SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/5/2014
10:09 AM
My Worship Time Focus: God Announces
Victory over Babylon PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jeremiah
51:34-50
Message of the
verses: We have two more
sub-sections to look at before we are done with the book of Jeremiah. After that I want to look at the “Postlude”
that Warren Wiersbe has written on Jeremiah and then comment and quote from it.
God Speaks to the Jews (Jeremiah 51:34-50): “34 “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has
devoured me and crushed me, He has set me down like an empty vessel; He has
swallowed me like a monster, He has filled his stomach with my delicacies; He
has washed me away. 35 “May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon
Babylon," The inhabitant of Zion will say; And, "May my blood be upon
the inhabitants of Chaldea," Jerusalem will say. 36 Therefore thus says the
LORD, "Behold, I am
going to plead your case And exact full vengeance for you; And I will dry up
her sea And make her fountain dry. 37 “Babylon will become a heap of
ruins, a haunt of jackals, An object of horror and hissing, without
inhabitants. 38 “They will roar together like young lions, They will growl like
lions’ cubs. 39 "When they become
heated up, I will serve them their banquet And make them drunk, that they may
become jubilant And may sleep a perpetual sleep And not wake up," declares
the LORD. 40 “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, Like rams
together with male goats. 41 “How Sheshak has been captured, And the praise of
the whole earth been seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among
the nations! 42 “The sea has come up over Babylon; She has been engulfed with
its tumultuous waves. 43 "Her cities have become an object of horror, A
parched land and a desert, A land in which no man lives And through which no
son of man passes. 44 “I will punish Bel in Babylon, And I will make what he
has swallowed come out of his mouth; And the nations will no longer stream to
him. Even the wall of
Babylon has fallen down! 45 "Come forth from her midst, My people,
And each of you save yourselves From the fierce anger of the LORD. 46 “Now so
that your heart does not grow faint, And you are not afraid at the report that
will be heard in the land-For the report will come one year, And after that
another report in another year, And violence will be in the land With ruler
against ruler- 47 Therefore
behold, days are coming When I will punish the idols of Babylon; And her whole
land will be put to shame And all her slain will fall in her midst. 48 "Then
heaven and earth and all that is in them Will shout for joy over Babylon, For
the destroyers will come to her from the north," Declares the LORD. 49 Indeed Babylon is to fall for
the slain of Israel, As also for Babylon the slain of all the earth have
fallen. 50 You who have escaped the sword, Depart! Do not stay! Remember the
LORD from afar, And let Jerusalem come to your mind.”
As we look at verses 34 and 35 we see that the Jews were
reminding the Lord what Nebuchadnezzar had done to them, and then we see what
the Lord tells to the Jews regarding Babylon.
Now we know from other Scriptures that the Lord had called Babylon to
defeat Judah because of what Judah had done against the Lord in not keeping the
covenant that the Lord had made with them, and when we look at that covenant
from Deuteronomy 28 we can see that it was a conditional covenant whereas the
Lord said to Israel if you do this I will bless you and if you don’t do this
and do that then I will bring curses on you.
Israel and then Judah did the things that God had promised to discipline
them for like worshiping idols as an example of what was in the conditional
covenant. God then brought
Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Jerusalem however they went too far and now God is
about to punish, even destroy Babylon.
We have mentioned many times in earlier SD’s that there are two parts to
Babylon, one that is a religious and the other one of governmental and in this
case God was going to destroy the later.
However both will rise again during the tribulation period and God will
destroy them at that time according to Revelation 17-18.
In this section we see more of how God will destroy
Babylon, and even break down the walls which happened in 330 BC headed up by
Alexander the Great. God would listen to
what the Jews requested and He would vindicate them as seen in verse 36. God describes vividly what He was going to do
to Babylon. In verse 41 we see the name “Sheshach”
and this is “a code name for Babylon (25:26) following a system where the last
letter of the alphabet is substituted for the first, the next to the last for
the second, and so on. Why Jeremiah used
a code name for the enemy is in one sentence isn’t easy to understand.” (Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on Jeremiah for
this section.)
We now see that for the third time God has told His
people to get out of Babylon, and this same order is given in the Book of
Revelation for the Jews at the time of the tribulation. God had told Jeremiah to tell the Jews not to
be afraid to go into Babylon earlier in the book, but now that He was about to
destroy Babylon He orders them to leave and go back to the land of Israel, to
the city of Jerusalem. Many of them
stayed and because of that all were almost destroyed. If it were not for the bravery of Queen Ester
all the Jews would have been saved. You
can read this account in the book of Ester, and also I have already written on
Ester in earlier SD’s.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I don’t always
have to understand what God is telling me to do through His Word or through the
preaching of His Word, but I am to obey it never the less.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I have the unexpected pleasure of meeting a
man that I went to school with this afternoon, and my prayer is that we will
have a good visit and that the Lord will be glorified through this visit.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:1-7.
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. 2 Set
your mind on things above, not on the things on the earth. 3 For you have died and your life is hidden
with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who
is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in
glory. 5 Therefore consider the members
of your earthly as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and
greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For
it is because of these things that the wrath of God has come upon the sons of
disobedience; 7 and in them you once walked, when you were living in them.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Greek, Latin, Hebrew” (Luke
23:28).
Today’s Bible
question: Who said ‘O generation of
vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come’?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/5/2014 10:46 AM
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