SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/19/2014
9:56 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Ezekiel’s First
Spoken Message PT-3
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
6:11-14
Message of the
verses: We are looking at the third
sub-point under the second main point in Warren Wiersbe outline for chapter
two.
God’s weapons of Destruction (Ezekiel 6:11-14): “11 "Thus says the Lord GOD, ’Clap your
hand, stamp your foot and say, "Alas, because of all the evil abominations
of the house of Israel, which will fall by sword, famine and plague! 12 “He who
is far off will die by the plague, and he who is near will fall by the sword,
and he who remains and is besieged will die by the famine. Thus will I spend My wrath on them.
13 "Then you will know that I am the LORD, when their
slain are among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the
tops of the mountains, under every green tree and under every leafy oak-the
places where they offered soothing aroma to all their idols. 14 "So throughout all their habitations I
will stretch out My hand against them and make the land more desolate and waste
than the wilderness toward Diblah; thus they will know that I am the
LORD."’"
Ezekiel gives his audience another surprise, perhaps to
liven up what the Lord had told him to say to the exiles, and that was a little
foot stomping and hand clapping. Perhaps
the crowd was a bit sleepy and needed something to wake them up as they had
heard what Ezekiel is about to tell them before, but we must remember there is
nothing wrong with repeating one’s self when they are teaching the Word of
God. I want to quote two NT passages
that have the word remembrance in them: “Lu
22:19 And when He had taken some bread
and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is My
body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." Joh 14:26
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My
name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I
said to you.” Our Pastor is preaching
through 2 Peter and the name of his sermon from last Sunday morning was “We
need to be reminded,” as Peter was reminding his readers from 2 Peter
1:12-15). Verse twelve reads as follows “Therefore,
I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already
know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you.” We are a forgetful people and therefore need
to be reminded of important spiritual things so that we do not forget
them. Satan would love for us to forget
the important things from the Word of God.
One of the things that I like from the preaching of John MacArthur is
that he will go over things from his previous sermon in order to remind his
listeners what he is teaching on. Now I
say that he does this when he is in a series, but he will even continue to go
over different points of his sermon again and again as he moves through the
points he is bringing up in his messages, and to me that is a good thing.
Warren Wiersbe writes on the hand slapping and foot
stomping: “In Ezek. 21:14 and 17, these
actions represented God’s response to the invasion and assault of the
Babylonians. From the context, when
Ezekiel struch his hands together, it symbolized the marching of soldiers and
the slashing of the swords as God’s wrath was ‘spent’ or ‘accomplished’ against
His disobedient people. This wasn’t
something the Lord enjoyed doing, because He has no pleasure in the death of
the wicked (18:23; 33:11). The Lord
unleashed His three weapons against His people:
the swords of the Babylonians, famine in the city, and the pestilence
that usually accompanies famine (see 5:1-2).”
“1 "As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as
a barber’s razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and
divide the hair. 2 “One third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the
city, when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one third
and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one third you shall
scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them.” It seems we continue to look at when Ezekiel
shaved his head and cut off his beard and the things that happened after it.
I want to focus in on the word Diblah from what Wiersbe
has to say about it as I looked it up in my Hebrew/English dictionary on my
Online Bible Program and did not get much info on it. “The word ‘Diblah’ might be a shortened form
of Beth Diblathaim in Moab (Jeremiah 48:22), but if it is, the significance of
the reference has been lost to us. Some
Hebrew manuscripts read ‘Ribiah,’ a city in Syria, and this seems to fit. God promised to devastate the land ‘from the
desert to Riblah [Diblah]’ (NIV), that is from the south to the north. It’s like saying ‘from Dan to Beersheba,’
from the north to the south.” Dr.
Wiersbe certainly has more information that the dictionaries I looked at.
The words “And they shall know that I am the Lord” are
found around sixty times in the book of Ezekiel, for the people of Judah had
certainly forgot who their true God was and with the devastation that the Lord is
causing to come upon them because of their sin in forgetting the covenant that
God had made with them He wanted them to realize that He was the Lord. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Whether in blessing or
chastening, the Lord’s purpose is to reveal Himself to us in His love and
grace.” Moses wrote the following in
Deuteronomy 5:29 “’Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear
Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with
their sons forever!”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I am moved by
Deuteronomy 5:29 and have a desire to continue to fear the Lord and to keep His
commandments always.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I want to continue to meditate on Colossians
3:1-11.
Memory verses for the
week: 2 Peter 2:1.
1 Simon Peter a bond
servant, and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the
same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Psalm 119.”
Today’s Bible
question: “Who said ‘Thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God’?”
Answer in our next SD.
11/19/2014 10:53 AM
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