SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/29/2014
8:51 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Accepting
the Burden of the Lord PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
2:3-5
Message of the
verses: In today’s SD we begin
looking at the second sub-point from the outline of Warren Wiersbe’s
commentary.
Go and Speak (Ezekiel 2:3-5): “3
Then He said to me, "Son of man, I am sending you to the sons of
Israel, to a rebellious
people who have
rebelled against Me; they and their fathers have transgressed against Me
to this very day. 4 “I am sending you to them who are stubborn and obstinate
children, and you shall say to them, ’Thus says the Lord GOD.’ 5 “As for them,
whether they listen or not-for they are a rebellious house-they will know that
a prophet has been among them.”
I mentioned in yesterday’s SD about how it seemed to me
that the Lord was giving me encouragement as I was to teach a Bible study on
the endtimes with people from our neighborhood.
My wife and I spent two days making sure the house was ready to receive company,
as the letters were sent out almost a month ago, but when the time for the
people to arrive no one showed up and this brought great disappointment to my
heart as it seems that people are not interested in the things of the Lord, at
least those who received my invitation.
Ezekiel is given a task from the Lord which was also a difficult task
for God calls His people a rebellious people, and according to Dr. Wiersbe this
is one of the themes of the book of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel was being commissioned as a prophet of God and it was not just
the job of a prophet to foretell the things that will happen in the
future. Dr. Wiersbe writes that “They
were primarily forth-tellers who
declared God’s Word to the people.
Sometimes they gave a message of judgment, but it was usually followed
by a message of hope and forgiveness.” I
remember when I was studying the book of Psalms that many of the psalms were
similar to this, as when the psalmist spoke of difficult things he would end
the psalm with hope for his readers.
As I stated Ezekiel will write and talk to the people of
Israel, telling them the things that God wants him to tell them, but he has to
realize from the beginning of his ministry that he will be speaking to a very
rebellious people. Their rebellion was
what caused them to be in the place where they were, that is in Babylon, in captivity
because of their sin, and yet some of them still held out hope that God would
send them back to the Promised Land right away or some put their hope in Egypt,
that they would defeat Babylon and thus Israel would be able to return to their
land. In reality Babylon would soundly
defeat Egypt not too far off to when Ezekiel would begin his ministry. God had told Judah through the prophet
Jeremiah that they would be in Babylon for 70 years and then he would allow
them to return to their land. We went
over why it was seventy years in our study of Jeremiah, but just a reminder
that Israel was to allow their land to rest every seven years and trust the
Lord to provide for them, but they did not do it for 490 years and thus missed
70 years of letting the land rest and so the Lord let the land rest for 70
years, one after another. 20 Those who
had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants
to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth
of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its
desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete (2 Chronicles
36:20-21).” Yes Ezekiel will have the
same problem with these people as both Isaiah and Jeremiah had with them for
they were indeed a rebellious people.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I have to admit that
there is a streak of rebellion in my life from time to time when I don’t rely
on the new nature, but fall back to living under the old nature which will
always get me in trouble. Israel’s sins
are all over the pages of the Bible and yet the Lord tells us through the Apostle
Paul that we read about them so that we will not follow what they have done,
but the problem is that sometimes I do follow their rebellious ways.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to show me why things did not
go as I prayed that they would yesterday.
Trust the Lord to answer my prayers concerning a family problem that we
should find out more about today.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:8-11.
8 But now you also, put
them all aside: anger, wrath, malice,
slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
9 Do not lie to one another, since you have laid aside the old self with
its evil practices, 10 and put on the new self who is being renewed to a true
knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—11 a renewal in
which there is no distinctions between Greek and Jew, circumcised and
uncircumcised, barbarian and Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all,
and in all.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Isaiah” (Isaiah 37:36).
Today’s Bible
question: “Which way would have been
nearer for the Lord to lead the Israelites to Canaan?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/29/2014 9:34 AM
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