FBC Daily Devotional – April 8, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday to you. Here we are at the latter half of the week. The week is winding down and we're heading toward the weekend.

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I trust your week has been going well. You've been able to stay focused and stay on mission through the course of this week, and in so doing found a little more margin and been able to be a blessing and a help to somebody else along the way through the course of the week.

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Well, today we're in Leviticus 6 and 7, as well as in Psalm 37. I want to focus our attention in Psalm 37.

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Notice how the passage begins. It says, Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.

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You find yourself easily fretting over the proliferation of evil that's going on in our day.

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I read recently of a dad in Canada, maybe you've seen this story too, whose 13, maybe 14 -year -old daughter apparently wants to become a boy.

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The mom and dad are divorced and the mom is all for it and thinks, yeah, my daughter wants to become a boy, then she should become a boy.

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She wants to go through, put her daughter through all of the processes of hormonal therapy and drugs and body mutilation and so forth in order to turn her into, quote unquote, a boy, which is, of course, not possible.

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The dad, on the other hand, is wholly, totally against this and he's tried to go to court and get this thing stopped, but has been met with, you know, blocked every step along the way.

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In fact, back in the fall, I think it was, a court actually ordered him not to talk about it.

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He's not allowed to talk publicly about it and voice his opposition. Well, eventually he had enough of that and said he can't be quiet about this.

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This isn't right, that he as a father has no influence over this thing at all and his daughter is going to be butchered and is going to be given drugs that are going to affect her for the rest of her life.

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He's just furious over this and so finally he went public and said what's happening and stated the case.

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And then the court came back and fined him and put him in jail, if I recall, put him in jail for violating this court order.

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I read that thing and my blood started to boil and I found myself getting agitated and that scenario couldn't be repeated over and over and over again these days, can it?

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You find yourself like that, fretting over the proliferation of the increasing hostility toward righteousness and righteous people?

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It's easy to do, isn't it? Well, this psalm counsels us not to do that and says, look,

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I can't solve all these problems, I can't deal with all of the unrighteousness of this world,

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I'm responsible for me. I'm responsible for me and for how

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I react to all this. And this psalm gives us five different responsibilities when we're prone to fret over the evildoers.

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I want you to notice these. Number one, I'm responsible to trust in the

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Lord no matter how much he and I might be vilified and marginalized in this world.

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I'm still to trust in the Lord and do good. Trust in the

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Lord and do good, and to do good even if it's not appreciated, even if that good that I'm wanting to do is now considered to be evil.

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And I still need to do the good. I don't stop doing the good,

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I continue to do the good, and in the doing of it, I trust the Lord. I trust in the Lord to take care of that, to take care of the matter.

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Secondly, I must not only trust the Lord, but I must delight in the Lord. Verse four says, delight yourself also in the

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Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, let's be clear what that does not mean.

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That does not mean that I can just assume that the things that I desire, the

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Lord's going to give me. There's a caveat to that, isn't there? There's a presupposition.

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The presupposition is that I am actually delighting myself in the Lord. And if I'm delighting in the

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Lord, then I'm going to delight in what delights the Lord. The desires that I have in my heart are going to be those things that are consistent with the desires that the

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Lord would have for me. Delight in the Lord, and he will give the desires of your heart that you ought to have.

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That I think is the idea here. But I must delight in him. Thirdly, I'm responsible to commit my way to the

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Lord, and a way that may involve some opposition and some hostility.

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So verse five says, commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he will bring it to pass. And then it goes on in verse six to say, he shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday.

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And what the psalmist is communicating here is that eventually, if you commit your way to the

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Lord, the Lord will vindicate you. If it's a way of righteousness, you can commit that to the

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Lord, he will bring that righteous way to pass, and you will be vindicated.

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Now that vindication may not be something you see in the near future.

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You may not see it in your lifetime. But there is coming a judgment day, and on that judgment day, the path that you chose, the righteous path that you chose to walk in, is going to be vindicated.

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And the unrighteous, the wicked, those that are proliferating the iniquity, as they look on and see the

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Lord bless you and hear the curse upon themselves, you will be indeed vindicated.

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And then fourthly, I need to be calm and to patiently wait for the

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Lord to act. So verse seven says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.

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Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way. Do you find yourself unable to rest?

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I mean really rest? Your mind at ease? Your heart at rest?

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You find yourself with a restless heart all the time? Why is that? Why is that?

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Is it because of sin that you feel that sense of guilt and you're restless?

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Well that's one thing. You can deal with that. Deal with that through confession and repentance. But if you're finding yourself restless, your mind is constantly running like a trip hammer and you're just constantly agitated because of the fact that you're constantly taking in all of this information about the proliferation of evil, then perhaps maybe you need to shut down some of those gateways that are feeding your mind and feeding your heart.

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That might be the thing you need to do. But whatever the case, you need to rest in the

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Lord. You need to rest in the Lord. Be calm about these matters and wait for the

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Lord to act. Every once in a while, whenever you get some news story about a

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Christian, a professing Christian who takes matters into his own hands as far as unrighteousness and he tries to go and correct the injustice or to deal with the wrong.

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Like this kid that we saw a couple of weeks ago now who went into these massage parlors and killed a bunch of people because he had a problem with lust and sex addiction.

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He just acted out. Well, how has that helped anything? No, you're not going to stop all the evil by taking matters into your own hands.

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The Lord is going to deal with it in his time. Rest in him. Be calm.

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Rest patiently in him. And then finally, number five, I need to be careful that I don't allow my anger at the increasing proliferation of wickedness and iniquity.

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I don't allow my anger to get the better of me. This verse eight says, cease from anger and forsake wrath.

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Do not fret. It only causes harm. So again, anger is,

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I heard it described this way, anger is God's energy to solve problems. But what if that's a problem that you can't solve?

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I mean, there's not a thing in the world I can do about this poor dad in Canada who's trying to stop his daughter from being butchered.

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I can't do anything about that. So it doesn't do me any good to get angry and to lash out and do all kinds of things, be wrathful.

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What help is that? Maybe you've experienced this if you're a

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Facebook person, where something on Facebook made you angry and it was unrighteous, it was wicked, and you responded to it and expressed the truth, but nevertheless, when you did, all that did, you're venting, all that did was just create a seemingly endless back and forth of angry people.

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Yeah, what good was accomplished in that? It only does harm.

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So let's be careful. Let's beware in this day of easy fretfulness that we not allow ourselves to fret over the evildoers, but be responsible for ourselves.

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Father, help us in this, we pray. It is a challenge in these days. We ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake.

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Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your Thursday. I trust God will bless you richly in it.