- 00:06
- Well, a good Friday to you. Last day of our typical work week today. I hope your week has gone well.
- 00:13
- If you look back and reflect on this week's work, this week's labors, I trust that you will see how
- 00:20
- God has used you to be productive in some way, and also trust that you have found rest after your labors, so that each day you could enter into the new day with a sense of anticipation, and maybe some enthusiasm, and with some energy.
- 00:40
- You say, oh, Pastor Bice, I wake up sleepy every day. I'm tired. Yeah, I understand.
- 00:46
- There are days like that, aren't there? Well, I hope you find more days where you enter into them rested and refreshed than you find, you know, waking up dreading going back to work today.
- 01:00
- Well, nevertheless, last work day of the week, I trust, for most of us.
- 01:06
- And just a reminder, I mentioned the other day that while you're watching this and whatever is going on in your world today, my wife and I are out hiking a trail up in Wisconsin, doing some backpacking, and spending a few days.
- 01:23
- I think our total trip is supposed to be hiking about 60 miles, something like that, spending a couple of nights in one campground, so we have a day of kind of rest in the middle of it all.
- 01:37
- But we're just trusting the Lord will give us a good time out and enjoying the beauty of his creation, and just some time with one another.
- 01:49
- You know, the experience of backpacking is generally somewhat solitary.
- 01:58
- You find one or two people that you might hike with, but that's about it.
- 02:03
- I personally enjoy some solitary backpacking. You know, I just go out by myself and enjoy the time alone with my own thoughts and opportunity to pray for people and that kind of thing.
- 02:15
- But I also will be enjoying this time just my wife and I.
- 02:21
- And where we're going on this trail, it's in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, and you can't just camp anywhere.
- 02:30
- You have to stay in shelters, but you have to reserve the shelter ahead of time, and only one person can reserve the shelter.
- 02:37
- So it's like I reserve these shelters, and the only person's going to be there is my wife and I, just the two of us in those shelters.
- 02:46
- Well, I guarantee it's not going to be anything like a four -star hotel, but it's a good time in a different setting for a husband and wife to get away and experience some things together.
- 02:58
- So trust you pray for us that we survive it well. Anyway, getting into today's reading, we read in Luke chapter 9, but also in Psalm 73.
- 03:12
- And I want to focus on Psalm 73 because the psalmist in this passage, he is vulnerable enough and authentic enough to tell us about a struggle that he had, that honestly, we all probably have or have had at one time or another.
- 03:33
- He says, as the psalm begins, he said, as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had almost nearly slipped, for I was envious of the boastful when
- 03:47
- I saw the prosperity of the wicked. And he goes on to describe that. And basically what he's saying is, you know what,
- 03:54
- I was ticked. I was ticked because here are these people who are wealthy and it seems like they can do anything they want to do.
- 04:03
- They can get anything they want to get. They don't seem to have any problems. And if they do have a problem, they can buy their way out of it.
- 04:11
- And they just get away with everything and nothing ever happens to them for it. Have you ever felt that way?
- 04:20
- Maybe not so much about rich people, but maybe, but rich and powerful people.
- 04:27
- Now, I was just, this just came up the other day because I read about this news reporter from Arizona, from Phoenix, Arizona.
- 04:39
- He's the reporter that broke the story of Bill Clinton meeting the attorney general on the tarmac at the
- 04:51
- Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. Remember that? And it was when Hillary was secretary of state and all this stuff was coming out about her email, the email scandal and so on and so forth.
- 05:08
- And there was very serious potential criminal charges that could have been filed against her for the way she handled these confidential, highly, highly confidential, top secret information.
- 05:26
- And it just so happened that former president Clinton and this attorney general and the department of justice at the time was, happened to meet on the tarmac at this airport.
- 05:42
- Well, the news reporter that found out about this, he broke the story and I didn't realize it at the time, but this article
- 05:53
- I was reading pointed out that after he broke that story, he got all kinds of death threats against him, his family, all kinds of bad stuff.
