SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/13/2014
9:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Judgment of Judah (2nd Action
Sermon)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
4:4-8
Message of the
verses: “4 “As for you, lie down on
your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall
bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it. 5 "For I have assigned you a number of
days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety
days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6 "When you have completed these, you
shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of
the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each
year. 7 “Then you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your
arm bared and prophesy against it. 8 “Now behold, I will put ropes on you so
that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the
days of your siege.”
Remember the name of the book by Steward Briscoe? “All Things Weird and Wonderful” and as we go
through the book of Ezekiel we will find out that this is a pretty good name
for the book of Ezekiel. We will
continue to see some strange things in today’s lesson on Ezekiel 4:4-8 as we
did in yesterday’s lesson from verses 1-3.
God tells Ezekiel to lay on his left side facing the model that he had
made, and he is to lie there for 390 days as each day represents a year of
rebellion on the part of Israel. Now I
have looked at different Bible commentators about when this time period of 390
years began and no one is sure, but a couple have stated that it began after
Rehoboam rebelled causing the kingdom to be divided. Dr. Wiersbe writes “It’s likely that the 390—year
period begins with Solomon’s son Rehoboam who became king in 930 (1 Kings
14:21ff). When you add the years of the
reigns of the kingso of Judah from Rehoboam to Zedekiah, as recorded in 1 and 2
Kings, you have a total of 394 years.
Since during three of the years of his reign Rehoboam walked with God (2
Chron. 11:16-17), we end up with a number very close to Ezekiel’s 390 years.” Now we read from his endnote on this
subject: “The subject of the length of
the reigns of the Jewish kings is sometimes puzzling, so we shouldn’t look for
absolute figures. Fathers and sons were
sometimes coregents, and at least two kings of Judah reigned for only three
months each.” In John MacArthur’s Study
Bible he writes that it is uncertain of what these years mean, and Steward
Briscoe suggests we figure it out for ourselves. Now as for the forty years Dr. Wiersbe
believes that this is the 40 years of wondering in the wilderness that happened
after the exodus of Israel from Egypt.
In verse four we read “you shall bear their iniquity.” Now we must remember two things as we read
this phrase. Jesus Christ is the only
One who has born our iniquity “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the
cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds
you were healed (1 Peter 2:24).” Next we
must remember that Ezekiel was a priest and in the OT it was the priest who
worked in the Temple sacrificing the animals for sin offerings and this
pictured what Christ did on the cross. In
an endnote Warren Wiersbe writes “The phrase ‘bear the iniquity’ can mean to
suffer for one’s own sins (Lev. 17:15-16) or to take to oneself the sins of
others (10:17; 16:22). Since the high
priest represented the people before God, and the priests offered the
sacrifices for sin, they were ‘bearing’ the nation’s sins in a symbolic
sense. Without their ministry, there
could be no forgiveness.”
Now I want to go back to the meaning of the number of
years for a moment and say that as we look at all the years that God had been
longsuffering with His people we must be amazed, for when one reads through the
book of Exodus through the books of Kings and Chronicles, (both sets of books),
we can see that there was much sinning going on in the nation of Israel and so
God had put up with this for a very long time.
He even through Moses predicted that all of this would happen in the 28th
chapter of Deuteronomy.
Now another question comes up about these verses we are
looking at and that is was Ezekiel there 24/7 or only during the day time, and
did he only eat the bread and only drink the water that is spoken of or did he
eat more as he returned to his house at night.
I for one can’t imagine laying on my side for over a year so I believe
that he only did this during the daylight hours, and that in and of itself
would be very difficult to accomplish.
We know that these verses picture what was going on at
Jerusalem during this time period as times got so bad that people were running out
of food to eat and water to drink, and God was showing the exiles that they
were the ones who were better off because they had been taken out of Jerusalem
before it really got bad.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Unlike the health
and wealth preachers you see on your TV set, following God is not always easy
as seen in our verses today. However we
can be assured that the retirement is out of this world so to speak. Ezekiel and the rest of the prophets had a
very difficult job and the Bible teaches us that if we are living for the Lord
we will also face persecution, so as we said the health and wealth TV preachers
are missing what the Bible has to say about following Christ.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to see me through the
difficult days in my life so that I can bring glory to the Lord through them.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:10-11.
10 and put on the new self
who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the One who created him—11
a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised
and un circumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Chris is all,
and in all.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Swallowed them up” (Exodus
7:12).
Today’s Bible
question: “Why did the missionaries
leave Lystra?”
Answer in our next SD.
11/13/2014 10:30 AM
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