FBC Daily Devotional – November 19, 2021

Well, a good Friday to you. We're at the end of another work week and looking forward to the weekend, looking forward to gathering together in God's house on Sunday.

This, of course, is the Sunday before Thanksgiving, so we're looking forward to,

I trust, thanking our God on this coming Lord's Day. At our church, we're going to focus,

I think, more of that Thanksgiving theme on Tuesday, next

Tuesday evening, next Tuesday at 7 o 'clock, we'll be having a Thanksgiving praise service at the church, and at just a good time, we sing some of those traditional

Thanksgiving hymns and have a time of sharing, giving thanks, you know, as testimony to the

Lord, and then a time in the Word with a message from God's Word. So we'll be really focusing on the

Thanksgiving theme on Tuesday night, but anytime you gather together at God's house is a good time for Thanksgiving and praise, and I think the worship of the

Lord on the Lord's Day can set the tone for how we celebrate a holiday like the coming

Thanksgiving. So I hope you can get to church on this coming Lord's Day. Well today, we're continuing to read in Acts chapter 7.

This chapter is a very lengthy chapter. It's that message of Stephen before the

Sanhedrin, those who are eventually going to kill him, and we know that that's coming. I mean, if you know

Acts 7, you know that that's coming, you know his fate is right around the corner here.

And so as I'm reading through this message of Stephen, I'm trying to place myself in the scene as, you know,

Stephen's standing there, and he's recounting Israel's history to the audience who are all very well aware of that history.

They're Pharisees, Sadducees, they know Israel's history, and so they're listening to him, and I'm looking at the faces of those who are listening.

And they're interested, they're nodding their heads, yeah, yeah, as Stephen goes through this whole history of Israel, you know, the promises made to Abraham, yeah, yeah, and so on and so forth.

And I'm imagining that they are not having a problem at all hearing the high points of their history, the incredible ways the

Lord worked in delivering his people from Egypt and so on and so forth. The great people in the nation's history whom the

Lord used throughout their history, you know, Abraham and Moses and David and so on and so forth, these great characters in their history who played a prominent role.

And they're hearing the various ways in which God has delivered his people or protected his people from their enemies, and it's probably not difficult even for them to hear some of the failures of those in the past.

Well, yeah, okay, you know, there's some bad guys, there's some guys who really blew it, and they can get that, okay, yeah, yeah.

But how are they going to respond when Stephen brings it all home and makes pointed application to them?

Well, we know how they're gonna respond. We know what's coming. But what

I'm wanting us to ponder today is how about me?

How do I respond? You know, are you gonna go to church Sunday? Okay, so you go to church

Sunday morning, and you're listening to the message from God's Word, and you know, there's all this stuff that's being said, you know, the passage is read, the passage is expounded, it's opened up, and you're learning about this, and you're learning about that, and you're going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But then how do you handle it? How do you respond when all of a sudden the preacher says, but what about this?

And he takes that passage, and he doesn't speak directly to you, because he's speaking to the congregation, but it feels like he's pointing a finger right at you, and he's got his eyes set right on the thing that you're doing wrong or whatever, you know, your bad attitude, your sinful behavior or whatever, and he points that out.

How do you respond then? See, do you shake your head?

Yeah, you know, you're right, you're right, you know, kind of bow your head a little bit in humble contrition as a step toward repentance and forgiveness, or do you respond like Stephen's audience is about to respond?

Do you get angry down inside? Do you kind of seethe? Because how, you know, how dare him say that, you know, kind of thing?

Is that, is that how you respond? So I think we need to be very, very careful when we are, when we're confronted with God's Word, that we don't just appreciate the things that we like and dismiss the things we don't.

I think we have to be careful and humble enough to admit it when we're wrong, to confess our sins, that he might be faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Our response when we're convicted should be, yes, a response of contrition, but also gratitude.

Thank you, Father. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who has not given up on me, who brings to my mind sins of which

I need to repent, and I need to confess to you, and I need to forsake.

This helps me grow in my Christ -like, my Christ -like walk.

Thank you for this. That's the kind of attitude we need to develop.

I hope we shall. I hope we shall. Let's pray.

Father, all of us can be convicted by that very thought, because sometimes we don't like it when our wrongs are pointed out and the finger is pointing at us, so to speak.

It doesn't feel good, but we need to appreciate it because your

Spirit has been given to convict us of sin, that we might turn from it, and we might be drawn closer to and become more like our

Lord Jesus Christ. May we do so. We pray in Jesus' name.

All right. Well, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and especially can get in God's house on the