FBC Daily Devotional – December 10, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:05

Well, good Friday morning to you. Here we are at the end of the week and looking forward to the weekend.

00:11

So this is going to be the third Sunday of Advent coming up this

00:16

Sunday. Looking forward to the day. We have, of course, a morning service and so forth as usual,

00:24

Bible study and then morning service at 1030, but then Sunday evening, doing something a little different, we're having our church

00:33

Christmas party, all gather together, have a good time of fellowship and then some devotions centering our attention on a

00:40

Christmas theme. Just a wonderful time for the church family to get together.

00:45

So I hope you can join us for worship on Sunday morning and we would be glad for you to also come and join into our

00:53

Christmas celebration Sunday night as well. But that's a couple of days away.

00:59

Today, we want to focus in the first chapter of 2 Kings.

01:04

So we finished up the first book of Kings the other day in our scripture reading and now we're entering into that second book and we are introduced to Ahab's son

01:16

Ahaziah. Now, you remember King Ahab was quite the character. He was a weakling.

01:21

He was easily misled by his wretched wife Jezebel and that was a problem in itself.

01:31

But one thing I want to point out that is a contrast to his son Ahaziah.

01:37

You remember when Jezebel manipulated things and got

01:44

Naboth's vineyard for Ahab? You remember that? And the

01:50

Lord came by way of Elijah and confronted Ahab with his sin and Ahab repented.

02:00

He humbled himself before the Lord and he repented and he mourned over his sin and the coming judgment for that sin.

02:08

And the Lord relented of the judgment that he said was going to come upon him because of that repentance.

02:15

Now, in contrast to that, along comes Ahaziah and Ahaziah has become so apostate.

02:25

He has turned so far from the Lord that he's sick and in his sickness he doesn't appeal to God at all.

02:35

He doesn't appeal to the Lord at all. He sends a messenger to go find out from a spokesman for Baal, an idol, a no -God.

02:46

What's going to happen to him? Can he recover? Will he recover from this illness? So Ahaziah has totally turned away from the

02:56

Lord and it just challenges us in our own walk with the

03:04

Lord to really consider, you know, to whom do

03:10

I look when I am in need? To whom do I look when I'm in need? You might, and I would certainly expect you'd respond, well

03:20

I would never turn to like some false god, some idol. You know, I wouldn't call up a monk, a

03:29

Buddhist monk or something and ask him for advice or guidance or help. No, I would never do that.

03:37

Perhaps not, but how many times do we not go to the

03:43

Lord? How many times do we not seek our Lord's face and we just try to charge ahead and take matters into our own hands and solve problems ourselves?

03:57

I think there's perhaps an inclination in many of us to do that.

04:03

We, you know, we're Americans, you know, we're rugged individualists and self -sufficient and all of the rest of that kind of stuff.

04:12

We don't need anybody's help. I see a lot, I've seen that a lot in church through my years of ministry.

04:19

Someone asked me the other day, how many years have you been in the ministry? And I had to stop and think, well, you know, this is coming up on 2022.

04:27

I started working officially in a church in 1980, so that's 41 years already.

04:36

And in those years, I've seen some people who, you know, they were well -meaning

04:42

Christians. They, you know, they were kind of humble, but they were in need.

04:49

They needed help. And they wouldn't ask, they wouldn't accept help.

04:56

You know, you go to them and say, how can we help you? Oh, no, no, no, no, I'll be okay, I'll be okay.

05:03

Well, if that response to the offer to help on the part of the church or God's people is the same response that the person has toward God in their time of need, then that's a problem.

05:19

No, listen, God wants us to express our dependence upon him.

05:26

Well, Ahaziah rejects all that. He says, no, I'm not going to go to the wall, I'm going to go to Baal. So off he goes to Baal, and he doesn't hear the message that he wants to hear.

05:37

Instead, the messengers are actually intercepted by Elijah.

05:46

And Elijah says, he's going to die. You tell, go back home to Ahaziah and tell him he's not going to come down off the bed, he's going to die.

05:57

Okay, so now here's where the contrast comes in that I wanted us to see earlier. Remember, when

06:02

Ahab was told God's judgment is coming upon you, what did he do?

06:09

He humbled himself and he put sackcloth on and he mourned. What does

06:15

Ahaziah do? Ahaziah calls the captain of his guard and he says, send 50 men to go capture

06:23

Elijah and bring him to me. Well, he does. He sends those 50 men go and they come to Elijah and Elijah calls down fire from heaven and those 50 men are destroyed.

06:36

Does that make any difference to Ahaziah? Not at all. Instead, he says, send 50 more.

06:42

So 50 more go, same result. And third time,

06:48

Ahaziah says, send 50 more. He's determined to get this prophet whom he despises because that prophet dared tell him he's going to die.

06:59

He confronts him with his sin and he's going to die. The third group of 50, the commander of those 50, he goes to Elijah and he humbly goes before him and says, have mercy on us.

07:11

I'm just doing what I'm told. You know, I'm just a messenger. Please don't. So Elijah then goes with him.

07:18

And as he goes, Elijah goes. Nevertheless, he appears before Ahaziah and do you think

07:26

Ahaziah is in the least bit repentant? Not at all. Not at all. And Elijah confronts him, says, you're going to die.

07:35

And he did. And he did. No humility, no repentance, no place for God.

07:45

So I take a few things from this. One of them is I want to be sure. I want to be sure that in my times of need,

07:53

I am faithful to go to the one, the only one who can ultimately supply that need.

08:00

I want to express my dependence upon my heavenly father. He wants me to express that dependence and he wants to meet the need.

08:09

So let's go to him. Let's go to him. And then again, when we're confronted with our sin, how do we respond?

08:20

I want to be one who responds with brokenness and conviction and humility and not proud, arrogant rejection of the messenger.

08:33

So let's take these things to heart. Father, I pray today that you would speak to us through this passage of Scripture teach us to go to you, our father, for all of our needs and teach us,

08:47

Father, to respond humbly to your convicting word. This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.

08:54

Amen. All right. Well, again, have a good rest of your Friday. Wonderful weekend.