- 06:03
- And he had to, you know, he had to do all kinds of things to protect himself. Well, the article that I read was, was reporting the fact that that reporter committed suicide recently.
- 06:20
- There was no indication that he had any depression or he was depressed or discouraged about anything.
- 06:27
- There was nothing, nothing indicating that he was going to take his own life, but he just happened to commit suicide.
- 06:36
- And as I thought about that article, I thought back on a whole bunch of other very convenient suicides that have taken place connected to some powerful people who could very well have gotten into trouble if the poor people who took their lives had lived.
- 06:58
- And I got angry. It just made me angry. I thought, don't these people ever, they get away with everything.
- 07:07
- You know, and then you hear these stories about, you know, this bombshell information coming out about all these, you know, people who broke the law and did all this kind of stuff.
- 07:16
- And yet nothing ever seems to happen to them. See, this is Psalm 73. This is what, this is what the psalmist is talking about.
- 07:24
- He's talking, he's looking at the prosperous people, the wealthy people who have this kind of power and they're getting away with everything.
- 07:33
- And he said, I just about, it just about sent me in a spiral downward. Well, what do we do when we start feeling like that?
- 07:43
- We observe these things. We start feeling like, what do we do? Hey, let's follow the psalmist's lead.
- 07:50
- Listen to what he says in verses 16 and 17. He says, when I thought how to understand this, when
- 07:56
- I was trying to put this all together and make sense of it all, he says, it was just too painful for me.
- 08:03
- I just couldn't do it. It was too painful for me. He says, until, until I went into the sanctuary of God, then
- 08:13
- I understood their end. And as he goes on, he talks about the fact that they may, it may seem like they're getting away with all kinds of stuff right now, but God's, God's not done with the thing yet.
- 08:30
- God's not done with the thing yet. They will be called to account. Their day is coming.
- 08:37
- Their life is not eternal. I mean, they're not going to live forever. They are going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
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- They will answer for all of this. If they don't answer for it in this life, you can be sure they're going to answer for it when they went, when their body's lowered in the grave and they face eternity.
- 08:59
- God will hold them accountable. So he goes on to say, surely you set them in slippery places.
- 09:08
- You cast them down to destruction. Oh, how they are brought to desolation as in a moment.
- 09:18
- So the next time you read these stories or you hear these kinds of things on the news and you feel your blood start to boil, your blood pressure start to rise, you get a little angry again, and maybe, maybe even envious of, you know, all that rich people have and all that they can do and so on and so forth.
- 09:35
- Hey, listen, go to the sanctuary, go to the sanctuary and consider their end.
- 09:44
- Consider their end. We can be thankful that the Lord knows and the
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- Lord will hold them accountable. Their day will come. Our Father, I pray that we would take encouragement in that and not allow the corruption of our world and even in our society and the power brokers and the people who seem to get away with everything.
- 10:08
- Father, please deliver us from despondency over it all. Instead, take us to the sanctuary where we can see you and we can understand what you are like.
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- You are a God of justice. You are a God who holds people accountable and the wrongdoing will be made right.
- 10:28
- The wrongdoers will be held to account. Give us the faith and trust to believe this, we pray, and we ask this in Jesus' name.
- 10:37
- Amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your day today and a wonderful weekend gathering together in God's house.
- 10:46
- I hope you enjoy your 4th of July celebration as well, however you plan to do that. Enjoy the fireworks if you're going to see those.
- 10:55
- If you don't go see them, you'll certainly hear them. So, just have a wonderful, wonderful holiday weekend.
- 11:02
- And as far as next week, I'm not sure how many of these devotionals are going to be up next week because, like I said,
- 11:09
- I've been out in the woods all week and I usually record these in advance. I don't know how many of these
- 11:15
- I'm going to get done before I head off into the woods. So, if I don't show up in your
- 11:20
- Facebook feed for a few days, I trust it's not because I've been eaten by a bear or something out in the woods.
- 11:29
- I trust we'll be back to see you very soon. So, have a good rest of your day and a wonderful weekend. God bless.
