FBC Morning Light – November 4, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Friday morning to you, coming to another weekend. I hope you're looking forward to a good weekend and gathering with God's people on the

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Lord's Day. Well, you know, a couple days after the Lord's Day is

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Election Day here in the United States, and I hope you're going to go to the polls and make your choice for candidates and issues that may be on the ballot and so forth.

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I hope you take that opportunity as a responsibility, as a person living in the kind of democratic republic in which we live, that we have that freedom and we have that opportunity to vote.

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But the reason I bring that up is because of one of these verses that we read today in Proverbs chapter 28, the last verse of the chapter.

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It says this, when the wicked arise men hide themselves, but when they perish the righteous increase.

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Now that verse could be applied in a lot of different venues. I think, for example, of the...I

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think that the difficulty and the challenges of people living in some of the

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African countries and territories in different countries, where it's ruled by these rogue groups that are bent on violence, and they come into a village and they just start opening fire and shooting people, because they want the young boys to become a part of their militia, and they want the girls to rape and pillage and so forth, and it's just that kind of rampant wickedness.

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It's just awful, and what is the impact of it? Men hide themselves. People do everything they can to stay off the radar screen of the wicked, and you see some of that in Mexico as well, don't you?

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With the cartels and the power that they hold in certain villages and so forth. It's just an awful situation.

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But we could expand that to even the political climate in a nation like ours, when the leadership that has come to the fore is comprised of a bunch of wicked people.

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They're corrupt in their thinking, they're corrupt in their morals, they're corrupt in how they conduct themselves in their political office, like using it for self -aggrandizement and so forth.

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When wicked people rise to levels of leadership and power in a nation like ours, what does it do to the common person, like you and me?

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Well, it creates a certain degree of fear, because what are they going to do?

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What's going to be the impact? I mean, what's going to be the impact upon our nation for the way things are right now?

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You see, we don't know. We don't know. Some of you are tied very tightly with your retirement program and so forth, with the stock market, and you don't have any choice in the matter.

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Yeah, you got the Social Security thing, but you know as well as anybody that ain't gonna be sufficient, and for a number of years after you've retired, there's got to be more to it than that.

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Your retirement is tied up into the stock market, but this year you've lost thousands and thousands of dollars just in that one thing, just in that one area.

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Arguably, a lot of that is due to the leadership that is taking place in our nation's capital these days, and that leadership,

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I would also argue, has led our country in the wrong direction.

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Now, that's my opinion, and I don't want to be real super political on this kind of a venue, but the point is you well know that there's the promotion of all kinds of evil on the part of this administration and some of state administrations.

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For example, the state of Illinois, Governor Pritzker, wants to expand abortion and make it available to people in other states where restrictions on abortion are tighter, and he wants to open up even more possibilities for abortion.

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The murder of pre -born children, that's just plain wicked. So anyway, getting back to our verse, when the wicked arise, men hide themselves.

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They want to stay below the radar screen, don't want to call any attention to themselves, lest the wicked who are in power do something hurtful, harmful to them.

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But the last part of the verse brings us back to next Tuesday. When they perish, the righteous increase.

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You remove the wicked, get them out of the office, get them out of control of a village or whatever, then that gives the opportunity for righteous people, those who do right, to come to the fore and change things for the good.

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The righteous here, that speak of the righteous increase, doesn't necessarily mean what the

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New Testament concept of the righteous would be. The New Testament righteous people are those who are in Christ Jesus, and they have been declared righteous by the imputed righteousness of Christ, and so on and so forth.

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The Old Testament concept of being righteous means simply you're doing the right thing. You're behaving appropriately, behaving rightly, according to the principles and the guidelines of God.

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And so we can pray for that, and we can vote for that in the coming election here.

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We can vote for individuals who will displace the wicked and give opportunity for those who want to do right and have some morals about them and some principles about them to flourish.

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We can pray for that, and we can vote for that. I hope we'll take advantage of our privilege in this country of helping to displace the wicked with those who are more in line with our principles and our guidelines for righteous living.

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Well, let's pray. Father, we do pray that you would be merciful to us as a nation, and that those who are in positions of power and authority who are wicked men, wicked women, that you would displace them, and may there be a great cleansing of that even this coming

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Tuesday. That would be the desire of our heart. We submit all of this to you, Father. The nations of this world are under your control, and we submit ourselves and our desires to your plan and purposes, even for our nation.

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But we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, again, have a great weekend, and if possible, we'd love to see you on the