SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/9/2014
9:47 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Nations
Disgrace PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Lamentations
1:12-22
Message
of the verses: We will try and
finish our look at the first chapter in the book of Lamentations in today’s
SD. I wanted to include another
Lamentation over the city of Jerusalem from the lips of our Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ when he says: “37 "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the
prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather
your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and
you were unwilling. 38 “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!
39 "For I say to you, from now on
you will not see Me until you say, ’BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE
LORD!’"(Matthew 23:37-39).” Jesus
said these words just days before He hung on the cross to pay for our sins.
The Plea of the City for Sympathy
and Help (Lamentations 1:12-22): “12 "Is
it nothing to all you who pass this way? Look and see if there is any pain like
my pain Which was severely dealt out to me, Which the LORD inflicted on the day of His fierce anger.
13 “From on high He sent fire into my bones, And it prevailed over them. He has
spread a net for my feet; He has turned me back; He has made me desolate, Faint
all day long. 14 “The yoke of my transgressions is bound; By His hand they are
knit together. They have come upon my neck; He has made my strength fail. The Lord has given me
into the hands Of those against whom I am not able to stand. 15 "The Lord has rejected all my strong men
In my midst; He has called an appointed time against me To crush my young men;
The Lord has trodden as in a wine press The virgin daughter of Judah. 16 “For these things I weep; My eyes
run down with water; Because far from me is a comforter, One who restores my
soul. My children are
desolate Because the enemy has prevailed." 17 Zion stretches out
her hands; There is no one to comfort her; The LORD has commanded concerning
Jacob That the ones round about him should be his adversaries; Jerusalem has
become an unclean thing among them. 18
"The LORD is
righteous; For I have rebelled against His command; Hear now, all
peoples, And behold my pain; My virgins and my young men Have gone into
captivity. 19 “I called to
my lovers, but they deceived me; My priests and my elders perished in
the city While they sought food to restore their strength themselves. 20 “See,
O LORD, for I am in distress; My spirit is greatly troubled; My heart is
overturned within me, For I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword
slays; In the house it is like death. 21 “They have heard that I groan; There
is no one to comfort me; All
my enemies have heard of my calamity; They are glad that You have done it.
Oh, that You would bring the day which You have proclaimed, That they may become like me.
22 “Let all their
wickedness come before You; And deal with them as You have dealt with me For
all my transgressions; For my groans are many and my heart is
faint."”
As we scan over this passage we can
see many references of the Lord, or in some cases the word “He” is used to
reference the Lord. We see that the Lord
afflicted the people of Jerusalem in 12a, and The Lord delivered Jerusalem into
the enemies hands in 14b; and the Lord trampled the people under His feet in
verse 15; and then we see that the Lord commanded the enemy to attack from
verse 17; next the Lord is righteous in verse 18. What can we learn from these statements about
the Lord? Jeremiah is teaching us that
the Lord is in control, which speaks of the sovereignty of the Lord, which is one
of His attributes. There is a great
division of history in how the Lord is dealing with the people on planet earth
when the Babylonians overtook the people of Judah and destroyed the city of
Jerusalem. This brought in the times of
the Gentiles and that time is still going on right now, even today. I realize that the Jews went back to
Jerusalem, but they never were in sovereign control of Israel from the time
that the Babylonians overtook them in 586 BC until May of 1948, but we are
still living in the times of the Gentiles even though God has brought Israel
back to their land. When will the times
of the Gentiles end? We get a hint of
this when we read the following from “Lu 21:24 and they will fall by the edge
of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will
be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” Jesus is speaking about this from Luke
chapter 12, which is a chapter that is what is called “The Olivet Discourse,
and is also seen in Matthew chapter 24, and Mark chapter 13. In this discourse Jesus is speaking about the
tribulation period and it will be at the end of the tribulation period when our
Lord returns to planet earth and at that time will end the times of the
Gentiles. Now back to Lamentations.
