Daily Devotional – June 30, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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on this Tuesday, the last day of June 2020.

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Half of 2020 will be in the history books. It's funny how some people look at this, isn't it?

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They consider the, it's like all the turmoil and the upheaval of these last four months, and it all has no end in sight, unless, of course, it's all somehow connected to Election Day in November.

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But anyway, they kind of think that by turning over the calendar page from December 31st to January 1st, from 2020 to 2021, that that's going to make all things new.

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Well, not to disappoint anybody, but there's only one who's going to make all things new, and he's really not tied to our calendar.

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He'll do that when he's quite ready to do it. Anyway, right now, I just started a few weeks ago reading

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Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant, and I was struck in reading that biography how difficult it was for Ulysses to gain the approval to marry the woman he wanted to marry,

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Julia Dent. The father -in -law wasn't too keen on young Ulysses, even though he was a

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West Point, he was graduating from West Point and was going to be going into the military, and a graduate of West Point, that says something,

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I would think. But there were some differences in the families. The Dents were from the

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South and were slaveholders. They favored slavery. Actually, they were from Missouri, from St.

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Louis. The Grants, on the other hand, were from Ohio, and they were staunch abolitionists.

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And Mr. Dent, he wanted his daughter to marry someone more, shall we say, substantial than this young upstart guy in the military, someone who could provide for her the kind of significant, comfortable, lavish lifestyle that she grew up with.

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And honestly, Grant's future in the military was less than acceptable to Mr.

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Dent. There was no way that Ulysses could ever hope to measure up.

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Well, rather than that completely destroying his hope of marrying Julia, all that did was motivate him to try harder.

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So off he went with a no, a not now answer to his desire to marry

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Julia. Off he went into service, and he served for three to four years in the Mexican -American

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War, writing letters to Julia, getting letters from Julia, and so on and so forth. And during that stint in the

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Mexican -American War, Ulysses attained a measure of success in every endeavor that he was assigned to.

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He did a very excellent job, outstanding job. And so when he was finally released from that duty in the

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Mexican -American War, and before his next assignment, he journeyed back to St.

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Louis with the hopes of finally gaining Mr. Dent's favor to marry Julia, thinking perhaps that his success in the army and his rise in the ranks would impress the man.

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Well, clearly Ulysses had grown quite a bit in those last four years, and his success was obvious.

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It showed on the very uniform that he was wearing. But only reluctantly did

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Dad Dent agree to the wedding, and probably that was more to do with the fact that his own financial situation had soured a bit, and he was, you know, kind of eager to get his daughter,

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Julia, married off. They did get married, but Grant never really succeeded in gaining his father -in -law's approval, try as hard as he may.

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Now, in reading this, I saw a parallel to a couple of quotes that I came across recently, one from Horatio Bonner that says this, he says, it is forgiveness that sets a man working for God.

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Now listen, he does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven.

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And much more recently, Jerry Bridges kind of echoes that same idea. Bridges wrote, out of grateful response to God's grace, we seek to understand his will and to obey him, not to be blessed, but because we have been blessed.

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Now what both of these men are addressing is the fact that a lot of Christians, they really approach their relationship to God in the same sort of way that Ulysses Grant was trying to get

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Julia Dent's father's approval. It's as if God has kind of an inherent disdain for us, even though we're his children, and that somehow, some way, we have to try really, really hard to get him to forgive us, and even more, to get him to bless us.

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But you know, what does God himself tell us? Listen to Ephesians chapter 1. Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, and he says,

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

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In Jesus we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.

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Did you catch that? We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins.

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And in the next chapter, Paul writes, But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace you have been saved. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing.

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It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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In a very similar passage in the next letter in our Bible, in Colossians, or a couple letters later in Colossians, Paul declares this,

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And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, that is, you weren't

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Jews, God made alive, made us alive together with Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

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This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. So Bonner and Bridges are quite right.

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You don't work in order to be forgiven or blessed by God. You already are forgiven.

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You already are blessed by God. And once that remarkable truth sinks in, it radically changes your motivation to seek to understand and obey

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God's will, to find out what God is like and what he likes, not to gain his favor and approval, but because he's already graciously made you accepted in the

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Beloved in Christ Jesus. Let's give thanks to our God today for what he has already done for us, and let's allow that.

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Let's pray that God will so let that truth sink into our hearts and minds, that we will endeavor to know him and to love him and to live for him, motivated by his already accepting us in Christ Jesus.

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Let's pray together. And so, our Father and our God, we do thank you today for your grace in saving unworthy sinners.

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And in that salvation, with that salvation, not only comes forgiveness, but every blessing is ours in Christ Jesus.

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And now, as we allow that truth to mull over in our minds and to sink into our hearts,

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I pray that that truth would motivate us to want to love you more, live for you more faithfully, to know you better and more richly.

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I pray that you would do this work in our hearts by your grace. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

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All right, well, I hope the rest of your last day of the month of June goes well, and that God will richly bless you and encourage you with this great truth of his word.