SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
4/9/2015 8:29 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Protecting
the Flock
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
34:23-31
Message of the
verses: “23 “Then I will set over them one shepherd, My servant
David, and he will feed them; he will feed them himself and be their shepherd. 24 “And I, the LORD, will be their God, and My
servant David will be prince among them; I the LORD have spoken. 25 “I will
make a covenant of peace with them and eliminate harmful beasts from the land
so that they may live securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. 26 “I
will make them and the places around My hill a blessing. And I will cause
showers to come down in their season; they will be showers of blessing. 27 “Also the
tree of the field will yield its fruit and the earth will yield its increase,
and they will be secure on their land. Then they will know that I am the LORD,
when I have broken the bars of their yoke and have delivered them from the hand
of those who enslaved them. 28 “They will no longer be a prey to the nations,
and the beasts of the earth will not devour them; but they will live securely,
and no one will make them afraid. 29 “I will establish for them a renowned
planting place, and they will not again be victims of famine in the land, and
they will not endure the insults of the nations anymore. 30 “Then they will
know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they, the house of
Israel, are My people,"
declares the Lord GOD. 31 “As
for you, My sheep, the sheep of My pasture, you are men, and I am your
God," declares the Lord GOD.”
Again we see that this prophecy that we are looking at
will be completed in the Millennial Kingdom when the Shepherd, our Lord Jesus
Christ will be the One ruling the entire earth from Jerusalem. In Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary he states that
the prince that is mentioned in verse 24 will not be David, but will be the
Lord Jesus Christ, and I agree that Christ will be the One ruling, but when we
move to some later chapters in Ezekiel we will see this word “prince” again and
there are those who I have read that think that this could very well be
David. From chapters 37-48 we will see
this word prince used some nineteen times.
This scene that we are looking at now is different from
the one we have been looking at in Ezekiel for there use to be a lot of
difficulties with their shepherds, but now when Ezekiel speaks of the coming
kingdom things are much better for the children of Israel, better because their
Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ will be the One ruling.
This section speaks of the rains coming during the right
time in order to have a good harvest, and when we look at the condition
covenant seen in Deuteronomy 28:9-14 we will see that Israel had to obey the
Lord and keep His Laws in order to have the rains to come in the right time,
and they disobeyed this covenant and the results of that were seen in the
earlier chapters of Ezekiel when they were taken captive to Babylon.
We also see the safety that God would give to them and
this to was a part of this conditional covenant found in Deuteronomy and this
too was not kept by Israel, but during the Kingdom age they will not have the
trouble with other nations because of Christ ruling from Jerusalem and caring
for His people Israel.
This promise and other found in other OT prophecies will
all be fulfilled in the Kingdom age, and perhaps this message gave
encouragement to the exiles who probably did not know that God still had plans
for the children of Israel. God was
given great comfort to these exiles through this message from Ezekiel and these
prophecies that we are reading about in yesterday’s SD and today’s SD have not
been fulfilled yet, and these prophecies are not for the church, but for Israel
and they will be fulfilled. The SD that
I did this morning from Revelation chapter seven had similarities to this one
as both this one and the earlier one speak of the same time period, the
Tribulation Period.
4/9/2015 8:59 PM
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