SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/2/2011 8:25:05 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2
“The Goodness of God”
Bible Reading
& Meditation Reference: Nehemiah 9:19-22
Message of the verses: “19
You, in Your great compassion, Did not forsake them in the wilderness; The
pillar of cloud did not leave them by day, To guide them on their way, Nor the
pillar of fire by night, to light for them the way in which they were to go. 20
“You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them, Your manna You did not withhold
from their mouth, And You gave them water for their thirst. 21 “Indeed, forty
years You provided for them in the wilderness and they were not in want; Their
clothes did not wear out, nor did their feet swell. 22 “You also gave them
kingdoms and peoples, And allotted them to them as a boundary. They took
possession of the land of Sihon the king of Heshbon And the land of Og the king
of Bashan.”
In
today’s SD I will look at the second sub-point under the second main point of
Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary on Nehemiah. He
entitles this sub-point “Leading the
nation,” and it will cover the verses written above.
The
verses above tell of how the Lord took care of the children of Israel while
they were in the wilderness, wandering for forty years because of the unbelief
of the first generation that came out of Egypt.
This was the generation that saw all the miracles that God did in order
to bring them out of slavery which they were under while in the land of Egypt. God gave these unbelieving people the Spirit
to teach them and a cloud to protective them from both the heat and the cold,
He gave them manna to eat, and water to drink, their clothes did neither wear
out, nor did their feet swell from all the walking that they did. God did all of this because of His goodness,
which is one of His attributes that are part of who God is. This may be a good
time to say that a study of the attributes of God is a wonderful study to
undertake, and one all believers should do so that they can get to know God
better. A. W. Tozer has written a number
of books that tell of the attributes of God.
“The Knowledge of the Holy” is
a book that is written by Tozer which speaks of the attributes of God. Chip Ingram read that book so many times that
he actually wrote a book on the attributes of God, “God as He Longs for You to See Him” is the title of Ingram’s book. Then there is the classic book written by J.
I. Packer called “Knowing God” that
also tells about the attributes of God.
All of these books are well worth reading. Richard A. Strauss also wrote one of the best
books on the attributes of God “The Joy of Knowing God.” You can actually read this book free on the
internet https://bible.org/series/joy-knowing-god.
I
have mentioned that the people of Israel were slaves in the land of Egypt while
they were there for over four hundred years.
God took a family of seventy people to Egypt and made a nation out of
them, a nation that would one day bring the Messiah to the earth in the person
of Jesus Christ. This was one of the
purposes of why God chose the nation of Israel as His own. When God brought the children of Israel out
of the nation of Egypt He did it through a series of ten miracles, very
powerful miracles that can be read about in the first few chapters of the book
of Exodus. This generation of Israel had
been involved in the salary under the Egyptians and knew the harshness of it
yet when they were released from this slavery through the goodness of God and
ran into some hard times, which were tests that God was giving them, they
wanted to return to slavery. When we
read this we wonder why they wanted to do this, and yet when we read in the NT
the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in the eight chapter of John’s gospel we see
that everyone who has been born on this earth is a slave to sin: “31 So
Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in
My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32 and you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free." 33 They answered Him, "We are
Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it
that You say, ’You will become free’?" 34 Jesus answered them,
"Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
35 “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain
forever. 36 “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” All of us who have been born again through
the Spirit of God have now become son’s of God, we are no longer slaves to sin,
and yet just like the children of Israel who had a desire to go back into
slavery in Egypt we sometimes have a desire to go back to being slaves of sin
thus we should not be too hard on that generation that came out of Egypt but
learn from them and not make the same mistakes that they made.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Going along with the last portion of this SD
that had to do with sin and being a slave to sin I want to think about a
passage in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews, a chapter that some
call “God’s Hall of Fame, or Faith.” In
this chapter we read about the faith of some of the OT believers who had a
tremendous amount of faith. We find
Moses in this chapter and this is what it says about Moses, “24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up,
refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to
endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, 26
considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt;
for he was looking to the reward.” This highlighted portion of verse twenty-five
tells why it is not so hard to be lured into going back to being a slave of
sin, for it says that sin brings pleasure, yet it is a passing pleasure, a
pleasure that does not satisfy the very heart and soul. I suppose that we could call this pleasure
“fools gold” for whenever I desire to go back and sin I surely am being a fool.
My Steps of
Faith for Today:
1.
I do not want to act foolish today.
2.
Continue to learn contentment.
9/2/2011 9:20:07 AM
12/11/2024 9:07 AM
I just listened to a sermon by John
MacArthur that I believe if one will listen to it and think about what he was
saying that it would help any believer, or even non believer in his or her
battle with sin. https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/GTY142/sanctification-and-sins-of-the-mind
The following quote comes from a sermon
that MacArthur preached in 1983 “The Believer and Indwelling Sin PT-2. “A rather flippant sort of scoffing young man
asked a preacher in a mocking fashion, “You say that unsaved people carry a
great weight sin. Frankly,” he said, “I feel nothing. How heavy is sin? Ten
pounds? Fifty pounds? Eighty pounds? A hundred pounds?” The preacher thought
for a moment and gently replied, “If you laid a 400 pound weight on a corpse,
would it feel the load?” The young man was quick to say, “Of course not, it’s
dead.” To which the preacher replied in driving home the point, “The spirit
that knows not Christ is equally dead. And though the load is great, he feels
none of it.”
12/11/2024 9:16 AM
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