FBC Daily Devotional – January 21, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Friday to you. The week is about over. We're heading into the weekend.

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I hope you're looking forward to a good weekend, looking forward to gathering together on the Lord's Day, God's people, and worshiping

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Him together, and the highlight of the weekend, of course, and of the week, starting off the week in the right way.

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I hope you will do that. Well, today we read in 1 Chronicles, chapters 12 through 14.

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One thing that stands out to me in this passage is what we see in chapter 13, verses 7 through 14.

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Here's the idea, the principle. It's not enough just to have a good motive to do something good.

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It's not enough. That which is motivated by good motives, that is a good thing, nothing bad about it, must be done in the right way, must be done according to the proper principles.

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Here's where I'm getting this. David wanted to bring the

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Ark of the Covenant to a place in Jerusalem, centrally located, where the worship of God could take place with the majority of God's people.

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It wasn't often an out -of -the -way place anymore. This was a noble thing, and God had established

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Jerusalem to be the city of a central location for his worship.

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But in the moving of that Ark, what we read in these verses is that they put the

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Ark on an ox cart. The problem with that is that God had directed that the

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Ark be carried by four individuals on poles.

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The poles went through the rings on the Ark, and then the Ark was covered, and it was to be carried from one place to another.

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So that those directions about how the Ark was to be transported were ignored in this case.

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Nobody thought to look them up, and if anybody knew how it was supposed to be done, nobody said anything.

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The result was disastrous, because the Ark on the back of the cart hit probably a rock or a pothole.

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It was like a Chicago road or something. Then the Ark started to tip and was about to fall off the cart.

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This guy Uzzah reached up with his hand to steady the Ark, and he touched it.

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The Lord struck him and he died, because that was strictly forbidden. This was a violation of the holiness of God to touch that Ark.

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No one was to do that. This created a great deal of consternation on the part of David.

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He was ticked. He was angry. He was like, how in the world can I ever get this and he moved it aside, and he didn't touch it.

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Now here's the thing. God had described how the Ark was to be transported.

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He revealed his will in the transporting of the Ark. But a couple things we can say about that.

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Either those who knew how it was supposed to be done didn't say anything when the orders were given to put it on a cart, and if that's the case, that's a problem.

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Or nobody bothered to check. Nobody bothered to ask. Now here's an interesting further development or further thought along this line.

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We read in chapter 14 in verse 10, in verses 9 and following, that the

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Philistines went up and made a raid on the valley of Rephaim. So the Philistines, enemies of the

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Israelites. They come up to this valley of Rephaim and they're raiding it. And then the next verse says,

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David inquired of God saying, shall I go up against the Philistines? God told him, yeah you shall.

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Well then a few verses later, it says in verse 13 that once again the

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Philistines made a raid on the valley. And verse 14, therefore

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David inquired again of God and God said to him, you should not go up, you shall go around, circle around them and but here's the point.

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When it came to these matters of war, David was quick to inquire of the

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Lord. Shall I go up? What do you want me to do? How do you want me to go about doing this?

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And God told him. God gave him directions. But when it came to the matter of worship,

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David took matters into his own hands. David didn't stop to inquire of the

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Lord. How do you want me to do this? And if so, how do you want me to go about doing it?

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See, there was the failure. And here's the point. We need God's direction, not only in war, but in worship.

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And when we don't have God's direction, it's disastrous, both in war, in our battles, as well as in our worship.

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So let's learn from David's mistake that when

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God has laid out principles in his word, God's laid out guidelines in his word about how he is to be worshipped, we need to follow those.

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A lot of the problems that are going on in churches and so forth today are really rooted in a failure to do this very thing, to find out, you know,

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God, how do you want to be worshipped? And God has laid out some very specific principles and practical guidelines, regulations, if you will, for worship.

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Certain things are supposed to be involved in our worship of him, and just those things, and nothing more.

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We would be wise to take heed to those things. Let's learn from David and his debacle in trying to worship

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God. You should have gone to him and inquired as he did about war.

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We need God. We need his guidance in war, as well as in worship. Father, I pray that we would learn from the mistakes of others, and we would avoid those failures.

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We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, this coming Lord's Day, we'll gather together to worship, and on our

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Sunday morning worship service, we try to follow prescribed manner of worship.

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We pray, we sing, we read the scriptures, we confess our failures, we appeal to our

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Lord, and we preach the word. And we respond to the word.

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So that's what we do on Sunday morning. Join us. Look forward to meeting you. Have a good weekend.