SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
4/19/2015 11:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Reunion: The Kingdoms United
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
37:15-28
Message of the
verses: “15 The word of the LORD
came again to me saying, 16 “And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick
and write on it, ’For
Judah and for the sons of Israel, his companions’; then take another stick and write
on it, ’For Joseph, the
stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel, his companions.’ 17 “Then
join them for yourself one to another into one stick that they may become one
in your hand. 18 “When the sons of your people speak to you saying, ’Will you
not declare to us what you mean by these?’ 19
say to them, ’Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I will take the
stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his
companions; and I will put them with it, with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick,
and they will be one in My hand."’ 20 “The sticks on which you write will
be in your hand before their eyes. 21 “Say to them, ’Thus says the Lord GOD,
"Behold, I will take
the sons of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will
gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; 22 and I will make them one nation
in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king will be king for all of them; and they will no longer be two
nations and no longer be divided into two kingdoms. 23 “They will no
longer defile themselves with their idols, or with their detestable things, or
with any of their transgressions; but I will deliver them from all their
dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. And they will be My people, and
I will be their God. 24 “My servant David will be king over them, and they will
all have one shepherd;
and they will walk in My ordinances and keep My statutes and observe them.
25 "They will live on the land that
I gave to Jacob My servant, in which your fathers lived; and they will live on
it, they, and their sons and their sons’ sons, forever; and David My servant will be their prince
forever. 26 “I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with
them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary
in their midst forever. 27 “My dwelling place also will be with them; and I
will be their God, and they will be My people. 28 “And the nations will know
that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst
forever."’"”
A little history lesson is in order at this time. After David died his son Solomon took over as
Israel’s new king over the entire nation of Israel. Solomon seemed to care more about himself as
time went on in his leadership of Israel.
Solomon began to tax the people a lot and by the end of his leadership
in 931 BC his son Rehoboam took over and at that time the kingdom was divided
into ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom and two Tribes in the Southern Kingdom
which made up Judah and Benjamin. In 722
BC the Assyrians defeated the Northern Kingdom because of their idol worship
and other sins. They never had a good
king that reigned in the Northern Kingdom.
In 586, as we have learned in our study of Ezekiel the Southern Kingdom
fell to Babylon. I would suppose that
the people that Ezekiel was speaking to at this time did not realize what God
was going to do, for they knew that God had promised a kingdom for Israel, but
all they saw was great defeat and perhaps they thought that God would do
something else, but one of God’s characteristics is being immutable as God
never changes His mind and so there would still be a kingdom for Israel in the
future.
In the section of Ezekiel chapter 37 we are looking at
today we see the last of Ezekiel’s action sermons as God tells him to take two
sticks and to write the name of the Northern Kingdom on one and on the other
write the name of the Southern Kingdom and put them in his hand together. God was showing that when the time for Him to
bring the kingdom of Israel back to the land that they would be one
nation. I am told in a sermon that I
heard about when David Ben-Gurion, who was the first Prime Minister of Israel,
as his fellow leaders what they were to name this new nation that someone
brought up this section of Scripture to him and so the name became Israel. Now we have spoken of this earlier in other
SD’s that it is my belief and others that what we see in Israel is not what
will be there in the Millennial Kingdom for that has already been looked at in
earlier SD’s on Ezekiel 36 and 37. I
have said that I believe that what we see in Israel today is the nation without
the Spirit in it which will be given later on.
The Scriptural lesson we can get out of this section is
unity and there is much said about unity in the New Testament. The church today is to have unity and when
the Millennial Kingdom begins with Jesus Christ setting on David’s throne there
will be unity in Israel and unity in the people who are believers who have just
come out of the Great Tribulation. Dr.
Wiersbe asks what would maintain the unity of the people that Ezekiel is
speaking about. He writes “For one
thing, the Lord would cleanse them and renew spiritual life within them so that
they no longer had any ambitions to compete with one another.” This is a good reason why people do not have
unity in the church today, they compete with one another and this will not be
in the Millennial Kingdom.
The
next reason is that Jesus will be ruling over them. He will shepherd them with grace and love and
they will respond to that, and He will be their prince forever.
4/19/2015
12:21 PM 4/19/2015 8:02 PM
When
we get to chapters 40-48 we will see in greater detail how the Millennial
Kingdom will be set up as there will be a new temple, and Christ will re-do the
earth and the Promised Land as the description given in chapters 40-48 make it
impossible for there to be enough room for all of the changes that will have to
be made to accommodate where the temple will be and also where the different
tribes of Israel will be located along with where the “prince” and his land
will be.
I
want to finish this chapter by quoting the last paragraph of Warren Wiersbe’s
commentary as to how he finished. “Whether
it’s the Children of Israel or the saints in the church today, the Lord wants
His people to be united. ‘Behold, how
good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together’ (Ps. 133:1). Paul appealed to the believers in Corinth to
cultivate the unity in the church (1 Cor. 1:10), and he exhorted the Ephesian
believers to ‘make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the
bond of peace’ (Eph. 4:3 NIV). Sometimes
it takes prayer, sacrifice, and patience to maintain the unity of God’s people,
but it’s important that we do so. Jesus
prayed that His people might be one and manifest to the lost world the living
unity between Christ and His church and among believers and local churches
(John 17:20-23). A divided church is not
a strong church or a church bearing witness to the grace and glory of God. God’s people today need the fresh wind of the
Spirit to give us new life from God and new love for one another.”
4/19/2015 8:22 PM
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