SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
8/10/2015 9:01 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Nations,
prepare for Judgment
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Joel 3:1-8
Message of the
verses: “1 "For behold, in
those days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, 2 I will gather all the nations
And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into
judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land. 3
“They have also cast lots for My people, Traded a boy for a harlot And sold a
girl for wine that they may drink. 4 “Moreover, what are you to Me, O Tyre,
Sidon and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering Me a recompense? But
if you do recompense Me, swiftly and speedily I will return your recompense on
your head. 5 “Since you have taken My silver and My gold, brought My precious
treasures to your temples, 6 and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the
Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory, 7 behold, I am going
to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and return your
recompense on your head. 8 “Also I will sell your sons and your daughters into
the hand of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a
distant nation," for the LORD has spoken.”
I guess it is kind of hard from me to understand what is
going on here, but I will try to explain in the best way that I can. The first thing that we have to understand is
that God has chosen Israel to be His own, and this happened when God called
Abram to be the father of the nation of Israel way back in the 12th
chapter of the book of Genesis. You see
when Adam and Eve sinned then God set into motion a way to restore men back to
a relationship with Himself and this would happen through the nation of
Israel. God loves Israel and although
throughout most of the Old Testament we see that God has had to discipline
Israel, He still loves them. Parents
understand this better than those who never had any children, for when one of
you children do something wrong you know that there are times when you have to
discipline them, but they are still yours and you discipline them because you
love them. The writer to the Hebrews
writes “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful;
yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful
fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11).”
One of the ways that God disciplined Israel was to send them into the
nations and this has happened two different times. The first time began in 605 BC and then
finally in 586 BC Jerusalem was destroyed and many of the Jews were killed or
sent into exile into Babylon where they remained for 70 years. The next time this happened was in 70 AD when
the Romans again destroyed Jerusalem and once again the Jews had to leave
Jerusalem and Judah and would go to many different nations. Then in May of 1948 Israel became a nation
again and to this day they still are a nation, and that is one of the reasons
that many Bible scholars believe that we are near the end times when the church
will soon be taken to haven in an event called the Rapture, and then the
Antichrist will arise to make a peace treaty with Israel for seven years which
will begin the period called the Tribulation.
At the end of this seven year period is when the battle of Armageddon
will happen, where God sill call the nations to the valley of Jehoshaphat as
seen in verse two where God will judge the nations for that word Jehoshaphat
means “Yahweh judges.” God had to send
the Jews into the nations and now God will judge the nations for the way that
they treated the Jews for God told Abraham “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’ (Gen 12:3).” Now Dr. Wiersbe writes of this word
“This great battle will take place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat (vv. 2, 12), a
site mentioned nowhere else in Scripture.
In verse 14, it’s called ‘the valley of decision,’ referring to God’s
decision (decree) to punish the nations.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes this endnote on this subject: “To make the ‘valley of decision’ a place
where lost sinners decide to follow Christ is to twist the Scripture. It is God who makes the decision, and His
decision (decree) is to judge and not save.
The nations have had their opportunity; not it is too late.” I suppose to put it another way we could say
that “God’s long-suffering has run out.”
Dr. Wiersbe then writes “some students believe it refers to the Plain of
Esdraelon where the ‘battle of Armageddon’ will be fought (Rev. 16:6).”
Now as we look at these verse we see that Joel makes a
list of sins that the nations have committed against the Jews: The have scattered them among the
nations. I can’t help but think of the
movie “Fiddler on the Roof” when I think of this sin that the nations have
committed against the Jews. They sold
them as slaves, well I don’t know how much slave trade went on in Germany but
during the Second World War they treated the Jews like slaves, as they treated
the Jews like cheap merchandise and perhaps even cast lots to see who got
who.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his commentary by writing “It’s
worth noting that God refers to the Jews as ‘My people’ and to the land as ‘My
land.’ The wealth is ‘My silver and My
gold.’ Even though the Jews have not
obeyed the covenant or sought to please the Lord, He has not abandoned
them. Even when they rejected their
Messiah, God was merciful to them. He
has preserved them as a nation and will one day come to their aid and defeat
their enemies.” All I can say is that at
this time they have many enemies for God to defeat, but I know that He will do
so.
8/10/2015 9:45 PM
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