SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/12/2016
8:54 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Voice of the Nation
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Micah 7:8-10
Message of
the verses: “8 Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though
I fall I will rise; Though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.
9 I will bear the indignation of the
LORD Because I have sinned against Him, Until He pleads my case and executes
justice for me. He will bring me out to the light, And I will see His
righteousness. 10 Then my enemy will see, And shame will cover her who said to
me, "Where is the LORD your God?" My eyes will look on her; At that
time she will be trampled down Like mire of the streets.”
In our introduction yesterday we quoted Dr. Wiersbe
who speaks of the different voices we will hear from this last main section in
the book of Micah, and the first one we see is the voice of the nation which we
will cover in today’s SD. After identifying the different voices that we will
see in the last section of Micah Dr. Wiersbe wrote “We must also realize that
Micah is looking down through the centuries with prophetic vision to the time
when Israel will come through great tribulation to come ‘dress rehearsals’ as
it were. But the future will bring
victory to God’s people, not defeat, when the Lord fulfills His promises and
establishes the kingdom.” Now as we have
been studying the different OT prophets we have mentioned on many different
occasions that there were times when the prophet was writing that spoke of
times during his life time or shortly after his life time or perhaps way down
through the corridors’ of time when he will actually be writing about the end
times, and sometimes this will happen in the same chapter, or paragraph, or
even verse. Now in Peter’s first letter
and in the very first chapter he writes “10 As to this salvation, the prophets
who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and
inquiries, 11 seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as
He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. 12 It was revealed to them that
they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now
have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the
Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look.” Peter is saying that there were times when
the prophets did not really understand what they were writing, and Daniel is a
good example, for when Daniel was a very old man he was looking back at his
life wondering what the things meant that he had seen and in the last chapter
of Daniel, chapter 12 the angel has these words to say to him: “"Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed
and sealed up until the end time. 10 “Many will be purged, purified and
refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who
have insight will understand.”
So you see Micah probably did not realize when his
words that he had written would come true, but we have a better advantage than
he did for we can see things that perhaps he did not see and now we have a
better idea what he was writing about.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Perhaps the prophet is speaking
on behalf of the remnant as he expresses their faith and courage. The enemy gloated over the defeated Jews and
asked in derision, ‘Where is the Lord your God?’ (v. 10 NIV; see Psalm 42:3,
10; 79:10; 115:2).” At this time he has
an endnote that he wrote to go along with this statement he made. “Micah 7:8-10 certainly expresses the
feelings and hopes of the exiles from both Israel and Judah. Eventually both Assyria and Babylon were
defeated and passed off the scene, but it wasn’t the Jews who conquered
them. The Jews’ returned from Babylonian
exile was a small picture of the greater re-gathering of Israel that will take
place in the last days (Isa. 11:11-16; Matt. 24:31).” He goes on to finish the paragraph: “But the people trust God and have confidence
that, though they were in darkness, they would see light; and though they had
been defeated, they would eventually conquer their enemies and trample them
like mud in the streets.”
As I mentioned earlier we have an advantage in
looking back at these prophecies of Micah, and we know that this has not
happened, for it did not happen after the Assyrian, or Babylonian exiles so we
realize that it will happen in the future.
Jesus revealed to us from Matthew 24:15-31 that in the end times the
Gentile nations would be targeting Israel and this has already beginning to
happen as we have heard that Iran and even ISIS wants to wipe Israel off of the
map, but remember what the Lord told Abraham in Genesis 12:3 “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.’”
God has kept this promise up until now and I truly believe that He will
continue to keep this promise as He promised.
I remember in my preparation for a Sunday school
class where I taught about what Daniel taught in the 9th chapter of
his book that in the last part of that chapter we can see that Israel would
continue to have a hard time, and it was because of their sin, and when Jesus
spoke in Matthew 24 He too told his listeners that the Jews would continue to
have a hard time, even foretold that Jerusalem would be once again
destroyed. Moses wrote of this in the
book of Deuteronomy writing that the Jews would be defeated two times and the
last time, which took place in 70 AD the survivors would actually offer themselves as slaves, but Moses tells us that
no one would buy them and this happened after their defeat in 70 AD, for there
were too many slaves on the slave market and no one needed any slaves to fulfill
what Moses wrote in the lengthy 28 chapter of Deuteronomy.
1/12/2016 9:28 PM
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