of Judah fall. God has a
plan for the entire world and we know how this plan of His will be worked out
as He has revealed snippets of it in His Word, but there are times in our
individual lives that we are not sure of how He is working out His plan for our
lives and that is where faith has to come in and take over. As we study the attributes of God we know that
He will stay within the parameters of His attributes, for instance God is good
and cannot do bad, and God is omniscience for He knows all things. God is sovereign meaning He can do what He
wants to work out what He desires to have done, so that is why I believe that
God desired to have Judah fall. The last
part of the answer to this question is that Judah had broken their covenant
with the Lord and so God had to fulfill the curse part of the covenant that He
made with Israel. See the 28th
chapter of Deuteronomy for the lengthy discussion of that covenant.
We see in this section of Jeremiah that Jeremiah is
beaten and put into jail over a lie that was against him by a man named Irijah,
who was like a guard working for the régime in Jerusalem. We see that Jeremiah was then beaten and put
into jail for many days. Commentator
John Gill writes on the statement “many days.”
“in this very uncomfortable condition; very probably till the Chaldean
army returned to Jerusalem, as he foretold it should.”
The lie that was told about Jeremiah was that he was
going to go over to the Babylonians, but Jeremiah was taking advantage of lull
in the fighting to go to Benjamin to take
care of some family business, but could not get out of the city before
he was arrested. Now he stayed in jail
until the king wanted to talk to him, for the king wanted to know if there was
any word from the Lord. Humanly speaking
it would have been easy for Jeremiah to tell the king something he wanted to
hear, but Jeremiah was a true prophet and because of this he had to tell the
king what the Lord had revealed to Him even though he knew that the king would
not like it. Jeremiah gave the true
answer to the king but he also kind of makes fun of the false prophets as he
reveals his answer to the king. He then
asked the king to allow him to come out of jail and so the king did allow
Jeremiah to the court of the guardhouse and was feed until the food ran
out. We have touched on this before and
stated that this perhaps was the Lord’s way of having Jeremiah taken care of
while the siege was going on.
Lord willing, we will begin to look at the 38th
chapter of Jeremiah in our next lesson as we continue with this third main
point that we have been looking at.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I want to remember
that God does have a plan for my life and even though most of the time it may
not be as exciting as I would like it to be I must trust the Lord to work out
the plan that He has for my life.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to trust the Lord as He works out
His plan for me.
Memory verse for the
week: Colossians 3:1
1 Therefore if you have
been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is,
seated at the right hand of God.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Ararat” (Genesis 8:4).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who could not enter the
Promised Land because he had rebelled against God’s commandment by smiting the
rock twice?”
Answer in our next Sd.
7/19/2014 9:54 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment