FBC Daily Devotional – November 25, 2020

day before Thanksgiving. Hope you're looking forward to a good holiday tomorrow, enjoying it with your family, friends, however you can do that.

I just hope it'll be a good day and not allow the the chaos of the pandemic and all the rest of that stuff to spoil the day for you, but it will be a good day of giving thanks.

Say more about Thanksgiving, the giving of thanks. Tonight in a special Thanksgiving evening service, be doing that at 7 o 'clock.

You can catch that on Facebook Live or the YouTube channel or the Faith Baptist homepage on our website.

So 7 o 'clock tonight, hope you can do that and get our hearts and our minds geared for a day of giving thanks.

But today, for the devotional, I want to kind of focus on something a little different. Do you know who

Pliny the Elder is? If you never heard of him, I don't blame you. He was a first century

Roman. He was an author, a naturalist, and a natural philosopher.

He was not a Christian. In fact, there was a Pliny the Younger who was very hostile toward Christians and looked at them as being a empire.

Well anyway, Pliny the Elder was also a navy commander and an army commander in the

Roman Empire and he was a friend of the Roman Emperor Vespasian.

Well, Pliny died in AD 79 and apparently from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

He was on a ship trying to rescue people from the destruction that Vesuvius was causing and it was in the harbor and apparently the volcanic fallout was so intense and so immense that it actually took his life.

But the reason I mention him is because he made a quote. He said something that is quite true and it rings true to what we understand of one of the dangers in the

Christian life or those who would profess to be Christians. So Pliny said this, he said, we should continue to be such when we are well as we promise to be when we are sick.

You know the emphasis here, right? The suggestion is that when we're ill, when we're sick, when in some kind of need, it's easy to make promises and Pliny would have said promises to the gods, but it's easy to make promises to God, commitments to the

Lord, vows if you will, whatever you want to call them. It's easy to make those things when our life is in a mess.

Physically we're ill, we're sick, there's some kind of threat, danger to our lives and we can cry out to God and make a promise.

If you get me out of this, if you heal me of this, whatever, then I will do thus and so. It reminds me of a movie

I saw years and years ago. I don't remember anything about it, just that this closing scene, there was a guy who was apparently, he thought he was drowning.

He was in the ocean and he's flailing and he's going under the water and he cries out to God, oh if you'll save me then

I'll serve you the rest of my life or something to that effect. Then all of a sudden his feet hit the bottom and he stood up and realized he was only about waist -deep in the water and then he's walking out of the water feeling really stupid and he says

I was just kidding, I was just kidding. Well that's the kind of thing Pliny is referring to.

It is good that we continue to be such when we are well as we promise to be when we are sick.

The children of Israel needed to learn this lesson, we do too and we need to learn from their instruction.

But because in Exodus 19, remember the people had just left the land of Egypt, just been delivered from bondage.

And in Exodus 19 there at the base of Mount Sinai, God's already shown himself powerful on their behalf in many ways, provided water for them when they were thirsty and so forth.

And Moses is about to ascend Mount Sinai, give them the law, and actually has, and after he tells them the

Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, all the people answered together and they said this, all that the

Lord has spoken we will do. There is the promise, the promise when they are ill, the promise when they are in need.

And Moses reported these words to the Lord. And later on after you know

Moses had gone back up on the mountain, he received more of the covenant and so forth, we read in Exodus 24 verse 3 and 7,

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said all the words that the

Lord has spoken we will do. Later on a few verses later in verse 7, Moses took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and they said, all that the

Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. Well it's easy to make such promises when you're ill, when you're in great need.

And they were, they were only partway into this excursion, this wilderness excursion that was going to take them from Egypt to the

Promised Land. They had this temporary hiatus at Mount Sinai, but they're still in the wilderness and there's a long way to go.

And so in this time of need, in this time of crisis, national crisis, it's easy for them to say we promise we'll do whatever you have said.

But will they continue to do so? Fast forward several years, about 39 years probably, and now the people of Israel are on the east side of the

Jordan River. There's been a lot that's happened in the last 39 years. A whole generation of Israelites have died and they have done so because they would not go into the land when they had a chance, when they had the opportunity.

They would not exercise faith in the Lord's promises. Said all the people in that land are too powerful, but we can't go in there and take that land.

Lord said okay. All right, this generation won't. You're going to wander in this wilderness till this generation dies off.

The next generation will go in and possess the land. So this generation now that's about to possess the land on the east side of the

Jordan River, here they are in, again, a time of need. They've experienced the years of sickness and death and deprivation.

And they're about to enter the promised land and the Lord uses Moses to rehearse for them all the law.

Hence Deuteronomy, second law, second giving of the law. And in the second giving of the law, in Deuteronomy chapter 6,

Moses exhorts the people and he says, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one. You shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children and talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your head. You shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So here's this very forceful exhortation to remember the commands of the

Lord, remember the words of the Lord that they have promised that they would keep. And why this emphasis?

Why this thrust? Why this strong exhortation? Well, because the

Lord knows that days of wellness are coming. They're going to enter this promised land and it's not going to be very long before they, well, let's just say, let's just read what the

Lord says. He says, When the Lord your God shall bring you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob, to give you, with great and good cities that you didn't build, you're going to get, you're just going to be able to walk into homes already furnished, occupied, and occupy them.

And houses full of good things that you did not fill. And cisterns that you did not dig, ready to collect the rain.

And vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, but ready to harvest. And when you eat and you are full, see, when these days of wellness come, then take care lest you forget the

Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The Lord knows full well our tendency as human beings, that we're in a time of crisis, we can make great grandiose promises, promises of obedience, promises to serve the

Lord, promises to do what the Lord would have us to do, and then we get out of that crisis, and it's so easy to forget.

Oh, Pliny's right. We should continue to be such when we are well, as we promise to be when we are sick.

Well, where are you today? How are you doing with that? I trust that your life is marked by a stable consistency, just a walk with the

Lord day in and day out, good times, bad times, and not allow yourself to forget who your

God is and what he has done and how absolutely essential he is to your life and to your eternity.

Keep walking with the Lord. Let's pray and ask the Lord to help us to be consistent and faithful.

Our Father and our God, deliver us from the kind of superficial, almost hypocritical promise -making when we're sick that we forget about when we're well.

Help us just to walk with you faithfully day in and day out, and we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. All right, we'll have a good rest of your midweek day,

Wednesday, and I hope you can join us tonight, 7 o 'clock, for a special Thanksgiving service message and an opportunity to praise and give thanks to our