Daily Devotional – Sept. 21, 2020

A good Monday to you. I hope you've had a great weekend, able to get to the Lord's house yesterday, had a good Lord's Day. Did you gain something from your time in God's Word and with God's people? I hope so.

I also hope you gave something of yourself in worship to the Lord. You know, we go to church and we often think about going to see what we can get out of the day, and there certainly is much to be gained in terms of you know, blessings and instruction and so forth.

But we also need to go to church and meet with God's people with the idea of what we can give in sacrifice of our thanksgiving and praise to the Lord, our attention to what's going on in the services and to the message of the day and so forth.

So I hope you both received a great deal from being in God's house and also gave of yourself. It's always a blessing. Well, the Lord Jesus said, right, it's more blessed to give than to receive. Well, it's been several years ago now, but we had a couple had come to our church at one time and they were, as the culture would say, they were down on their luck.

They really didn't have much of anything, didn't have a place to live, didn't have furniture, just got married, not particularly a young couple, but got married and just needed help. And our church pitched in and helped, and helped in a wonderful way, helped them get set up in an apartment.

Several people donated furniture for them so they could have furnishings in their home, had a food shower as I recall for them, and just helped them out with some groceries. I know on one occasion my wife actually took the wife to the grocery store and just, you know, just picking out stuff and then paid the bill, offering to help her learn how to do some cooking of some recipes and so forth, and just really did a lot to help the couple out.

About six months later they were gone. They were gone. It's happened more than once, not to that extreme, but I've had more than one occasion when someone comes needing help and, you know, really do, they're in a bad state, a bad place in life, and they make some great stirring vows, promises to return to the Lord, turn their life around, get back to church, be faithful, I'm going to do this, I'm really going to do this, and, you know, help them out, encourage them as best we can, and life starts to turn around for them, calms down, and things get settled, and then they disappear and go back to their old life.

Well, John Calvin made this statement. He said, you shall see a great number who become cold when God has once given them goods. That tendency is no surprise to God. Think back for a minute of the crisis, the crises, I should say, of being among the people of Israel on the eastern shore of the Jordan River about to cross over.

Think about what life has been like. You know, if you were there, then you could be as old as 59 years old, that's it. You're younger than 59. If you are between the ages of 40 and 59, then you lived the first 19 years of your life in Egypt, in bondage, and you were born into that slavery, and you lived in that slavery until all of a sudden God brought you out through the leadership of Moses, and when that happened, you left, you left quickly, and you left with probably next to nothing, although certainly many were able to plunder the Egyptians and got a lot of goods from the Egyptians and so forth.

But still, what lies ahead is four decades of wandering in a wilderness, living on manna every day. You say, well, what is that? Yep, it's exactly what manna means. The word manna means, what is it? But it's the same stuff every day, day after day after day after day for nearly four decades.

That would be like, well, think about eating oatmeal, however you could try to prepare it, however many different ways you could prepare oatmeal, three meals a day for almost 40 years. It doesn't sound too appetizing, does it?

Well, then you watched as an entire generation dies all around you, your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, relatives, anybody older than age 20 when you came out of Egypt, an entire generation. So here you are, you've gone through all of that, you're standing on the east side of the Jordan River, do you feel any sense of need, any sense of doing without under those circumstances?

The Warning Against Forgetting the Lord in Deuteronomy 6

All right, now in that context, as the people of Israel were about to enter the land of promise with all of its abundance just waiting for them, the Lord issued this warning in Deuteronomy 6. Listen to what he said.

He says,. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great food and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards, and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

It is the Lord your God you shall fear, him you shall serve, and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you. Well, the Lord knew that that tendency was going to come, and indeed in time it did.

The very thing he warned against is the very thing that ended up happening to so many of the Israelites over the years of their history. Well, it's not restricted to Old Testament Israel. That unfortunate tendency also struck the church in Laodicea.

Lukewarmness and Self-Sufficiency in Laodicea

You remember the words of warning to that church that Jesus gave them in Revelation 3? This is what he said. He said, So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

For you say, I am rich, and I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, and pitiable, and poor, blind, and naked. Here is the church at Laodicea that God in his grace, and that the people of that community had everything they needed, all the material things they needed.

They had plenty to eat. They had decent food, decent clothes on their back, a decent place to live. They saw themselves as rich and prospered and not in need of anything, and yet they were really quite cold.

Remember that statement of John Calvin? He said this. He said, There is this tendency. You shall see a great number who become cold when God has once given them goods. So have you taken your temperature lately?

I'm not talking about walking into your workplace and they shoot the little thing in your head. Have you taken your temperature lately, your spiritual temperature? If you've cooled off quite a bit in your love and your zeal for the Lord, follow the Lord's advice to the church at Laodicea.

Be zealous and repent. Turn back to him. Ask him to reignite that fire in your heart for the Lord, your dependence and trust upon him, and not your satisfaction and trust and dependence on things that can very quickly and very easily go away.

If your heart is cooled toward the Lord, be zealous, repent. So let's ask the Lord to help us to take our temperature and get a right reading. And on this first day of the week, we've just come through the weekend and the Lord's Day yesterday.

Perhaps today would be a good day to consider our spiritual temperature. Have we cooled? Have we considered ourselves to be so full and prosperous and rich that we don't need anything? Father, help us to see that we need you more desperately today, even than we did yesterday.

How we need you. May we be zealous and repent of our coldness, our cold-heartedness. And this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, may your heart be warm. May God richly bless you today as you begin this new work week.

And may he go with you in it. Have a great day. God bless.