4/26/2010 8:59 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: Man Proposes
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: 1 Samuel 6:1-9
Message of the verses: “1 ¶
Now the ark of the LORD had been in the country of the Philistines seven
months. 2 And the Philistines called for
the priests and the diviners, saying, "What shall we do with the ark of
the LORD? Tell us how we shall send it to its place." 3 They said, "If you send away the ark of
the God of Israel, do not send it empty; but you shall surely return to Him a
guilt offering. Then you will be healed and it will be known to you why His
hand is not removed from you." 4
Then they said, "What shall be the guilt offering which we shall
return to Him?" And they said, "Five golden tumors and five golden
mice according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for one plague
was on all of you and on your lords. 5
"So you shall make likenesses of your tumors and likenesses of your
mice that ravage the land, and you shall give glory to the God of Israel;
perhaps He will ease His hand from you, your gods, and your land. 6 "Why then do you harden your hearts as
the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He had severely dealt
with them, did they not allow the people to go, and they departed? 7 "Now therefore, take and prepare a new
cart and two milch cows on which there has never been a yoke; and hitch the
cows to the cart and take their calves home, away from them. 8 "Take the ark of the LORD and place it
on the cart; and put the articles of gold which you return to Him as a guilt
offering in a box by its side. Then send it away that it may go. 9 "Watch, if it goes up by the way of its
own territory to Beth-shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not,
then we will know that it was not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by
chance.’”
The last
section in chapter two of Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on 1 Samuel is entitled
“The wise providence of God,” and in it there are four sub-titles and sections
of which I wish to cover the first one this morning. The story is very familiar to me and as said
in yesterday’s SD is a favorite of mine.
Sometimes that creates a problem because that makes it hard to receive
something from the Lord as I read it, but by the grace of God I pray that He
will give me what He desires for me today.
This story
does indeed show the providence of God, for how else would these priests and
diviners ever think of such a plan as is in this story. Another thing that is seen here is that these
priests and diviners were still afraid of the God of Israel because of what
happened to the nation of Egypt Israel
The story
is very clear as to what happened and so I see no need as to go over it in any
kind of detail. I believe that this plan
was an excellent plan for the Philistines and it probably did save face for
them. Another point is that they had been
going through these troubles for seven months and I’m sure that they were very
tired of all that was happening to them and wanted to find out if it was truly
the God of Israel who was bringing this trouble on them.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: There is somewhat of a carry over from
yesterday’s SD in my spiritual meaning and that is that as the Philistines
discerned what was causing the troubles in their lives and did something about
it sod do I as I believe that I should confront the Lord and ask Him to show me
if my problems were entirely from sin in my life or if He was testing me in a
similar way that He tested Job.
There is
something else that I did not exactly learn from this story but was confirmed
in this story and this is that God is in control. I may not see the sovereign hand of the Lord
in all things but I know that He is in control of all things and there is not
one little element in this vast universe that God has created that is not in control
of the Lord, for if that were true then He would cease to be God, and that will
never happen.
My Steps of Faith for
Today:
- Trust the Lord with all aspects of my life, and pray that they will give glory to the Lord.
4/26/2010 9:37 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment