SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/10/2014
9:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The City’s
Destruction PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Lamentations
2:1-9
Message of the
verses: In today’s SD we will begin
to look at chapter two of the book of Lamentations which speaks about how the
city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and his army. We will see Jeremiah morning over what has
taken place.
Although we have gone over many times as to why the Lord allowed
the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem and the temple we must look at it again
because of the importance of it and because of what we can learn from their
sins so that we do not follow in their footsteps. Dr. Wiersbe writes: “By ignoring the covenant and depending on
the presence of the temple and its sacred furnishings, especially the ark, the
leaders and most of the people had replaced living faith with dead
superstition. However, this was not the
first time Jerusalem had been invaded.
As a warning to His sinful people, the Lord had allowed other enemies to
enter the city and plunder it; Egypt (1 Kings 14:25-26 and 2 Kings 23:31-35),
Israel, and the Northern Kingdom (2 Kings 14:13-14 and 2 Chron. 25:22-24), and
the Philistines and Arabs (2 Chron. 21:16-17).
Had Israel listened to her prophets and returned to the Lord, she would
have been spared the humiliation and suffering of destruction and deportation.”
As I think about what Dr. Wiersbe wrote I come to wonder
about our country, a country in which the Lord has blessed so very much by not
having any attacks upon our country from foreign nations in a very long time
until what happened thirteen years ago tomorrow. I do believe that this was a warning for our
country to begin to again worship the Lord in the way that He desires us to do,
but have we learned our lessons?
The Cloud of Anger (Lamentations 2:1-9): 1 How the Lord has covered the daughter of
Zion With a cloud in His anger! He has cast from heaven to earth The glory of
Israel, And has not remembered His footstool In the day of His anger. 2 The
Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared All the habitations of Jacob. In His
wrath He has thrown down The strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has
brought them down to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and its princes. 3
In fierce anger He has cut off All the strength of Israel; He has drawn back His
right hand From before the enemy. And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming
fire Consuming round about. 4 He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has set His
right hand like an adversary And slain all that were pleasant to the eye; In
the tent of the daughter of Zion He has poured out His wrath like fire. 5 The Lord has become like an
enemy. He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all its palaces,
He has destroyed its strongholds And multiplied in the daughter of Judah
Mourning and moaning. 6 And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a
garden booth; He has destroyed His appointed meeting place. The LORD has caused
to be forgotten The appointed feast and Sabbath in Zion, And He has despised king and
priest In the
indignation of His anger. 7 The Lord has rejected His altar, He has abandoned His sanctuary;
He has delivered into the hand of the enemy The walls of her palaces. They have
made a noise in the house of the LORD As in the day of an appointed feast. 8
The LORD determined to destroy The wall of the daughter of Zion. He has
stretched out a line, He has not restrained His hand from destroying, And He
has caused rampart and wall to lament; They have languished together. 9 Her
gates have sunk into the ground, He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king
and her princes are among the nations; The law is no more. Also, her prophets
find No vision from the LORD.”
This chapter is different from chapter one in that we see
the Lord’s anger here as opposed to His comfort as seen in chapter one. When we look back at the book of Exodus we
saw that the Lord was a cloud of protection for the children of Israel, but in
this chapter we see Him as a cloud of anger.
The Lord not only kept Israel protected by the cloud in the book of
Exodus, but He also entered the tabernacle that was built in the form of a
cloud, and then also in the temple, but now the temple has been torn down and
when we get to the book of Ezekiel we will see the glory (the cloud shows the
glory of the Lord) leave the temple before it was torn down. The glory would return in the form of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and now the glory is in true believers of Jesus Christ in
the person of the Holy Spirit. But here
there is a cloud of the anger of the Lord for He had instructed Jeremiah not to
pray for these people, and now they will not be answered if they pray for
themselves because there is a cloud above them that will not allow their
prayers to reach the Lord. “You have
covered Yourself with a cloud So that no prayer can pass through (Lam. 3:44).”
Verse three speaks of God cutting off all of their strength
that is all that they had trusted in, their king, their leaders, their walled
city, and even their religion. Also in
verse three the right hand of the Lord is seen, and this is His power, and He
had withdrawn His power from the enemies of Israel so that they could attack
Judah. When we get to chapter two of 2
Thessalonians we will see something similar that is there is something that
restrains the power of Satan that will be taken out of the way so that evil
will prevail during the tribulation period.
I believe that something is a Person, the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Jeremiah described the destruction of
the buildings, especially the palaces, strongholds and the temple itself (v.
5). The Babylonians treated the temple
like a booth in a garden and not like the dwelling place of the Lord, but the
Jews hadn’t done much better. The
polluted the sanctuary by their sin and hypocrisy (Isa. 1), and this led to the
destruction of the temple. The altar and other furnishings were gone, the
priests were gone, and there could be no more observance of the high and holy
days. The outer and inner walls of the
city, and the city gates, were destroyed as well. When the Jews built their temple, they used
measuring lines to be sure they were accurately following God’s plans, but now the
Lord had used a measuring line to be just as accurate in destroying the temple
and the city (Isa. 28:17 and Amos 7:7-8).
“9 Her gates have sunk into the ground, He has destroyed
and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations; The law is
no more. Also, her prophets find No vision from the LORD.” This verse gives a dismal picture of what was
going on, but it is good for us to remember that the Lord is gracious, and
merciful, and that there would come a day when, as Paul writes to the Romans “All
Israel will be saved.” That day is in
the future, but it is a promise to all Israel.
During this time the Jews had not taken advantage of what the Lord had
given to them and had thus been destroyed by the Babylonians who had been sent
by the Lord. Israel has had many
blessings that they have not taken advantage of “1 I am telling the truth in
Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit,
2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing
grief in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated
from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, 4
who are Israelites, to
whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the
giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, 5 whose are the
fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all,
God blessed forever. Amen (Romans 9:1-5)
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: How am I going to
be hard on the nation of Israel for what they did when as a believer in Jesus
Christ I actually have more blessings than they did, for I have a completed
Bible, and I have a wonderful Church to go to, along with having the Holy
Spirit living in me, and I still do not take advantage of all the blessings
that the Lord had given to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
I don’t want to forsake the blessings
that I have in Christ.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:1-8.
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
you mind on the things above, not on the things on 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 body 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. 8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger,
wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “The son of God” (Daniel
3:25).
Today’s Bible
question: “What is worse than having a
millstone hung around one’s neck and being thrown into the sea?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/10/2014 10:28 AM
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