FBC Daily Devotional – November 13, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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End of another week. Friday and the week has come and gone, flown by, looking forward to the weekend.

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Not so much the weather as I understand the forecast, but hey, weekends are weekends, and Sunday's coming.

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It's the Lord's Day, and we're planning to gather together Sunday morning at 10 30 for in -person worship.

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We are encouraging everybody to, you know, maintain those social distances and, you know, honor the closed pews and all that kind of stuff, just to be very careful about things because of this

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COVID outbreak in our region. But nevertheless, we will be, we are planning to gather

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Sunday morning on the Lord's Day. Won't be having Sunday school, won't be having the regular evening service.

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Got another event planned, church family knows about that, this wedding reception thing planned

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Sunday evening. But anyway, I hope you're looking forward to the

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Lord's Day. Always a great blessing to gather God's people. Well, do you know who

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Stevie Nicks is? Stevie Nicks. If you don't, don't feel bad.

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It's not like you're missing out on anything, but some of you probably will. Stevie Nicks is the lead singer and female singer and songwriter from the rock group

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Fleetwood Mac. It's a group that's been around for 50 years or so.

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She recently, Stevie Nicks, recently did an interview and she revealed in that interview that back in 1979, she got pregnant with the baby of another guy,

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I think was in the band. And she decided to have an abortion, wanted to get rid of that baby.

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And in the interview, she expressed, this sounds awful, but she expressed it was a good thing that she did that because she put it this way, quote, she says, if I had not had that abortion,

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I'm pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. So there was a choice there between this little life that she snuffed out or a rock band.

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And she thinks it's better that there was the rock band. And the reason she justifies that is she felt that it was her mission to bring hope and healing to many through the music of Fleetwood Mac.

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That abortion, in other words, helped her stay on mission. So she looks back on that terrible, terrible deed that she committed all those years ago.

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She has no regrets. Has no regrets. Feels like it was a good decision. Where's her conscience in this?

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Where's her conscience in this? I came across a statement the other day in my reading by Charles Spurgeon.

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He said this, of course, Spurgeon writing in the late 1800s, and there's a little bit of that flair of his language, but he says this.

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He says, to lose sensitiveness of conscience is to lose the excellence of our being.

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Let me say that again. To lose sensitiveness of our conscience is to lose the excellence of our being.

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I think that's true. I think that's true. And I'm confident that it is that truth that led the

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Apostle Paul to say what he did when he's speaking to the Ephesian elders. In Acts chapter 24, he gathers together the elders of the church at Ephesus, and he's basically saying goodbye, bidding them farewell.

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And in Acts 24, verse 16, he says this. He said, in this I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.

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He made a great deal of effort. He put in a great deal of effort to be sure that his conscience wasn't violated, and if it ever was, to very quickly deal with it.

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This is the point of to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men. Paul is not saying,

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I made sure I never sinned. No. But when his conscience pricked him, and the

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Spirit of God convicted him in his conscience about sin that he'd committed, he repented of that.

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He dealt with that quickly and radically and completely, and he made every effort to do that.

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Why? Because he understood that the sensitiveness of the conscience is so important.

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If you lose that sensitivity of your conscience, you lose the excellence of your being.

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What direction will your life go? What steps will you take when you have lost sensitiveness of your conscience?

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There are some other verses related to conscience. In Hebrews 13, the writer of Hebrews is wrapping up his letter to the

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Jewish people, his Jewish audience. He says, pray for us. Pray for us.

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I need you to pray for me. Pray for us in this way. He says, for we trust we have a good conscience in all things, willing to live honestly.

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Pray for us that we do. Pray for us that our conscience is a good conscience, and pray for us that we will live honestly in all things.

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This is a great concern of the writer's because he understands. If I lose the sensitiveness of my conscience,

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I lose the excellence of my being. Then in Romans 13,

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Paul is writing to the Romans. Bear in mind the time frame.

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Bear in mind the historical context in which Paul is writing. He's writing in the first century, in the middle of the first century, during the height of the

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Roman Empire. The emperors of Rome are no friend whatsoever to Christianity. Yet in Romans 13,

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Paul is exhorting the Romans to be subject to the authorities, the rulers, the governmental rulers.

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He says, because of this, you must be subject to governmental authorities, not only for wrath.

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In other words, don't just submit to their authority because they can punish you if you disobey.

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But he says, do so for conscience's sake. Do so for conscience's sake, because Paul's argument is that governmental authorities, rulers, are put in place by God.

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They are his servants. They're there carrying out his authority as delegated authority.

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And if you violate the rulers, if you rebel against the rulers and those in authority over you, then you're rebelling against God.

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Now the challenge, therefore, is that we want to obey governmental authorities, the laws of the land, not only so we don't get punished, but because of our own conscience.

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If I violate that law, I'm violating my conscience. I'm searing it.

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I'm helping my conscience lose its sensitiveness, and therefore, thereby,

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I'm losing a bit of excellence of my being. Now by the way, in that regard, just to make sure we're clear here, we also understand that our conscience has to be void of events toward God first and then toward men.

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So there will be occasions, there have been occasions in history, and even in our own country, in our own land, and more coming,

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I'm sure, where the government is going to enact legislation and order things of Christians that we can't go along with.

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Otherwise, we would be disobeying God, and Peter, standing before the authorities, said, we're not going to obey you to the men.

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We're not going to obey you because we ought to obey God rather than you, rather than men, and establishing that precedent that when the two conflict, we obey

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God first and then take what comes from man. So labor to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.

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To lose the sensitiveness of your conscience is to lose the excellence of your being.

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Spurgeon, after he made that statement, he closed a little devotional I was reading in this way.

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He said, and it's poetic, so follow here. He says, sin has been hammering my heart unto a hardness void of love.

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Let suppling grace to cross its art drop from above.

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You get the sense of what he's praying? He says, sin wants to hammer away at my conscience and make it insensitive to that sin, and he's praying, oh

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Lord, let the suppling grace, let your suppling grace fall from above and in that cross the art of that hammering sin as it works its way on my conscience.

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Don't let that be. Don't let that be. I think we can echo that prayer.

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Don't let sin hammer away at your conscience and harden you and make you insensitive.

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Pray for God's suppling grace to cross that destructive art of sin.

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Our Father and our God, we do thank you for your suppling grace. We thank you for your word that when we fill our minds with it, it is used by your spirit to prick our conscience and to encourage us to do the right thing.

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So Father, I pray, help us to have and maintain a sensitiveness in our conscience.

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We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your

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Friday, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend, particularly on the Lord's Day. Turn your focus attention on Him.