Daily Devotional – May 8, 2020

your home, your household, your family, this is the end of the seventh week of lockdown.

It's almost behind us, seven weeks of this. I kind of joked yesterday that you're supposed to stay home except for essentials like, you know, getting your dog groomed.

And then what was on the front page of our paper this morning? A photo of an unmasked dog groomer giving a pup a haircut.

Well maybe if I started barking I might be able to get one too, you think? How would that work?

I don't know. You know, this no haircut thing is kind of nostalgic for me because my locks haven't been this long since I think

I was a senior in high school, maybe just after my senior year of high school. You know, if it gets any longer

I'm going to have to change my social class. In my high school,

I don't know about yours, but I went to school in the mid -70s and in my high school there were like five social classes.

About 20 percent of the kids made up the rah -rah class. They were the athletes, the cheerleaders, and so forth.

About five percent made up the greaser class. These were the the tough guys, you know, they looked like James Dean.

And then about 15 percent made up the geek class, the studious all -american kids.

And then probably in those days, 40 percent made up the the freak class.

They had the hippie look, you know, the long hair, smoke, and all that kind of stuff. And then there were the outliers.

About 20 percent of us who were not really in any of the above. And I was in that outlier class.

But I'll tell you what, another three weeks of, you know, not being able to go to the barber or whatever like that,

I may have to move to the freak or the greaser group.

Just kind of depends on how I fix my gray locks. Oh well.

Yesterday I was looking at Psalm 112. Shared some thoughts with that.

It's a psalm that was written in the midst of a significant cultural crisis. Don't know exactly what it was, just that the psalmist describes it as being a time of darkness in verse four.

And even though that crisis isn't or wasn't exactly what ours is like in this day, there are some promises in that psalm that I think carry over to us that we can claim in this panacdemic in which we're living.

But verse first tells us that the blessings that he's going to talk about later are limited to those who fear the

Lord and delight in his word. Verse one says, Blessed or happy is the person, the man who fears the

Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments. And we pointed out those two things go together, fearing the

Lord and delighting in his word. So the person blessed in the panacdemic is going to be a person who fears the

Lord and delights in his word. Well, what then are the blessings? Mentioned yesterday the blessing of illumination.

Verse four says, Light dawns in darkness for the upright.

Light dawns in darkness for the upright. And pointed out there's all kinds of darkness going on right now, and you know it, and so do

I. But there's also the promise of light. Light dawns. I want to camp on this for a minute because as we meditate on that light that is dawning, that will dawn, that we can find some real encouragement.

As a child of God, a follower of Jesus Christ, what light do you already have that can help you navigate this panacdemic?

Let me suggest three rays of light. The first ray is this. Evil people exist at all levels of society.

You hear about people say things like, well, I just believe there's good in everybody. I believe everybody can do good, but we must not allow that idea, that notion, to blind us to the truth, to the ray of light that is that evil people exist at all levels of society.

Well, just look what came out in the news yesterday in the headlines. Three huge headlines. Number one, top officials in this country,

I mean in the intelligence agencies, the FBI, the CIA, the House of Representatives, the

Justice Department, and likely even the White House, all conspired together to destroy a three -star general,

Michael Flynn, for the express purpose of bringing down the president -elect of the

United States. And they did this, shattering countless lives in the process.

Sheer, unmitigated evil at the toppest levels of our society.

A second example, the federal prosecutor in New Jersey was, he got the back of the hand slapped on his face by the

Supreme Court yesterday, unanimously throwing out the conviction of these individuals in what they called the bridge gate.

And that prosecutor's whole attempt was to sabotage Chris Christie's presidential election campaign and succeeded in doing so, but they didn't get away with it.

And then the third headline was this father -son duo, is it in Georgia? I think it was, and the elder of the two was a cop, a former cop, and they executed a young black guy who's just jogging along the road, and they did it like they were hunting a deer or a rabbit.

And it's a murder that would likely have been swept under the rug, except for the fact a video surfaced that caught the whole thing, and then they were finally arrested for it all.

Now, here's the point. My point is not to just, you know, belabor bad news and evil and stuff like that, but this is a ray of light.

This truth can help us in this panacdemic, that evil people exist at all levels of society.

So don't be surprised when that ray of light exposes darkness in all kinds of places in the days ahead.

The second ray of light is that God rules over everything.

God rules over everything. And this truth is evident in the very first attempt on mankind's part to defy

God by uniting together at the Tower of Babel. You remember that incident. Men got together, people got together, and they said, let's make a name for ourselves.

Let's build a tower to reach to heaven by ourselves. We can leave God out of the picture. We don't need

God. Well, God saw it. He wasn't blind to it.

It was like, oh, this caught me off guard. No, God saw it. He frustrated it, and he scattered humanity throughout the globe.

And it's been that way ever since, even though man keeps trying to reenact the

Tower of Babel. But listen to Psalm 2, verses 1 through 9. Why do the heathen rage in the people's plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, that is

Jesus, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

We don't need God. We don't want to have God. But he who sits in the heaven laughs. The Lord holds them in derision.

Who do they think they are? Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me,

I have set my king in my holy hill. I will tell the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son.

Today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Now what does that psalm tell you? It tells you that God rules over everything.

People, rulers and nations or whatever can do whatever they want to try to do, thinking that they are autonomous and independent of God altogether, and God's watching the whole thing and he's got it all under control.

Here's a third ray of light. Ultimately, truth prevails and God wins.

Now we see this play out sometimes in front of us, in front of our eyes, Attorney General throwing out that Michael Flynn thing, those charges and dismissing that altogether.

And the wickedness that was intended there ends up overthrowing the wicked.

And more of that is going to be coming in the days ahead. But that's just a little bit.

That's just temporal. That's only a piece of the picture. This is going to occur on a total basis eventually.

This is a ray of light that you have that ultimately truth prevails and God wins.

In Revelation chapter 6, the last book of the Bible, those who were martyred for the faith cry out and they pray to the

Lord, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?

And their answer ultimately comes in chapter 19, verse 11 and following, where John writes,

I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called faithful and true.

And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron.

He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God, the almighty. On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written,

King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Who is this? The one who is called faithful and true.

Ultimately, truth prevails and God wins. So, fellow believer, child of God, rejoice in the blessing of illumination.

You have these three and many, many more rays of light that are piercing the darkness.

Sin exists at every level of society, but it's not without God's control. It's not apart from God's control.

And ultimately, truth prevails and he wins. Rejoice in that today.

All right, let's have a word of prayer and ask our God to keep these things in our minds before our eyes in these days.

Our Father in heaven, I pray that we would allow the light to shine in our own minds and hearts.

And may that light penetrate the darkness that is all around us. This we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, well, have a wonderful weekend. And I hope if you can join us on Sunday morning at 10 .30

for our morning worship service. Be speaking on a

Mother's Day theme that will be applicable to all of us. So I hope to see you then. All right, have a good day.