Daily Devotional – May 6, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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cabin fever. How's your temperature today? How you doing? Well, there's a good remedy for cabin fever.

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You know what that is? You can bring the temperature down very quickly just by going outside.

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Get outside. The sun has come back out today in the Sauk Valley. You need that vitamin

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D and the sun is good for you. So get out and enjoy it today.

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Well, speaking of getting out, when was the last time you were able to enjoy a dinner out somewhere?

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I was trying to remember that the other day. Excuse me. Seems like it was, I don't know, sometime back in early

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March, maybe at Candlelight. When was the last time you were out?

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Well, one thing is for sure. If I would have known then that it was the last time that I was going to be in a restaurant for until who knows when,

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I surely would have ordered one of June's desserts. Well, you know, some years stand out as being particularly significant, particularly memorable.

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So for example, 1929 is known as the year of the stock market crash.

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1941, the year of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the

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United States into World War II. 1963, the year that John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy, was assassinated.

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1969, the year that we landed the first men on the moon.

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How about the year 2020? What will this year go down as?

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I think it'll be marked as the year of fear, don't you? The fear of getting

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COVID -19, the fear of having it and not knowing it and infecting and maybe killing someone, the fear of job loss, the fear of economic collapse, the fear of bankruptcy, the fear of coercive government control.

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If all of that isn't enough, then you hear reports about the locust plague that is driving across Asia, Africa and into Asia.

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And so there's the fear of starvation from this locust plague and then the fear of food shortages in our own country from supply and demand, you know, not being able to get animals to market and so forth.

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Wendy's is out of beef in 20 % of their restaurants.

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And then murder hornets have now arrived in the United States. Have you seen these things?

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I mean, they're like two inches, you know, two inches. And I guess the biggest fear is them murdering the honey population.

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I don't know, maybe they would like to get one trapped in their face. I don't know. That certainly wouldn't appeal to me in the least bit.

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Well, look, all humorous, global spirit of fear hits right home in the

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Sauk Valley in Illinois. I'm not sure if you saw the governor's press conference yesterday or read about it in the paper this morning, but his fear -based plan for reopening the state, essentially, in effect, it denies churches of greater than 50 from being able to gather again until everything in the state returns to normal, till the last phase of getting out of this supposed pandemic, everything returns to normal.

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And the way he defines being able to have everything returned to normal is that there is a vaccine available for everyone in the state.

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Now, the best case scenario that I have seen for that is at the end of the year.

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And from what I've read about the best case scenario for an arrival of a vaccine by the end of the year, it's certainly one that I wouldn't even touch.

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I wouldn't accept. But let that sink in. Let that sink in.

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This fear -based plan for opening up the state prohibits churches from gathering until the end of the year at the very earliest.

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Tony McCombie, our state local representative, also posted the governor's fear -based edict regarding the allowing of boating and fishing, and she completely opposes it.

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And why? Well, for one thing, his plan, his edict says that no boat, regardless of size, can have more than two people on board.

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No exceptions, it says. No boat, no matter how big it is, can have more than two people on board.

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No exceptions. All right, so get this. My family of four can live together in the same house.

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We can get in the same car together and ride to the marina together, but two of us have to stay behind on the boat dock while the other two go for a boat ride.

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That's kind of a head -scratcher. Well, there's one thing that we as believers must constantly do in these days, and that's go back to the

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Bible and ask, how does God want me to live?

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How does God want me to live? When it comes to the 2020 fear frenzy, let me encourage you to remember what

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Paul told Timothy. Paul told Timothy, God gave us a spirit of fear, or gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self -control.

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And he also wants us to look beyond 2020, beyond our own lifetime for that matter.

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So Proverbs 13 .22 says, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

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Now, normally when we hear that verse, we right away think about money, don't we? Thinking of saving up an

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IRA or saving, you know, having a life insurance policy or something. So we have some kind of financial inheritance to leave to our children and to our grandchildren.

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Well, honestly, that's pretty American. The inheritance that we leave behind really we have to think of as our legacy.

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It may involve wealth and property, but that's really kind of secondary.

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I mean, we've all heard those stories, those horror stories about a great inheritance, financial inheritance that's left and it ends up destroying the heirs.

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No, our inheritance is our legacy and our legacy is preeminently the way we live.

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It's a way of life that serves as an example for the generations to come.

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One that our children's children can look back upon and praise and emulate, they can follow.

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And this week's pastor's page I posted this morning on my personal website.

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You can check it out if you want to, brianbice .com. But I wrote about an

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Iroquois maxim that actually reflects the wisdom of Proverbs 13 .22.

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Remember Proverbs 13 .22 says, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

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The Iroquois maxim asks the question, what would be good for the next seven generations?

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What would be good for the next seven generations? This seems to have been the driving principle on both sides of the

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American Civil War 150 or so years, 60 years ago. Now they answered the question differently, each side.

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But the thing of it is, they asked the question and they fought courageously for the vision, for their answer to that question.

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It also seems to have been the driving principle behind the greatest generation as Tom Brokaw defined or described our grandparents that endured those years of the

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Great Depression, at least my grandparents and maybe some of you listening, your great grandparents, but it describes how they endured the years of the

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Great Depression and World War II. What did they think was good for seven generations to follow?

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Virtues, virtues like valor and courage and fearlessness and self -sacrifice, the willingness to die for freedom from tyranny for their children's and for their children's children's sake.

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That fearless spirit that confronted tyranny in World War II was powerfully and courageously expressed,

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I think, by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England during World War II.

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On November 14th, 1940, he had gotten word in his secret box of secret communiques that an imminent massive

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Nazi airstrike was heading for London that night. And Eric Larson describes

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Churchill's response. He wrote, Churchill went to the cabinet war rooms to await the raid.

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He did many things well, but waiting was not one of them. Growing impatient, he climbed to the roof of the nearby

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Air Ministry building to watch for the attack. Wait a minute.

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Did you hear that? He climbed to the roof of a building to watch for the attack.

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Yes, you heard that right. He did that numerous times, standing on a rooftop as bombs dropped from the sky and they exploded all around, cheering as British anti -aircraft guns found their target, as if he was shaking his fist in the face of the

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Nazi tyranny and declaring, not on my watch. Some might call that foolhardy, but here's the thing.

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80 years later, we're admiring that man's fearlessness, his courage, his hatred of tyranny, his love of freedom for his nation and for his children's children.

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So here's my question. In our handling of this panic, panic, pandemic, what will it mean seven generations from now?

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What kind of legacy are we leaving behind? What kind of precedents are we setting?

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By our example, are we training our children's children to be courageous or cowardly, to be full of fear or full of faith?

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Let's ponder that question and let's leave an inheritance that is worthwhile for our children's children.

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Heavenly Father, give us wisdom, give us courage, free us from the tyranny of fear.

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We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your

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Tuesday, or no, I guess this is Wednesday, isn't it? Have a good Wednesday. And if you can meet tonight at seven o 'clock, share together some thoughts from God's word and have a time of prayer for our evening prayer or midweek prayer meeting.