SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/5/2016 9:45 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The
Day of the Lord and the Gentiles PT-1
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zephaniah 2:4-7
Message of the verses: “4 For Gaza will be abandoned And Ashkelon a
desolation; Ashdod will be driven out at noon And Ekron will be uprooted. 5 Woe
to the inhabitants of the seacoast, The nation of the Cherethites! The word of the LORD is against
you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines; And I will destroy you So that there will be no
inhabitant. 6 So the seacoast will be pastures, With caves for shepherds
and folds for flocks. 7 And
the coast will be For the remnant of the house of Judah, They will pasture on it.
In the houses of Ashkelon they will lie down at evening; For the LORD their God will care
for them And restore their fortune.”
As
mentioned at the end of our last SD on Zephaniah we begin a new section from
Dr. Wiersbe’s outline in our SD for today.
This section actually covers the rest of the second chapter, verses
4-15, and we will try to look at the introduction and first point in this SD.
I want to
begin by looking at the NT book of First Peter, and chapter four, verse
seventeen where we read “For it is time for judgment to begin with the
household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for
those who do not obey the gospel of God?”
Now we looked at God’s judgment on the people of Israel, and in
particular the Southern Kingdom of Judah as we began to look at Zephaniah and
now we move to the Gentiles and this follows what we read in our verse from
First Peter. The Day of the Lord will
certainly affect the Gentile nations as we learned when we studied the book of
Revelation, but in that book it also shows us how it affects Israel too. Dr. Wiersbe writes concerning the Gentiles “Though
they were never given God’s Law as were the Jews (Ps. 147:19-20), the Gentiles
are still responsible before God; for God has revealed Himself to them in
creation and conscience (Rom. 1:18ff.).
Furthermore, these nations had not always treated the Jews kindly, and
now the time had arrived for God to judge them.
“The
nations named may represent all the Gentiles, since these nations correspond to
the four points of the compass: Assyria
(north), Cush (south), Moab and Ammon (east), and Philistia (west). During the great Day of the Lord, all the
nations of the earth will taste the judgment of God.”
We will
first look at the nation of Philistia which is seen in the verses we quoted at
the beginning of this SD, Zephaniah 2:4-7.
I
have been listening to the Bible this year each day, trying to listen to three
chapters a day and then when I get to the book of Psalms I will try to listen
to it in a month, which should take me through the entire Bible this year. The Philistines are mentioned many times in
the Old Testament beginning with the Book of Genesis, and then they are also
mentioned in the book of Exodus. Amos
1:6-8 tells us “6 Thus says the LORD, "For three transgressions of Gaza
and for four I will not revoke its punishment, Because they deported an entire
population To deliver it up to Edom. 7 “So I will send fire upon the wall of
Gaza And it will consume her citadels. 8 “I will also cut off the inhabitant
from Ashdod, And him who holds the scepter, from Ashkelon; I will even unleash
My power upon Ekron, And the remnant of the Philistines will perish," Says
the Lord GOD.” These verses speak of the
Philistines as we read this quote from the Hebrew dictionary I have on my
Online Bible Program “another name for ‘Gaza’, a city of the Philistines
located in the extreme southwest of Palestine close to the Mediterranean.” The Philistines took the Jewish people
captive from cities in southern Judah and then they sold them to become slaves. Zephaniah tells of a time when they will have
no one living in their cities until the Lord puts the Jewish people there. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Nebuchadnezzar invaded
Philistia and conquered it, and the only remnant of that great nation left
today is the name ‘Palestine,’ which comes from ‘Philistine’ (see Ezek.
25:15-28; 26).”
Zephaniah
will have more to say about the Jewish people living in this land when we get
to chapter three and verses 9-20.
3/5/2016 10:10 PM
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