FBC Daily Devotional – June 29, 2021

Good Tuesday to you, 29th day of June. Just one more day left in the month of June this year, and I hope your month has gone well. You can look back over the last month and see how the Lord has blessed and provided in some good ways for you and your family, your loved ones.

I've seen some answers to prayer in the month of June and have much to reflect upon and rejoice over in this past month. So speaking of remembering, reflecting, rejoicing, in our reading today in Deuteronomy chapter 16, we read about a couple of feasts that the children of Israel were supposed to participate in every year, the Feast of Passover and then the Feast of Weeks, as it's called.

And these two festivals or feasts are discussed here in the first half of chapter 16. And they follow one right after the other. So you have the Feast of Passover and then the Feast of Weeks right after, shortly after that, seven weeks actually.

Feast of Weeks begins with Pentecost. But anyway, so what I want to focus on in those two feasts is the reason for them. And the reason is given in verses 3 and 12. So notice what the Lord tells his people in verse 3 regarding Passover.

He says, So Passover morphs into the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He says, All right, so they were supposed to participate in this Passover celebration. And then the Feast of Unleavened Bread, eating nothing but unleavened bread for those seven days to remember their affliction in Egypt.

They remember that they were afflicted in Egypt and then remember how the Lord delivered them from it. And then the follow-up feast that would come seven weeks later, the Feast of Weeks, the Lord says in verse 12,.

And I thought about that and I said, Okay, so every year, a couple of times within a matter of a couple of months of each other, these feasts were ordained to be observed. And in the observation, they were to remember their affliction.

But that's not what they were supposed to focus on. They were supposed to remember their affliction, but then that remembering their affliction was supposed to turn their thoughts and attention away from the affliction to the deliverance that they experienced and the deliverer who gave them that deliverance.

They were to remember that they were in bondage in Egypt and how the Lord delivered them out of that bondage. They were to remember their enslavement in Egypt and the affliction that they endured as slaves in Egypt.

But then remembering that affliction should turn their attention to remembering of the Lord's deliverance from that affliction and from that bondage. Now, I thought about that and reflected on my own life and wondered, Do I have any special days of the year that are particularly set aside for remembering and for reflecting for this purpose?

And honestly, I never really thought of it before like that. And then therefore, I never really established anything on my calendar. But as I reflected, I thought, you know, there have been some times that I should be referring back to often.

Once a year isn't a bad idea. I think, for example, just one of many examples I could share. Several years ago, our family was living in Tennessee. I was pastoring a church in Oak Ridge. That's about 20 minutes from Knoxville.

And Oak Ridge, Tennessee, by the way, is that city that was built out of the hollow to develop the nuclear bombs that, you know, were eventually made their way to Japan and ended World War II. So there's the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is in that town.

Anyway, I pastored there for four years. And honestly, the last six months to a year, I mean, most of that pastor was difficult. But the last six months were really a season of affliction. And I have often thought about that affliction.

But what's particularly memorable about it is not so much the affliction itself, but how the Lord provided through that affliction and how he delivered from that affliction. And we went from that ministry.

I left it before I had a place to go. It was that, I mean, it was that kind of a situation. It was not a very pleasant one at all. But we left that place and the Lord opened up a ministry for us in Shelburne, Vermont.

And I'll never forget, I'll never forget driving up the highway Route 7 in Vermont. It goes along the eastern border of the state. And you get up to the northern third of the state of Vermont. And that's where we ended up living, just south of Burlington, the largest city in the state, a city of 35 ,000, largest city.

We lived just south, about five miles south of Burlington. But I'll never remember, I'll never forget driving on Route 7. We came up a hill and we got to the crest of that hill. We looked out to the west and it was late afternoon, almost early evening time in June.

Looked out to the west and a whole panorama opened up before us. The Champlain Valley, Lake Champlain lay before us. And on the other side of the lake was the Adirondack Mountains. And it just, it was too bad I was driving, but it was pretty dangerous because I was mesmerized by that view.

And then I turned my attention to the right side of the car and looked out to the east and to the east is, again, we're on this ridge. And to the east, you could see the green mountains that go up the spine of Vermont.

It was absolutely gorgeous. And I remember turning to my wife and said, I think I could live here. I think I could live here. And sure enough, we did for eight years. And it was a wonderful ministry experience, which highlights to me, and this is why I go back to this, this is why I think of that in regards to this passage.

It was like the Lord in his grace delivered us from bondage and affliction that we endured for a lengthy period of time. And he brought us out of that into an abundant place, a place of abundant blessing and beauty and peace and relative tranquility in the ministry.

It was gracious on God's part to provide such a place. It is good for me to look back on that often and remember, remember the affliction from which the Lord delivered us. What do you remember? What do you remember?

Our Father in heaven, give us good memories. Help us, Father, to pause and reflect upon how you and your grace have brought us out of times of affliction and you delivered us in wonderful ways. Give us that insight, we pray, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well have a good rest of your Tuesday, and I trust your month of June will wrap up well. Good day. God bless.