SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/9/2015
10:07 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction
to Ezekiel 29
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Message of
the verses: We begin a new chapter in the book of Ezekiel
and also looking at a new chapter in Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary in which he
entitles it “Egypt Will Fall!” and it will cover chapters 29-32 in the book of
Ezekiel.
We have been looking from the book of Ezekiel the nations
that God would judge, and this continues in the next four chapters, but only
one nation is going to be mentioned in these chapters and that is the nation of
Egypt. The Scripture has much to say
about Egypt from all the way back to the books of Genesis and Exodus. God had promised to Abraham that his descendants
would eventually go down to Egypt and live there for four hundred years, and
that they would be mistreated while there.
This happened just as the Lord foretold it to Abraham. He also told him that they would come out of
Egypt with many spoils and that also happened just as He said it would. When we look at the lives of Abraham and
Isaac we see both of them went down to Egypt to get away from a famine, however
neither of them were told to go there by God.
This trend did not leave the nation of Israel
as on many times the leaders of Israel would look to Egypt to receive help from
them when like Abraham and Isaac they should have looked to the Lord for
help. In the age of grace that we live
in we believers on far too many occasions run to the world for help when we
should look to the Lord. We believers,
at times go through trials ordained by the Lord to draw us closer to Him and to
grow in our faith, but we miss out on these learning experiences because we run
to the world for help instead of trusting the Lord to get us through them.
Dr. Wiersbe writes in his introductory commentary the
following: “These four chapters are
composed of seven messages (or oracles) that God gave to Ezekiel to deliver to
the Egyptians and to the Jewish exiles.
The phrase ‘the word of the Lord came’ or a similar statement marks off
each message. Six of these seven
messages are dated (the third one is not—30:1-19, so we are able to fit them
into the chronology of the book. Each of
the messages presents a picture—or metaphor—of the impending judgment of Egypt.”
Introduction to the first main point “The monster slain:” “The first message was given on January 7,
578 BC, about seven months before Jerusalem was destroyed. The prophet set his face against Pharaoh
Hophra, who ruled Egypt from 589 to 570 BC.
(See Jeremiah 44:30) The picture
here is of killing a sea monster.”
We will now look at the endnote that Dr. Wiersbe has on
the subject of sea monsters: “Many
ancient peoples had myths concerning great sea monsters that fought one another
to gain control of creation, and this imagery occasionally shows up in
Scriptures (Job. 9:13; Ps. 74:13-14; Isa. 27:1). One of Egypt’s names in Scripture is ‘Rahab’
and Egypt is portrayed as a water monster (Pss. 87:4; 89:10; Isa.
51:9-10). Of course, the ancient
mythology is not approved by the biblical writers but only used in an illustrative
way.”
I do find it interesting when I listened to a tape
message by a creationist that he told the story of a fishing vessel from Japan
who caught a huge dead fish, I mean the size of sea monsters that are spoken of
in the Scriptures, but because of its awful sell they had to let it go. 3/9/2015 10:31 PM
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