FBC Daily Devotional – October 29, 2021

Well, happy Friday to you. Hope your morning has gotten off to a good start today, and you're doing well and Lord's blessing blessed your week thus far. Hope you're looking forward to a good weekend. We gather together on the Lord's Day Be worshiping the Lord together and again back in the book of Judges in the Sunday morning service.

Looking at this character Samson and what a character he is, isn't he? But anyhow, I hope you can join us on the Lord's Day Morning service at 1030 preceded by Adult Sunday school class and we're gonna be wrapping up very quickly here in that adult class this rather lengthy series on holiness the whole subject of sanctification very important subject for us as believers because Well, the Bible tells us this is the will of God for you even your sanctification.

So if it's God's will Then I ought to be pursuing it and I ought to know a little bit about what that means. So that's what we're studying in our adult Sunday school class well today I want to look at both a verse in 2nd Samuel 17 as well as the passage in Proverbs because both of them tie in I think with our current political situation and I'm not meaning for this to be political but The the verses Make have application to government.

So You've seen the polls. How do you think the current presidential administration is doing? Do you think the country is on the right track? What is your? What is your? Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the president United States and so forth?

Do you think the do you think he's making decisions that are leading us? Economically. Socioculturally and so forth in the right direction or in the wrong direction now the reason I start off with that question is because the There's some insight in 2nd Samuel 17 that helps us deal with Government that isn't doing the right thing that isn't following good counsel good advice and so forth.

So listen to what's going on here Absalom the usurping King has He's taken the throne in Jerusalem and he's seeking some advice about you know, what do we do now? Do we go after David pursue him and his army and and just destroy him?

What should we do? And so He calls these two advisors the first a Hithophel. He gives his advice and a Hithophel says you need to go after him. You know, he's vulnerable now we can we can destroy him and done it at a duck and Let's let's go kill.

Let's go kill David. That's Hithophel's advice. And everybody everybody listened to the advice of Hithophel. He was considered to be wise and astute and shrewd and his counsel was always appreciated. Well the other advisor who shy He says that's not a good idea because you know David's a warrior.

His men are warriors. And you know, he's gonna be like, uh, he's gonna be like a Mama bear who's been robbed of her cubs. He's gonna be he's just gonna be antsy and You'd be walking into a slaughter so this I don't think it'd be a good idea to go after David instead let's do this and let's get let's get a massive force of soldiers and then all of a sudden we'll ambush them and so on and so forth and in the end of it Absalom says oh.

And by the way, who shies advice was designed to buy David time. They who shy was actually an ally of David and he's buying David some time so that David can escape. Well Absalom doesn't know that of course, but Absalom comes the conclusion and he says oh who shies advice is better than a Hithophel's this time and Hithophel doesn't like that eventually he actually goes and commits suicide.

But here's the point. I wanted this I wanted to get at. I wanted you to notice. I wanted you to notice especially the last part of verse 14 of 2nd Samuel 17 Absalom's and all the men of Israel said the advice of who shy the archite is better than the advice of a Hithophel for The Lord had purposed to defeat the good advice of a Hithophel.

To the intent that the Lord might bring disaster upon Absalom. Now I read that when I read that I read it.

With.

Fresh in my mind the report that came out from you know, this is hearing with the the National Security Advisor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the general General Milley and so forth and These guys testified that the president was advised not to do certain things and you know related to the pulling out of Afghanistan and.

That you know, we need to we need to adjust what you're planning to do. This isn't gonna work and so forth and they they testified that all these advisors Counseled the president in a particular way and he dismissed their advice and he went ahead and ordered the pull out of Afghanistan the way he the way we ended up pulling out of Afghanistan, which was a disaster a disaster and.

And almost everybody scratching their heads over why in the world did he do this? Why did he do that? Why did they close Bagram airbase? Why did they leave these people behind? Why didn't we have more troops there and you know and on and on you can go detailing all of that terrible decision.

And the way it was decided. Well, here's some perspective to help us understand. Why the president did what he did. The Lord says in here in this particular verse. That he had everybody follow this particular yet.

He had the president follow the advice he got. He had the president ignore the good advice that he received to the end that it might breathe might be the destruction of Absalom or we might read it. Some cow it's going to come back and haunt This man what he's done to all these people.

The death the needless death that has occurred because of that.

Decision.

The people who are living in absolute fear of Being executed by the Taliban some who already have been You know Americans that are trapped behind enemy lines there in Afghanistan and on and on we could go with that horrible debacle of a decision.

Perhaps This is of the Lord to bring about the demise of this man this man. I I believe he's an easy. He's an evil man. He wants to do evil things. He wants to he wants to he wants to broaden Abortion.

He wants to broaden. You know quote-unquote rights for.

For.

Abominable behavior in in our country. He wants to do. He wants to create problems deeper for people. Financially and so on so I think he's an evil man. And and if he had Nothing, but great success in this whole Afghanistan thing He might have a much easier time getting his five trillion dollar Package passed and all that kind of stuff again.

I'm not trying to be too political here. I'm trying to give us a sense of perspective. We look at our government we look at government leaders and we wonder. We scratch our heads sometimes and wonder well, how in the world did they make such terrible decisions.

And this verse Gives us some insight. The Lord is sovereign and He providentially works even in the council chambers of government buildings So that the government officials end up making decisions.

That are.

Designed by the Lord to bring about an end and an ultimate end one We may not see yet. We may not like it. But it's in the Lord's hands and I think that's an important point to come to. Well, I don't have time I could take the time to go to the Proverbs passage.

But it also speaks of government authorities and let me just simply say that that passage tells us that a good king a good ruler a good government authority a good government leader Will appreciate righteousness in his realm because he knows.

He knows if he appreciates righteousness and despises evil. Righteousness is going to strengthen him as a leader and strengthen his realm. Oh Would we that we had good leaders? Our father in our God. We don't always Understand your ways.

They are bond. They are beyond us. I pray that you would give us grace Simply to trust you and your providential workings even in the halls of Congress and the White House and the State House and The government's mansions and all those places of government leadership.

May we trust you? May we trust you we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Well have a good rest of your Friday and hope you have a wonderful weekend and do do gather with God's people on this Lord's.

Day, okay. Good day.