FBC Daily Devotional – December 9, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday morning to you. We're in Psalm 138 this morning for our thoughts.

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We also read in Acts chapter 13 again, but I want to bring out three different thoughts from Psalm 138.

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Two of them are found in verse 2, and the first half of verse 2 gives us some wonderful fodder for praise, because here's what it says.

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Verse 2 says, You know, we have a variety of lifestyles and blessings in terms of material things in our lives.

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Some have more, some have less, and that's true in the church. There are some in the church who have relatively little, and they're content with that.

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And there are some within the church whom God has blessed abundantly, and they have beautiful homes and a lot of possessions and so on and so forth.

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God's blessed them abundantly materially, and thank the Lord for that as well. So there's this great vast difference of things such as that that we can be thankful for.

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But whether you are rich or poor, young or old, if you know Christ as your

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Savior, then you can always thank the

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Lord for these two things, His steadfast love and His faithfulness.

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And the two things really actually go together. His steadfast love, what's it talking about? The Hebrew term that's translated steadfast love is the

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Hebrew word hesed, and it's a word that's full of meaning and implication.

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I like to simplify it in a way that I think helps me understand it best.

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And it's a word, it's a translation of the word that was shared with me even with my

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Hebrew professor in college, and it's stuck with me all these years. The word hesed is talking about God's loyalty,

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His steadfast loyalty to His covenant. And love is behind that, and that's why it's translated your steadfast love.

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But it's His steadfast love that manifests itself in loyalty to His covenant.

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In other words, the covenant that God makes with His own people is not one that He will renege on in any way, shape, or form.

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He will be steadfastly loyal to that covenant. It's like a husband and wife, they get married and they stand at the altar and they pledge to one another that,

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I will be faithful to you till death do us part. And throughout those married years, those couples that are faithful and loyal to that covenant, to be faithful to that partner through the years, through the thick and the thin, the good times and the bad times, the rich times and the poor times, sickness and in health, poverty and wealth, as the vow says, then those couples are marked by hesed, steadfast love, loyalty to their covenant.

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And God, we can be thankful, is always loyal to His covenant that He makes with His people.

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So as people of the new covenant, we can be grateful that we are held in the palm of His hand and no one can ever pluck us out of His hand, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, nothing whatsoever.

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Why? Because God is faithful to His covenant,

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He's true to His covenant. And the second word there in verse two that we can be thankful for is His faithfulness.

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So not only faithful to His covenant, but just faithful to His word, faithful to His people, He's faithful in being who

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He is. He is never other than who He is. He is ever faithful.

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We can be thankful for God's steadfast love and His faithfulness. The other thing in verse two that I wanted to bring out is the end of the verse says, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.

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God is exalted above everything else. His name, that's referring to His character and all that He is,

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His glory and His word. So those two things, He's exalted above all things.

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And what I have encouraged our congregation to do is to look at that, the end of that verse, those two things that God is exalted above all else, and let those be a guide for even how we, shall we say, do church.

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What are our priorities? We want to glorify God and we want to exalt

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His word. We want to be a God -centered, word -oriented church that proclaims

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God's word to the glory of God. The third thing in this psalm that I wanted to bring out is the very last verse.

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And in the last verse of the psalm, the psalmist says this. He says, the

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Lord will fulfill His purposes for me. He will fulfill

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His purpose for me. So if you know Christ as your Savior, you're one of God's children, then one of the things you can confidently affirm is that God's purpose for me will be fulfilled.

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Well, how can I know that? How can I be sure of that? All right, we're going to go right back to verse two again.

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Because after he says, the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me, he says, your steadfast love,

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O Lord, endures forever. Your faithfulness to your covenant endures forever.

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So I can be confident, you who know Christ, you can be confident that God will fulfill His purpose for you, for your life, because of His steadfast love,

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His faithfulness, His loyalty to the covenant that He has made with you in Christ Jesus.

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So these are some wonderful, profound truths in this brief psalm, and let's thank

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God for it. So our Father today, we do thank you for your steadfast love.

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We thank you that those who know Christ as their Savior will ever be confident and secure in that love.

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We thank you for your faithfulness, that you do not change, that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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We thank you for your character, for your glory, and may we strive to bring glory to you in all that we do, in all that we say, in all that we are.

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And we thank you for your word. May it be the guiding light of our lives.

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May our lives be built upon it. May we exalt it, because you do.

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And Father, we thank you that you will fulfill your purposes for your people. So we praise you for these things today, and thank you for them all.

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And we ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your