We have stated that it was because
of the sin of Judah, and the fact that they had broken their covenant with the
Lord that He used the Babylonians to defeat Judah and destroy Jerusalem. From our study of Jeremiah we saw that if the
Jews would have listened to Jeremiah and not fought against the Babylonians
that God would not have allowed them to destroy the city and the temple, but
they did not listen and so the Babylonians treated them very badly, which in
turn caused the Lord to treat them in the same way. God’s anger is a holy anger which is directed
against sin. Dr. Wiersbe writes “According
to the law of Moses, if a priest’s daughter was guilty of immorality, she was
burned to death (Lev. 21:9). Israel was
a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6), but she betrayed the Lord and consorted with
idols.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes “The people who
had been freed from bondage by the Lord were now under the yoke of a pagan
foreign nation (v. 14).” John Gill
writes the following on the first part of verse 14: “The yoke of my
transgressions is bound by his hand, &c.] That is, the punishment of her
sins was laid upon her by the Lord himself; his hand was in it; it came from
him; the Chaldeans were
only instruments; and a heavy yoke this was.” Yes it was a heavy yoke indeed. Dr. Wiersbe then writes “Sin always promises
freedom but brings bondage.” This is
true and the old gospel song says that sin will take you farther than you’ll
want to go, slowly and surely taking control.
We do not find anyone who wants to
help out the Jews at this time, and we also see that Jeremiah sheds many tears
over them even though he was the one who had told them to repent so that this
calamity would not come upon them.
We have learned, and it is spoken
again from this passage that the rulers of Judah had looked to other nations
for help, but did not get any. God
wanted them to look to Him for help, but they trusted their “lovers” for
help. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah told them
not to trust Egypt, but they did.
(Isaiah 31 and Jeremiah 2:18, 36 speaks of this.)
Verse 19 reads as follows “"I
called to my lovers, but they deceived me; My priests and my elders perished in
the city While they sought food to restore their strength themselves.” John Gill writes “I called for my lovers, [but] they deceived me,
&c.] Either her idols, with whom she had committed spiritual adultery, that
is, idolatry; but these could not answer her expectations, and help her: or the
Egyptians, that courted her friendship, and with whom she was in alliance, and
in whom she trusted; and these, in the times of her distress, she called upon
to make good their engagements, but they disappointed her, and stood not to
their covenant and promises, but left her to stand and fall by herself; this
Jerusalem said, according to the Targum, when she was delivered into the hands
of Nebuchadnezzar; but these words, "they deceived me," it makes to
be the Romans, that came with Titus and Vespasian, and built bulwarks against
Jerusalem:
my priests and mine elders gave up the
ghost in the city; or died in the city of Jerusalem;
not by the sword of the enemy, but through famine; and so, in the Arabic language, the word
<Arabic> {i} signifies to labor under famine, and want of food, and
perish through it; and if this was the case of their priests that officiated in
holy things, and of their elders or civil magistrates, what must be the case of
the common people?
while
they sought their meat to relieve their souls; or "fetch {k} [them]
back"; which were just fainting and dying away through hunger; and who did
expire while they were begging their bread, or inquiring in one place after
another where they could get any, either freely or for money.”
The priests were to be feed from the
people, but this did not happen because the people had no food for themselves
because of the harshness of the Babylonians.
We will now look at a section of the
covenant that God had made with Israel that is found in Deuteronomy 28: 32,
50: “"Your sons and your daughters
shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them
continually; but there will be nothing you can do. A nation of fierce countenance who will have
no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: As I have
seen the distress that Judah has gone because of their sin, I learn that my
trust needs to be in the Lord and not in other things that are called
idols. One of my memory verses speaks of
this: “Therefore consider the members of
your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and
greed, which amounts to idolatry.”
(Colossians 3:5)
My Steps of Faith for Today: Remember
this verse when tempted by the things that it speaks of.
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 your mind on things above, not on the
things that are on earth. 3 For you have
died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your
life is revealed, they 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 yesterdays Bible question: “Manna.”
Today’s
Bible question: “The fourth man with the
three Hebrews in the fiery furnace had the form of whom?”
Answer
in our next SD.
9/9/2014
10:54 AM
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