Daily Devotional – April 28, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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going stay -at -home orders and restrictions and limitations and so forth is the seemingly increasing difficulty with people getting along.

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There's not the unity that we saw earlier on.

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Seems like more information is coming out, different sources of information. There's more conflict.

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One of the things that is disturbing is trying to get to the truth.

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Pilate asked Jesus, what is truth? In a big general sense, we're more concerned about what is the truth.

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That seems to be harder and harder to discern these days. Well, anyway, I trust that we can keep our focus where it ought to be.

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Tomorrow night in the Wednesday night Bible study time, I'll be looking at the statement in the

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Beatitudes where Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers and see if that has anything to apply to our current situation.

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Well, speaking of struggling, seems like a lot of people these days are struggling with their diet.

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One couple got into a little bit of a tiff recently on this subject when he said,

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I'm still, I'm just still tired from all the CrossFit this morning. And his wife corrected him and said, it's pronounced croissant and you've eaten four of them already today.

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Well, he decided that, yeah, that was probably, he's probably getting a little out of hand.

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So he thought he would social distance himself from the kitchen so he could flatten his curve.

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Well, I'm thinking that that's probably not going to last, the social distancing that is.

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I'm sure that the curve probably will. Well, yesterday

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I wanted us to get to thinking about how to respond when the wheels come off. Everything's going fine.

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You're humming along just well, doing well. And then all of a sudden the wheels come on, come off.

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It's not going so well anymore. Joshua chapter seven provides the basis for this discussion.

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Israel is in the early stages of taking possession of that promised land that God had promised them that they would have.

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They've crossed the Jordan River successfully, went through on dry ground. They have had a smooth leadership transition.

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They conquered Jericho soundly and God gave them a miraculous victory over Jericho.

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And then they suffer a humiliating loss at Ai. So now what?

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Now what? How will Joshua respond? It's the same question we want to ask ourselves today in the middle of this virus crisis.

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Our country and maybe even your personal life was humming along just fine. And then everything is ground to a halt by a microscopic germ.

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So now what do we do? Now what do we do? How do we handle the distress? What questions come to our mind?

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Where do we go for answers to those questions? Well, we've already discussed some of the options and all of these options are being utilized in one form or another these days.

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There is the, we talked about the scientific approach where we're only interested in where the science takes us and looking solely at circumstantial explanations or reasons or causes and so forth.

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It's important to do that kind of study, but that's the sole thing. And that's the first and most important thing.

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And then there's the stoic approach that is a sort of passive, well, it is what it is. Let's just get on with life.

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And we talked about the naturist approach where, and then there are the spiritual approaches we talked about, and there's a wide variety of spiritual approaches, but I'm thinking particularly of two in the

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United States. And one of them is the American religion response. And that's the one where we just look at God as kind of like our cosmic genie.

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When we have a crisis, we go to God and ask him to get us out of the crisis, to give us relief, give us comfort and that kind of a thing.

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Make everything better for us. And then when peace comes, when the crisis is gone, then we forget about God.

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We ignore him. We don't think about him anymore. We could care less about his will, what his word tells us and so forth.

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And then speaking of spiritual approaches, there's the biblically Christian response where we go to God with our questions.

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We seek answers of him and we're not merely seeking relief. This is the only appropriate and satisfactory response for the

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Christian to have. It's not that we shouldn't or don't do the forensic diligence that scientists and investigators are pursuing.

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That's fine. And it's something that should be done, especially if there's wrongdoing behind it all, or if there's something that can be corrected to prevent something like this in the future.

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But that's not enough. That's not enough. We have to go deeper than that.

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It would be like Joshua, after the defeat of AI, pulling together an investigative task force trying to figure out what went wrong and then determining that, well, our forces were too small.

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We just need to send more men. Or we underestimated the enemy's capabilities and we have to do a little better job of reconnaissance from here on out.

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Or we should have used a more subtle strategy and so on and so forth. So if Joshua had taken that approach, it would not have been sufficient.

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So what was Joshua's first response? Well, we're given an answer in chapter 7, verse 6, where we read,

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Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the

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Lord until evening, he and the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads.

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What was his first response? His first response wasn't anger. His first response wasn't, you know, we got to figure out how to get this, do this right.

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His first response was a response of humility, of humility. Humility instead of a cocky kind of self -reliance that says, you know what, we can figure this out.

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You know, we can beat this thing. We beat Jericho. We can beat AI. We can come up with a strategy.

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We can find a solution. We will achieve victory.

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Now, I understand the need for confidence in times of crisis, but there's a difference between confidence and cockiness, and there's a question of where that confidence is placed, you see.

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Joshua will have confidence when all is said and done, but his confidence isn't going to come from himself.

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It's not going to come from his army. It's going to come from the Lord, and that confidence is going to come out of this starting place of humility.

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He expresses humility. His first response is humility instead of a kind of a cocky self -reliance, and it's a humility that shows itself in an utter dependence upon the

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Lord, his God. Listen, he fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the

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Lord. The point is, he knew where to turn. It wasn't inward.

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It wasn't outward to his army. His turn was upward.

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His turn was to face the Lord. He fell on his face before the ark of the

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Lord. He knew to go to the place of the

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Lord's presence. This is where we start, the place of humility, the place of the

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Lord's presence, and not just a place, but the person who dwells in that place.

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He knew whom to look to for answers, the Lord. He knew whom to look to for help, the

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Lord. That's why the first thing he did when he got the report of the defeat at Ai, he and his elders, the leaders of Israel, they tore their clothes in an act of grief, and they fell to the earth on their face before the ark of the

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Lord until evening, waiting upon him, utterly dependent upon him for answers, for help.

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So, the starting point is humility, humility.

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Well, tomorrow we'll continue exploring this. There's so much more that we can gain, so much more profit to be had from this episode in Joshua's life,

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Israel's history, an episode of defeat. Well, let's ask the

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Lord to give us a good day today as we continue to humbly walk with him. Our Father and our

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God, we thank you for the instruction of your word, the guidance, the counsel that can give to us even in times of crisis.

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May we heed your wisdom. May we humble ourselves before you.

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And this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, I trust you'll have a good

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Tuesday, looking like it's warmer today and nicer weather, and hopefully until storms come in.

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You have a good day. Get outside and enjoy some of that vitamin D, that liquid sunshine, and just enjoy the day.