SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/24/2015
9:33 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Prayer for
Vengeance: Fifth Seal PT-1a
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
6:9-11
Message of the
verses: “9 When the Lamb broke the
fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain
because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had
maintained; 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and
true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell
on the earth?" 11 And there was given to each of them a white robe;
and they were told that
they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their
fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been,
would be completed also.”
I want to continue to look at the introduction to these
verses which tell of what the fifth seal is about.
Let us look at Isaiah 34:1-3 and verse 8 to see what one
of God’s prophets wrote on the subject of God’s vengeance: “1 Draw near, O nations, to hear; and listen,
O peoples! Let the earth and all it contains hear, and the world and all that
springs from it. 2 For the
LORD’S indignation is against all the nations, And His wrath against all their
armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to
slaughter. 3 So their slain will be
thrown out, And their corpses will give off their stench, And the mountains
will be drenched with their blood… 8 For the LORD has a day of
vengeance, A year of recompense for the cause of Zion.” Now we look at Isaiah 59:17-18 “17 He put on
righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance
for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. 18 According to their deeds, so He
will repay, Wrath
to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies; To the coastlands He will
make recompense.”
We have mentioned in our study of Ezekiel when the
prophet was speaking of judgment against some of Israel’s enemies that even
though the Lord had punished Israel for the many sins she committed it was like
a Father disciplining His own children with the purpose of causing them to
repent, while the enemies of Israel were destroyed because of the way that they
treated Israel, God’s own. God will
always have a remnant of Israel and even though He has punished them in the
past both in the time of their great idol worship and also when they rejected
their Messiah, He always had a remnant and the prophet Malachi speaks of this
in 4:1-2 “1 "For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and
all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming
will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave
them neither root nor branch." 2 “But for you who fear My name, the sun of
righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and
skip about like calves from the stall.”
I believe that many of those who we are speaking of in
our verses from Revelation who are under the altar may very well be from the
nation of Israel, and so it is important for us to look at some of these OT
passages that speak not only of God’s judgment on Israel, but also His
lovingkindness for Israel. In the NT the
apostle Paul wrote three chapters in the book of Romans about God’s plans for
Israel, and he poured out his heart for his nation because of their hard
hearts. I don’t want to get too far off
the track, but many people do not believe that God does have and will bring
about His vengeance upon those who deserve it, and when we look at the
judgments from the book of Revelation we can see that one of the reasons that
God brings judgment upon the world is because of the way that they treat the
Jews, which is a part of His covenant with His people that goes all the way
back to Genesis 12:1-3 ground we have covered before: “ 1 Now
the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your
relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;
3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who
curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be
blessed." We see here that
anytime a person does wrong to a Jew because they are a Jew that God will curse
them, and we must remember that all of the hatred for the children of Israel is
from Satan. I am not saying that if a
child of Abraham does you wrong that you cannot do something about that, but if
they are persecuted because of who they are then God will take care of the one
or the nation who does this.
John MacArthur writes “The knowledge that God will one
day execute vengeance on those who reject Him does not justify any personal
vengeance on the part of believers.
Proverbs 25:21 commands, ‘If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.’
Paul echoed that thought in Romans 12:19-20: ‘Never take your own revenge, beloved, but
leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will
repay,’ says the Lord. ‘But if your
enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for I so
doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’
Neither Jesus (Luke 23:34), Stephen (Acts 7:60), nor Paul (1 Cor. 4:12)
sought personal vengeance on their oppressors.
Even God Himself declares, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live’ (Ezek. 33:11),
because ‘The Lord…is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for
all to come to repentance’ (2 Pet. 3:9).
“The realization that the Day of the Lord is coming in
which God will take vengeance on the wicked is a bittersweet one for
believers. On one hand we rejoice,
because God’s glory will be put on display, sin will be done away with, the
world will be taken back from the usurper, Satan, and God will be
vindicated. But on the other hand, that
day will bring about the destruction of the ungodly and their sentencing to
eternal punishment.”
All of this is seen pictured in Revelation 10:8-11 where
we read “8 Then the voice which I heard from heaven, I heard again speaking
with me, and saying, "Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the
angel who stands on the sea and on the land." 9 So I went to the angel,
telling him to give me the little book. And he *said to me, "Take it and
eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as
honey." 10 I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and
in my mouth it was sweet as honey; and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made
bitter. 11 And they said to me, "You must prophesy again concerning many
peoples and nations and tongues and kings."”
MacArthur writes “John’s initial reaction to the judgment
described in the little book was the sweet realization that God will be
vindicated and His glory put on display.
But the sobering realization of the horrors that would be inflicted on unbelievers
nauseated him.”
While studying God’s attributes and looking in particular
at the long-suffering of God which has to do with God being patient with
sinners we know that one day that will come to an end as we are seeing in our
study of the book of Revelation, but it is still here now and if anyone reading
this does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord there is still time
to care for this by acknowledging that you are a sinner, and then also knowing
that in and of yourself you can do nothing to care for that. Then realize that Jesus Christ has cared for
that if you will accept that Jesus paid for you sins and then ask Him to come
into your heart and forgive your sins.
This will be the very best day of your life.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: More than ever I
am thankful for the books that I have read to help me better understand the
attributes of God so that I can accept passages like we are looking at in this
chapter, and also in this book.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
To love the Lord with all of my heart,
soul, mind, and strength, and to better live in and understand the love that
Christ has for me.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Benjamin” (Genesis 42:4).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who wrote the first five
books of the Old Testament?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/24/2015 10:17 AM
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