FBC Daily Devotional – March 26, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, good Friday to you, last day of our work week, and looking forward to the weekend. I'm looking forward to Palm Sunday and our gathering together to worship the

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King as he is acknowledged on that first Palm Sunday years ago.

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At least for a short time, he was acknowledged as the one coming as the son of David to rule on David's throne.

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Well, we'll be celebrating that on the Lord's Day, but for today, we're back in the book of Exodus in chapter 34, was where we were reading in our scripture reading for today.

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This of course follows after the whole golden calf incident, so Moses had to confront the people and many of the people perished because of that sin of the golden calf, and the

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Lord had told Moses, you know, I'm going to wipe them all out, I'm going to make of you a great nation. Moses says, no, no, no,

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I want you to be glorified. And then Moses asked for something very interesting at the end of chapter 33.

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He asked the Lord to show him his glory. He asked, Moses asked the

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Lord, show me your glory. And the Lord replied and said, nobody can see my face and live, but I'll give you a glimpse of my glory.

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So he put him in a cleft of the rock, if you will, kind of covered him up so he couldn't see the fullness of the glory of God as he passed by.

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But then the Lord revealed what was glorious about him in chapter 34, and this

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I think is really astounding, especially in the context of what was just experienced with the whole golden calf incident, that idolatry and everything else.

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And this is the Lord's, really, one of his most encouraging expressions of self -revelation, self -disclosure to his people, affirming some things about himself that if they will believe it will be most encouraging, and I think if we believe it will be most encouraging.

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So what does the Lord tell us about himself? What has he revealed about himself? This is what he says in chapter 34, in verse 6, it says, the

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Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed the

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LORD. And that name, LORD, is in all caps, if you have noticed that in your

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Bible, which means it's his personal name, Yahweh. So it could read it this way,

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Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

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He'll go on and we'll say more about that in a moment. But man, what a list. What a list of things about this

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God who had just recently severely punished many of the people of Israel because of that golden calf sin.

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He says even though he's done that, he says this is what I'm like. So when you hear what he says he's like, you have to realize the people didn't get nearly what they deserved.

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So what does God say he's like? He says, I am merciful. I am merciful.

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I don't give you all that you deserve. Then he says, I am gracious.

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I give you what you don't deserve. I give you blessings that you don't deserve.

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He's merciful. He's gracious. He says he is slow to anger.

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He's slow to anger. Think about that quality in comparison to maybe our own responses to things that aggravate us and raise our ire.

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There's a lot of stuff that can be going on in the political world and the morality and all the rest of that stuff in our world today.

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We see this. We hear the news report. We get the news feed, whatever. Right away we can feel our blood boiling and we want to just lash out.

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Here's the thing, the Lord sees that and so much more, way much more.

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He sees everything of every human heart and yet he says, I'm slow to anger.

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He's slow to anger and he's abounding in steadfast love. Abounding in steadfast love.

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All right, now what is that steadfast love? Steadfast love is a

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Hebrew word. It shows up all over the place in the Old Testament. It's the word hesed and it has to do with the keeping of the covenant.

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Keeping of the covenant. It's a faithful keeping of one's covenant promises.

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The Lord says, I am abounding in steadfast, I like to use the word loyalty.

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Steadfast loyalty to the covenant that I have made.

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In other words, the Lord is saying there, I will never go back on my word. Never go back and break my covenant with my people.

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That leads him to say he's faithful. So steadfast loyalty to his covenant.

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He's also faithful to his people, faithful to his covenant, faithful to his word.

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And then he says he's forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

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And I won't elaborate on that here, but I will mention that those three words for sin correspond to the three chambers of our heart and the sin of each of those chambers.

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Iniquity has to do with the uncleanness of our sin, transgression has to do with the rebellion of our sin, and the word sin itself has to do with falling short of what we know

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God wants and what God demands. And the Lord says, even though you're unclean, and you rebel, and you fall short of what

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I demand, I will forgive that. I will forgive that. But then he also goes on to warn against being presumptuous and warns against an unrepentant heart because he says, as he continues,

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I will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

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In other words, as long as people are unrepentant and they will not acknowledge their sin and turn from their sin,

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I will visit that iniquity upon them. I will not clear unrepentant sin.

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That's what he's saying. Don't be presumptuous, and when you're confronted with and convicted of sin, turn from it, repent of it, confess it, deal with it, and God is very gracious and merciful and he will forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin.

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What encouraging promises to God's people. I hope that when you hear this succinct self -disclosure of God telling us what he is like, that gives you a profound appreciation and love for and fear of.

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By that I mean a holy reverence and joyful reverence of this

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God who has sent to us his Son Jesus to save us from our sins.

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What a wonderful God. And so, our Father and our God, we do thank you that you are a merciful, gracious God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, covenant loyalty, that you are a faithful God, that you are a

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God who forgives. Thank you for that forgiveness, which we all so desperately need.

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And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your

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Friday, and again, this coming Lord's Day, if you can join us, we'll be having our regular

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Sunday school hour at Bible study time at 9 .30, the morning service at 10 .30,

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and we have lunchtime together after the morning service, and then an afternoon service at 1 o 'clock.

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And you're welcome to join. If you can't make it, we do live stream the Bible study, the adult

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Bible study time, as well as the morning service, and you can catch that on the church homepage website, as well as YouTube, so join us if you can.