Thursday, November 20, 2014

Idolatry (2 Chronicles 25:14-16)


5/20/2011 10:50:56 AM

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY

 

My Worship Time                                                                                          Focus:  Idolatry

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                       Reference:  2Chron. 25:14-16

 

            Message of the verses:  “14 ¶  Now after Amaziah came from slaughtering the Edomites, he brought the gods of the sons of Seir, set them up as his gods, bowed down before them and burned incense to them. 15  Then the anger of the LORD burned against Amaziah, and He sent him a prophet who said to him, "Why have you sought the gods of the people who have not delivered their own people from your hand?" 16  As he was talking with him, the king said to him, "Have we appointed you a royal counselor? Stop! Why should you be struck down?" Then the prophet stopped and said, "I know that God has planned to destroy you, because you have done this and have not listened to my counsel.’”

 

            I have two quotes from Dr. Warren Wiersbe to make before making my observations on this section of Scripture:  “Let us be as watchful after the victory as before the battle”  (This is actually a quote from an old Scottish minister Andrew Bonar).  “The greatest judgment God can send to people is to let them have their own way.”  I have read both of these quotes in different commentaries that Warren Wiersbe has written and because they are so helpful to me I wanted to include them in this SD.

 

            Back in the book of 1Samuel there was something similar that happened as happened in this section of Scripture and I suppose that it happened all over the known world in OT times, and that is that when a country defeated another country they would take the gods of that country and put them on display in their country and mostly in their temple to the god that they worshipped.  This was done to show that their god was better than the country’s god that they defeated.  This was not exactly the case here as Amaziah decided to worship the god or gods that he had just defeated, and then to top it off he gave a lot of trouble to the prophet that came to tell him how wrong he was in doing this.  All of the Jews who look at the OT knew that God was the only God and all other gods were false and that it was punishable by death to worship these other so called gods. 

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Idolatry is putting anything above the worship of God, so if I would put making money ahead of God then that is idolatry.  Knowing this I cannot be too hard on Amaziah, even though this was a really dumb thing to do.  I have trouble in areas of my life that need to be addressed and that takes up a lot of my time so I don’t have time to deal with other peoples sins, however I am to learn from these things that happened in the OT so that I don’t repeat them.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:

 

1.      Continue to learn contentment.

2.      Remember that there is a battle that I am engaged in and I need the spiritual armor in place.

3.      Give myself to the Lord this day for worship and for service.

4.      I will set no worthless thing before my eyes.

 

 

5/20/2011 11:17:55 AM

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment