SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/3/2014
8:30 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Baruch: A Faithful Servant
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
45:1-5
Message of the
verses: We begin the last main point
from Warren Wiersbe’s outline and commentary on the book of Jeremiah, as I
follow his outline in my Spiritual Diaries.
Baruch: A Faithful
Servant (Jeremiah 45:1-5): “1 This is
the message which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when
he had written down these words in a book at Jeremiah’s dictation, in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying: 2 "Thus says the LORD the God of Israel to
you, O Baruch: 3 ’You said, "Ah,
woe is me! For the LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my
groaning and have found no rest."’ 4 “Thus you are to say to him, ’Thus
says the LORD, "Behold, what I have built I am about to tear down, and
what I have planted I am about to uproot, that is, the whole land." 5 ’But
you, are you seeking great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I
am going to bring disaster on all flesh,’ declares the LORD, ’but I will give your life to you
as booty in all the places where you may go.’"”
As we come to the end of chapter eleven in Warren Wiersbe’s
commentary on the book of Jeremiah we see in the book of Jeremiah a very short
chapter, chapter 45, which only has five verses in it, and as we begin to read
this chapter we see in the first verse that it actually belongs as far as the
time it was written near the events of chapter thirty-six. We can tell this because the date of it is
seen in verse one “in the fourth year of Jehoiakim.” In his commentary on this
chapter Dr. Wiersbe gives three important reasons as to why this chapter was
placed where it is placed in the Word of God.
We will briefly look at these reasons in this SD.
Reason One: When
we move on to chapters 46-51 we will see prophecies that Jeremiah gave about
the nations as seen in Jeremiah chapter 25 also emphasis on these same nations
and chapter 25 was written at the same time as chapter 45, so it is a good
springboard to move into those remaining chapters in the book of Jeremiah,
minus chapter 52 which we have already looked at.
Reasons Two and Three:
As we read this chapter we can look into the very heart of this man
Baruch, who was a faithful servant to Jeremiah as he was his secretary and
wrote down all the things that Jeremiah told him to write, and so it is because
of his writings that we now have the book of Jeremiah in our Bibles. We know that Baruch was a man who had a
brother who worked for the king and probably could have gotten a job with him
in the service of the king, but he chose to work with the prophet Jeremiah and
serve in the background. We see in this
chapter that he is discouraged and we can actually compare him to Jeremiah who
could have had a job as a priest, but God called him to be a prophet and there
were times when he may have wondered why he chose to follow the Lord, times
when he was in the pit or times when he was beaten. Baruch may have been wondering why he was
serving Jeremiah when the sieges began from the Babylonians and perhaps this is
why he became depressed. We see in this
short chapter that God gives him a promise and if he was thinking about leaving
his job with Jeremiah and going to work at the palace it would have been a
great mistake for he would probably been killed by the Babylonians, but as we
see in this chapter the Lord will spare his life. As we look at his life and how it is
described in this chapter we can see that it is not always a life of wine and
roses when we serve the Lord, but the retirement is out of this world. We too, can easily get discouraged, but we
must continue to trust the Lord and serve Him in the way that He has chosen us
to serve Him.
Now I am afraid that I have been writing about the third
reason in Dr. Wiersbe’s reasons for having his chapter in this place in the
book of Jeremiah, but that is okay as we want to look at all of them any
way.
I will finish this part of this SD with the following
words from Warren Wiersbe: “When we are
serving the Lord and His people, we never want to seek great things for
ourselves. The only important thing is
that God’s work is accomplished and God’s great name is glorified. John the Baptist put it succinctly: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John
3:30).
“A crisis doesn’t ‘make a person’; a crisis reveals what
a person is made of. The crisis that
followed the destruction of Jerusalem was like a goldsmith’s furnace that
revealed the dross as well as the pure gold.
It’s too bad there wasn’t more gold.
“How will you and I respond when ‘the fiery trials’ come? (1 Peter 4:12-19) I hope that, like Job, we’ll come forth pure
as gold (Job 23:10).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: It is easy to be
depressed when things don’t go the way that I want them to go, and I experience
difficulty in handling the trusting the Lord way of life, but by the grace of
God He will give me the strength to come forth like gold.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to guide my steps this day
that the things that I do will bring glory to the Lord.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:1-4.
1 Therefore if we have been
raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated
at the right hand of God. 2 Set your
mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have died and your life is now hid
with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who
is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in
glory.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Hager” (Genesis 21:9-14).
Today’s Bible
question: “What does the word Gospel
mean?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/3/2014 9:12 AM
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