FBC Daily Devotional – January 6, 2022

Well, good Thursday morning to you. Hope your day is going well so far today. I just wanted to share a few thoughts from Acts chapters 22 and 3 and this is the account where the Apostle Paul has wrapped up his address to those who are expressing some hostility toward him out in the crowd, out in the square, the public square.

And remember how that happened. You know, there's this almost like a mob scene and people getting all upset and everything and at Paul and they're practically ready to kill him until the Roman soldiers step in and rescue Paul from them.

And as Paul is being taken into safekeeping, he says, let me talk to the people. So he turns around and he addresses the people and he speaks in their language, of course, and he's communicating his testimony.

We looked the other day at that testimony itself. That was a very dramatic testimony. He shared it with this crowd and they listened. They listened very intently. They knew this man. They knew that he was a very devout Jew, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and they knew he had changed.

They knew he'd become a Christian. So they listened to his testimony and they listened with great interest. They didn't get mad at his testimony. But after he shared his testimony, he shared how he had seen this vision of the Lord, from the Lord, and in the course of that vision, the Lord gave to Paul.

His.

Mission, his mission, what he's to do with his life. And as he's starting to tell that vision to the crowd, they're listening, they're accepting that until he gets to this point where he says, where the Lord says to Paul, He, the Lord said to me, Depart, for I will send you away from here to the Gentiles.

Now, just to make sure we understand here, the Gentiles are anybody who's not a Jew. So, you know, the Jews were, you know, they just had this thing about the Gentiles, you know, and they were fine with what Paul said up until he claims that God told him, I'm going to send you away from here to the Gentiles.

I'm going to send you to take the message of the gospel, the good news of the gospel, to turn people from darkness to light. I'm going to send you with that message to the Gentiles. That's when things got out of hand, at that point.

It says in verse 22, They listened to him until this word, the word Gentiles, and then they raised their voices and they said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live. Then as they cried out and tore off their clothes and they threw dust into the air.

So, man, isn't it amazing how human prejudices can be aroused and once they are, how hostile someone can be? Here, at the slightest reference to the hated person or group, the Gentiles, the idea that a Jew would be sent on a divine mission for the benefit of the Gentiles.

That just, that sent them over the edge. They couldn't take that. Not the Gentiles, those despised, despicable, dirty, filthy non-Jewish people. That this person, Paul, he ought to die for saying such a thing as that.

May the Lord deliver us from such hatred toward others, whoever they may be, whoever they may be. The sad thing is that these people who were calling for the death of Paul, the Jewish people and the leadership of the Jewish people, they didn't realize that one of the tasks, one of the responsibilities of the nation of Israel as a whole was to be a lighthouse to the Gentiles.

What was to draw people, unconverted, non-Jewish people, to draw people to the one true God, that they might be converted from their paganism. To follow, to believe and follow and trust in the one true God.

Their God, they had totally lost sight of that mission. Totally lost it completely. Well, God gave it clearly to Paul and he's determined to, he's determined to pursue that mission. That is reprehensible to the prejudiced.

The Gentile Mission and Human Prejudice

May the Lord deliver us from that kind of prejudicial spirit. And then I also wanted to just point out a couple things in Psalm 2. We read Psalm 2 today in our reading and you know, it struck me how fitting that Psalm is for our day and age.

Why do the nation's rage and the people's imagine a vain empty thing against our God? Mankind as a whole, as a whole,.

Loathes.

Submitting to divine authority. Do not want to do it. But that's especially loathsome when it becomes national policy. The kings of the earth rage. The kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord and against his anointed one, the Lord Jesus Christ.

When top governmental officials do this and when the policy of the land is established that is in defiance of God's Word and what God has to say, this is loathsome. This is grievous when such a state exists and such a state exists.

It's becoming more and more.

The.

Course of action in our own nation. Not just freedoms are being eroded, but but biblical principle is being completely discarded. The laws of the laws of God are despised. You know, so you have abortion rights and you have you have same-sex marriages and all of that kind of stuff that is clearly an abomination.

I mean his word says it is and yet we don't want to hear it. We don't want to hear it. When one of the top governmental officials says we don't have any use for God's will in this place, speaking of in this official governmental setting, no place for it.

Well, when that's the case, you know, how does God respond to that? Psalm 2 tells us he laughs. He laughs. These people think that they're so powerful. They think there's something else. They think they're so great.

They think that just at their whim or their will they can eradicate me from their nation. Oh little do we know. Little do we understand and comprehend that the sovereign God is sovereign over our nation, over every leader in position in the state and federal level, every one of them.

They may cast him off. They may not want to have anything to do with him, but God has them. In the palm of his hand, turning their heart where he wills for the good or sometimes the ill of the people of the land.

Not so bold and brazen when they're standing before God. He says kiss the Son, bow before the Son, respect and reverence the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That day will come. That day will come. All right.

Prayer for Deliverance and National Repentance

So Psalm 2, a fitting psalm for our day and our age, our nation and would God that our national leaders would bow the knee before the King, King Jesus and honor him and his word. Well, Father, I pray today.

I pray that you would deliver us who claim to be your people from the kind of hatred of prejudicial thinking that despises others just because of who they are. I pray that we would see them as instead of souls who need the Savior.

Father, I pray for our nation today. I pray for our leaders. I pray that they would make good decisions that reflect the principles of your word and go in an opposite direction of where our nation is headed in these last several years.

This we pray in Jesus name. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Thursday and I trust God will bless you in it.

Good day.