SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/12/2014
8:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction
and The Destiny of the king
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
34:1-7
Message of the
verses: We will again be in the book
of Jeremiah for a while as we begin looking at the tenth chapter of Warren
Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of Jeremiah which covers chapters 34-39 and 52
of the book of Jeremiah. He entitles
this chapter “Contemporary Events and Eternal Truths.” I have mentioned many times in recent SD’s
that I use the commentary of Warren Wiersbe to help me to understand things
from the Word of God as it has been said of him that he puts the cookies on the
shelf where you can reach them. I am
thankful to our Lord for the gift of understand and conveying the Word of God
that He has given to Warren Wiersbe, and for the “Be” series that he has
written for the entire Bible. In our SD
for today we will look at the introduction to his tenth chapter and also begin
looking at the first main-section and the first sub-point under that main
section.
Introduction to chapters 34-39 and 52: “A nation that cannot preserve itself ought
to die, and it will die—die in the grasp of the evils it is too feeble to
overthrow.” This quote from Senator
Morris Shepherd that was given in the U. S. Senate on December 18, 1914 is the
way that Warren Wiersbe begins his tenth chapter from his book “Be Decisive”
which is his commentary on the book of Jeremiah and as we will see it fits the
chapters we will be studying from the book of Jeremiah at this time.
Wiersbe begins this chapter with the following
words: “In spite of the long-suffering
of God and the faithful ministry of God’s prophets, the kingdom of Judah was
about to die. It was a nation with a
glorious heritage—laws given from heaven by Moses, a land conquered by Joshua,
a kingdom established by David and made magnificent by Solomon, a people in
whose midst Jehovah dwelt in a splendid temple—and yet that glorious heritage
couldn’t prevent Judah’s shameful ruin at the hands of the idolatrous
Babylonians. The end had come.”
We could blame the downfall and defeat of Judah on the
political decisions that their leaders made as they depended upon their
relationship with Egypt, but that was not the true cause of their downfall,
only a symptom of their down fall. There
true downfall was that their leaders, which amounted to their kings did not
believe the Word of the Lord which they not only had in the form of books, but
also in the form of the prophets including Jeremiah. Many years ago when I had not been a believer
for a long time a family group came to our church that were singers and they
had written a song about different godly men of the Scriptures who went through
some difficult times and the chorus of the song went something like this, “he
didn’t look down, he didn’t look around, but look up, up, up,” and then
repeated it again. This was exactly what
the kings of Judah did not do for they were looking down and around, but never
looked up, and up to God was where then needed to look.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his introduction to this chapter
with these words “Jeremiah recorded a number of events in Judah’s final days
that prove we can’t treat God’s Word any way we please and get away with it.” The first main point we will look at is “God’s
Word Dishonored” which covers Jeremiah 34:1-35:19. Asaph, who wrote the 74th Psalm
shows us a little bit of what happened to Judah during this awful time in their
history.
“1 O God, why have You rejected us forever? Why does Your
anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture? 2 Remember Your congregation,
which You have purchased of old, Which You have redeemed to be the tribe of
Your inheritance; And this Mount Zion, where You have dwelt. 3 Turn Your
footsteps toward the perpetual ruins; The enemy has damaged everything within
the sanctuary. 4 Your adversaries have roared in the midst of Your meeting
place; They have set up their own standards for signs. 5 It seems as if one had
lifted up His axe in a forest of trees. 6 And now all its carved work They
smash with hatchet and hammers. 7 They
have burned Your sanctuary to the ground; They have defiled the dwelling place
of Your name. 8 They said in their heart, "Let us completely subdue
them." They have burned all the meeting places of God in the land. 9 We do
not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet, Nor is there any among us
who knows how long. 10 How long, O God, will the adversary revile, And the
enemy spurn Your name forever? 11 Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your
right hand? From within Your bosom, destroy them!
“12 Yet God is my king from of old, Who
works deeds of deliverance in the midst of the earth. 13 You divided the sea by
Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. 14 You
crushed the heads of Leviathan; You gave him as food for the creatures of the
wilderness. 15 You broke open springs and torrents; You dried up ever-flowing
streams. 16 Yours is the day, Yours also is the night; You have prepared the
light and the sun. 17 You have established all the boundaries of the earth; You
have made summer and winter.
