FBC Daily Devotional – June 25, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Friday to you. Here we are at the end of the first work week of summer of 2021.

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Hope your week has gone well, and you wrap up your work week well, and look forward to the weekend.

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I trust you'll have a good weekend, get some rest and refreshment, get a project or two done, need to do, but don't fill up all the weekend with busy stuff.

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Take time to rest, get some refreshment, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.

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Take advantage of the Lord's Day to gather with God's people, to worship the Lord, to grow in your grace and knowledge of Christ, and be refreshed spiritually.

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Well, yesterday we focused on the part of a verse where Jesus told his disciples, take care how you hear.

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Pay attention to how you hear. Well, today in Deuteronomy chapter 11, there is an

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Old Testament exhortation to take care. It's expressed in the New King James with the words, take heed, and we read it in verse 16.

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Verse 16 of chapter 11 says, take heed to yourselves. It goes on to say, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and you serve other gods and worship them.

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Take care. Take care. Yesterday we needed to take care about how we heard the word every time we have an opportunity to hear it.

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Today we're exhorted to take care of our own hearts, take care of ourselves, take heed, lest we be led astray by and deceived by the enticement of idolatry.

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Now, you may think, well, you know, I get the Old Testament Israelites being concerned about idolatry.

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I mean, they had the shirah poles and they had the statues, the bales, and all the rest of those kinds of things.

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You know, we don't have those things. We don't, idolatry isn't that, isn't quite like that around us, and so we're not really enticed by idols like that.

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No, we're not. We're not. But we're pretty foolish if we don't, if we don't realize that we're given to idolatry as well.

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The New Testament exhortation that Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 10, I think it is where he tells us to flee from idolatry.

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We need to take, we need to take that to heart and realize that even though we don't have statues to bow down to, there are idols that we can bow down to.

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By that, I mean, and by an idol, I mean anything or anyone that promises something desirable or essential for my well -being, my happiness in life outside of that which

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God has established, the parameter of worship and serving God. In other words, you know, the

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Lord has promised to supply all of my need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. The Lord is the source of all my blessing and my happiness.

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We're told that happy, in the first Psalm, happy is the one who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scornful.

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You know, the Lord has shown us where happiness lies and it lies in his word and in the conformity of our life to his word.

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The problem with idolatry is an idol comes along and entices us and says, you need to do this, you need to come after this, you need to grab this pleasure, or you need to grab that thing, and then you'll find true happiness.

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Then you'll really know joy and pleasure and all the rest of those kinds of things.

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So the enticement of idolatry is that promise of something desirable by something or someone other than the

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Lord's blessing that will give me fulfillment. And I need to take care lest I'm deceived by and enticed by those idols.

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Well, how do I do that? What does that mean, to take care? Well, I think, first of all, it means being alert, being alert, being alert to what's going on in my own heart and my own mind.

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That is, I need to be alert to the desires that are going on inside of me.

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I need to be alert to the thoughts that I'm having and the thought processes that I'm going through.

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Am I in the middle of a thought process that is trying to justify the doing of something or the pursuing of something that the

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Lord says don't do, don't go there? See, I need to be alert to that. I need to be taking heed to my own heart, to what's going on in my desires and in my thoughts.

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I also need to take care by being savvy to the deception of idolatry.

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And the way I can be savvy to the deception of idolatry is by being informed of God's will.

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You know, what does God command? What are God's precepts?

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What are those things? I take care by being informed of those things, but I also take care by being convinced that He's right, that God is right, that God's will is the best thing for my life, that God's commands are good for me, that God's precepts are wholesome and worthwhile and necessary for me to follow.

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And then I take care by actually being concerned about my behavior, about what

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I do. And I think also I take care by the preparatory work, the work that needs to happen ahead of time before I'm confronted with the idol and its enticements and its deception.

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I take the preparatory, I do the preparatory work of learning what is

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God like and what does God like? What pleases

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Him? What is He like and what is

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He like and what does He like? You see, I learn of those things and the learning of those things is a preparatory work that helps me recognize the presence of deceptive idolatry and to be savvy to its subtle enticements.

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So let's take care. As the verse says, take care, take heed to yourself, lest your heart be deceived and you turn aside.

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So our Father and our God, I pray that you would help us to want to do the preparatory work of taking care lest we're deceived.

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And I pray that we would know you and know what you are like and know what you desire of us and may we walk accordingly.

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I pray that we would flee from idolatry and this we pray in Jesus' name for His sake.

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Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your Friday and a wonderful weekend and if you can make it to the

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Lord's house to church this Sunday. We meet with Bible study time at 9 30, morning service at 10 30 and then evening service at six o 'clock.

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be a great time of gathering with God's people. Hope you can make it. All right, have a good day. God bless.