SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/10/2015
10:01 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Leadership Responsibility PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
19:1-9
Spiritual meaning
for the verses: We are going to look
at the first nine verses of chapter nineteen in this SD. We know from the past chapter we studied that
God made it clear through Ezekiel that people were responsible for their own
sins, but it must be admitted that Israel had some terrible leaders who caused horror
on their people because of their sinfulness and defiance against the Lord. In these first nine verses we see Ezekiel
penning a lamentation or a dirge for the people of Israel. Jeremiah was good at writing lamentations as
the book following his is named Lamentations.
David also wrote some in the Psalms he wrote. Steward Briscoe writes “A lamentation was a
special poem with a particularly mournful rhythm.”
In his introductory commentary on this section Warren
Wiersbe writes: Whether you read secular
of sacred history, you discover that people become like their leaders. The same people who applauded Solomon when he
built the temple also applauded Jeroboam when he set up the golden caves and
instituted a new religion. One of the
hardest tasks of Christian leaders today is to keep our churches true to the
Word of God so that people don’t follow every religious celebrity whose ideas
run contrary to Scripture. It appears
that being popular and being ‘successful’ are more important today than being
faithful.” This statement is very true
in our nation today in both the church and also our political leader.
“1 "As for you, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel 2
and say, ’What was your mother? A lioness among lions! She lay down among young
lions, She reared her cubs. 3 ’When she brought up one of her cubs, He became a
lion, And he learned to tear his prey; He devoured men. 4 ’Then nations heard
about him; He was captured in their pit, And they brought him with hooks To the land of Egypt. 5
’When she saw, as she waited, That her hope was lost, She took another of her
cubs And made him a young lion. 6 ’And he walked about among the lions; He
became a young lion, He learned to tear his prey; He devoured men. 7 ’He
destroyed their fortified towers And laid waste their cities; And the land and
its fullness were appalled Because of the sound of his roaring. 8 ’Then nations
set against him On every side from their provinces, And they spread their net
over him; He was captured in their pit. 9 ’They put him in a cage with hooks
And brought him to the
king of Babylon; They brought him in hunting nets So that his voice
would be heard no more On the mountains of Israel.”
This lamentation speaks of the last two kings of Judah,
which marked the end of David’s dynasty, but did not prevent the Messiah to be
born from the line of David as God had promised. In Genesis chapter 49 we see the death of
Jacob, but before he died he went over some prophecies of his sons and I want
to focus in on what he said about his son Judah: “9 “Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey,
my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion,
who dares rouse him up? 10 “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the
ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be
the obedience of the peoples (Genesis 49:9-10).” Verse nine speaks of Judah being a lion and
the reason that I included verse ten is because Ezekiel will speak of the
Messiah in 21:27.
The first royal “whelp” that Ezekiel speaks of is King
Jehoahaz who only reigned in Judah for three months and was captured by Pharaoh
Neco and taken to Egypt where he died. The
next cub or whelp is Jehoiachin who only reigned for three moths too and then
he broke a treaty with Nebuchadnezzar and was carted off to Babylon where he
died. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Jehoiachin
turned a deaf ear to the preaching of Jeremiah, and the prophet didn’t have
anything good to say about him (Jer.22:18-19).
In this brief parable, the Lord made it clear that these two kings of
Judah thought themselves to be great leaders, but hey ignored the Word of God
and He cut them down after their brief reigns.”
Remember that a good leader is one who always knows that he is second in
charge, and these two kings did not remember this.
1/10/2015 10:30 PM
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