“18 Remember this, O LORD, that the enemy
has reviled, And a foolish people has spurned Your name. 19 Do not deliver the
soul of Your turtledove to the wild beast; Do not forget the life of Your
afflicted forever. 20 Consider the covenant; For the dark places of the land
are full of the habitations of violence. 21 Let not the oppressed return
dishonored; Let the afflicted and needy praise Your name. 22 Arise, O God, and
plead Your own cause; Remember how the foolish man reproaches You all day long.
23 Do not forget the voice of Your
adversaries, The uproar of those who rise against You which ascends
continually.”
The Destiny of the king (Jeremiah 34:1-7): “1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the
LORD, when Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon and all his army, with all the kingdoms of the earth that were
under his dominion and all the peoples, were fighting against Jerusalem and
against all its cities, saying, 2
"Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ’Go and speak to Zedekiah king
of Judah and say to him: "Thus says the LORD, ’Behold, I am giving this
city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire.
3 ’You will not escape from his hand,
for you will surely be captured and delivered into his hand; and you will see
the king of Babylon eye to eye, and he will speak with you face to face, and
you will go to Babylon.’"’ 4 “Yet hear the word of the LORD, O Zedekiah
king of Judah! Thus says the LORD concerning you, ’You will not die by the
sword. 5 ’You will die in peace; and as
spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so
they will burn spices for you; and they will lament for you, "Alas,
lord!"’ For I have spoken the word," declares the LORD. 6 Then
Jeremiah the prophet spoke all these words to Zedekiah king of Judah in
Jerusalem 7 when the army
of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the
remaining cities of Judah, that is, Lachish and Azekah, for they alone remained
as fortified cities among the cities of Judah.”
We see here that Jeremiah again hears what the Lord has
to say to the king of Judah, Zedekiah, and tells him again that the city of
Jerusalem will be burned with fire by the King of Babylon and that he will not
die by the sword, but will be taken to Babylon where he will die, but that he
will have a proper funeral, something that was important to the Jewish
people. According to Dr. Wiersbe
Jeremiah gave this message to Zedekiah in 588 B.C.
We know that God had given this weak king of Judah many
offers to repent so that the city and the temple would not be destroyed, but as
we have learned in earlier SD’s on Jeremiah that the king listened to the false
prophets who said that God would not destroy the city and the temple because it
was His temple, and because of the covenant that God had with David. In my other blog we have been looking at some
Spiritual Diaries that I wrote in 2011 from the book of 1 Kings, and in chapter
eight of 1 Kings we read the prayer that Solomon gives at the dedication of the
temple that he had built for the Lord, and in this section of 1 Kings we will
see that the glory of the Lord will enter this temple where He will stay until
we see from the book of Ezekiel that He leaves before the destruction of the
temple. Ezekiel sees that glory of the
Lord leave the temple which is seen in chapters 10-11 of his book. God would not dwell in the way that He did
when the temple was built, but left from there and the next time we see the
glory of the Lord is when the Lord Jesus Christ comes to earth. The Holy Spirit of the Lord now lives in the
presence of all genuine believers. It is
a very profitable study to follow the presence or the glory of the Lord from
the pages of Scripture.
We will see when we study chapter thirty-eight of
Jeremiah that it was fear of his counselors that caused Zedekiah not to repent
and thus allow the Lord to save the city and the temple.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: We see through
the book of Jeremiah the courage that he has, for he has talked to many high ranking
people from not only Judah, but also other countries to tell them what the Lord
had to say. I want to have the courage
that Jeremiah and the rest of the prophets had, and pray that the Lord will
give me this kind of courage.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Proverbs 3:5-6.
Memory verses for the
week: Philippians 2:5-11 (a Review).
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 on earth
and under the earth 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Jericho” (Joshua 6:2-16).
Today’s Bible
question: “To whom did Jesus say ‘you
are worried and bothered about so many things’?”
Answer in our next SD.
7/12/2014 9:49 AM
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