SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/11/2015
8:44 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Monster Slain PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
29:8-12
Message of the
verses: In this SD we will look at
the second sub-section under this main section listed above.
Nebuchadnezzar’s Invasion (Ezekiel 29:8-12): “8 ’Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I
will bring upon you a sword and I will cut off from you man and beast. 9 “The
land of Egypt will become a desolation and waste. Then they will know that I am
the LORD. Because you
said, ’The Nile is mine, and I have made it,’ 10 therefore, behold, I am against you and against your rivers, and
I will make the land of Egypt an utter waste and desolation, from Migdol to Syene and even to
the border of Ethiopia. 11 “A man’s foot will not pass through it, and
the foot of a beast will not pass through it, and it will not be inhabited for forty years. 12 “So I
will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of desolated lands. And
her cities, in the midst of cities that are laid waste, will be desolate forty
years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them
among the lands."”
Let us first of all look at Jeremiah 43:8-13 to see what
he has to say about this invasion: “8 Then
the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, 9 "Take some large stones in your hands
and hide them in the mortar in the brick terrace which is at the entrance of
Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes, in the sight of some of the Jews; 10 and say to them, ’Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel,
"Behold, I am going to send and get Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My
servant, and I am going to set his throne right over these stones that I have
hidden; and he will spread his canopy over them. 11 "He will also come and strike the land
of Egypt; those who are meant for death will be given over to death, and those
for captivity to captivity, and those for the sword to the sword. 12 “And I
shall set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he will burn them and
take them captive. So he will wrap himself with the land of Egypt as a shepherd
wraps himself with his garment, and he will depart from there safely. 13 “He
will also shatter the obelisks of Heliopolis, which is in the land of Egypt;
and the temples of the gods of Egypt he will burn with fire."’"” Now what I want to do now is to quote from my
Spiritual Diary from this portion of Jeremiah written on the 30th of
July last year (2014). “I first want to
quote John Gill again as we have used his commentary on certain verses while
studying Jeremiah, and this time I want to look at his commentary on the first
part of verse thirteen. Now he used the
KJV of the Bible and so it will be a bit different, but we will still be able
to understand it. “Ver. 13. He shall
break also the images of Bethshemesh, that [is] in the land of Egypt, &c.]
Or, "of Heliopolis,"
as the Septuagint; the "city of the sun"; and so
"Bethshemesh" here signifies the "house of the sun"; either
it designs the temple of the sun, or the city where it was worshipped; as Heliopolis was famous for the
worship of the sun, and for a magnificent temple in it, built for that
purpose, and where abundance of persons resorted on that account, as Herodotus
{l} observes; here were many images of the sun; and these now should be broke
to pieces, when this city should become the city of destruction, as is foretold
it should by Isaiah, #Isa 19:18; where the Targum expressly calls it the city
Bethshemesh, that is to be destroyed; see Gill on "Isa 19:18". This
is the same city that was formerly called On, and had a priest in Joseph’s
time, #Ge 41:45.” I have a “problem” when
I am in a doctor’s office of in an office waiting to be seen and I pick up a
magazine and it seems I always start from the back and go forward which is what
I am doing taking the last verse in this section first and then moving to the
front.
“Dr. Wiersbe has been telling us about “action sermons”
that Jeremiah has made throughout his book and this is the last of those action
sermons as he takes some rocks and puts them on the wall around at the city of Tahpanhes,
well actually around the temple that is there, and then he speaks about what he
has done in order to make his point, the point that God had given to them, and
this would fulfill some of what he had already spoken, or at least reinforce
what he had said earlier in the chapter.
What he added was who it was that was going to destroy this temple and
other parts of Egypt as it would be God’s servant Nebuchadnezzar who would
accomplish this for the Lord, however this time he would be destroying a
heathen temple instead of the temple of God, but God’s temple had been made
into a heathen temple by the Jews who lived in Jerusalem as seen from the book
of Ezekiel.
“Dr. Wiersbe concludes “His victory would be so easy that
it would be like a shepherd wrapping his garment around himself! And yet
these are the very gods that the Jews would worship in Egypt, gods destined to
be destroyed!””
Jeremiah had gone to Egypt with some of those Jewish
people who were left in Judah at the advice from him not to go. They even asked him to seek the Lord in
prayer to ask whether or not they should go and were told not to go, but they
went anyway and many of them were killed by Nebuchadnezzar in the battle we are
studying about now.
“From Migdol to Syene and even to
the border of Ethiopia” is like saying from Dan to Beersheba when
talking about Israel, it covers it all.
Dr. Wiersbe reports that this happened from 568-567 BC.
3/11/2015 9:04 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment