FBC Daily Devotional – October 29, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, happy Friday to you. I 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.

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I hope you're looking forward to a good weekend. We gather together on the Lord's Day. We'll be worshiping the

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Lord together, and again back in the book of Judges in the Sunday morning service, looking at this character,

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Samson, and what a character he is, isn't he? But anyhow, I hope you can join us on the

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Lord's Day morning service at 1030, preceded by adult

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Sunday school class, and we're going to be wrapping up very quickly here in that adult class this rather lengthy series on holiness, the whole subject of sanctification.

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Very important subject for us as believers because, well, the Bible tells us this is the will of God for you, even your sanctification.

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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.

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So that's what we're studying in our adult Sunday school class. Well today, I want to look at both a verse in 2

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Samuel 17 as well as the passage in Proverbs because both of them tie in,

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I think, with our current political situation. I'm not meaning for this to be political, but the the verses have application to government.

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So you've seen the polls. How do you think the current presidential administration is doing?

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Do you think the country is on the right track? What is your what is your

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Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the President of the

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United States and so forth? 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?

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Now the reason I start off with that question is because there's some insight in 2

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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.

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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?

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Do we go after David, pursue him and his army, and just destroy him? What should we do?

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And so he calls these two advisors. The first, Ahithophel, he gives his advice and Ahithophel says you need to go after him.

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You know, he's vulnerable now. We can destroy him and da -da -da -da -da, and let's go kill

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David. That's Ahithophel's advice. And everybody, everybody listened to the advice of Ahithophel.

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He was considered to be wise, and astute, and shrewd, and his counsel was always appreciated.

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Well, the other advisor, Hushai, he says that's not a good idea because, you know,

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David's a warrior, his men are warriors, and, you know, he's gonna be like a, he's gonna be like a mama bear who's been robbed of her cubs.

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He's gonna be, he's just gonna be antsy, and you'd be walking into a slaughter.

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So this, I don't think it'd be a good idea to go after David. Instead, let's do this. 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.

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And the end of it, Absalom says, oh, and by the way,

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Hushai's advice was designed to buy David time. Hushai was actually an ally of David, and he's buying

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David some time so that David can escape. Well, Absalom doesn't know that, of course, but Absalom comes to the conclusion, and he says, oh,

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Hushai's advice is better than Ahithophel's this time. And Ahithophel doesn't like that.

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Eventually, he actually goes and commits suicide. But here's the point I wanted to, I wanted to get at. I wanted you to notice,

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I wanted you to notice especially the last part of verse 14 of 2nd

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Samuel 17. Absalom and all the men of Israel said, the advice of Hushai, the archite, is better than the advice of Ahithophel, for the

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Lord had purposed to defeat the good advice of Ahithophel to the intent that the

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Lord might bring disaster upon Absalom. Now, I read that, when

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I read that, I read it with fresh in my mind the report that came out from, you know, this hearing with the the

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National Security Advisor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the General Milley and so forth.

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And these guys testified that the president was advised not to do certain things.

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And, you know, related to the pulling out of Afghanistan. And that, you know, we need to adjust what you're planning to do.

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This isn't going to work and so forth. And they testified that all these advisors counseled the president in a particular way.

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And he dismissed their advice. And he went ahead and ordered the pull out of Afghanistan the way we ended up pulling out of Afghanistan, which was a disaster.

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A disaster. And almost everybody scratching their heads over why in the world did he do this?

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Why did he do that? Why did they close Bagram Air Base? Why did they leave these people behind?

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Why didn't we have more troops there? And, you know, and on and on you could go detailing all of that terrible decision and the way it was decided.

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Well, here's some perspective to help us understand why the president did what he did.

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The Lord says in here in this particular verse that he had everybody follow this particular.

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He had the president follow the advice he got. He had the president ignore the good advice that he received.

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To the end of that, it might be the destruction of Absalom.

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Or we might read it some cow is going to come back and haunt this man.

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What he's done to all these people, the death, the needless death that has occurred because of that decision.

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The people who are living in absolute fear of being executed by the

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Taliban. Some who already have been. You know, Americans that are trapped behind enemy lines there in Afghanistan.

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And on and on we could go with that horrible debacle of a decision.

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Perhaps, this is of the Lord to bring about the demise of this man.

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I believe he's an evil man. He wants to do evil things. He wants to broaden abortion.

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He wants to broaden quote -unquote rights for abominable behavior in our country.

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He wants to create problems deeper for people financially and so on.

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I think he's an evil man. And if he had nothing but great success in this whole

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Afghanistan thing, he might have a much easier time getting his five trillion dollar package passed and all that kind of stuff.

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Again, I'm not trying to be too political here. I'm trying to give us a sense of perspective.

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We look at our government. We look at government leaders and we wonder, we scratch our heads sometimes and wonder how in the world did they make such terrible decisions?

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And this verse gives us some insight. The Lord is sovereign and he providentially works even in the council chambers of government buildings.

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So that the government officials end up making decisions that are designed by the

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Lord to bring about an end, an ultimate end. One we may not see yet.

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We may not like it, but it's in the Lord's hands. And I think that's an important point to come to.

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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.

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He knows if he appreciates righteousness and despises evil, righteousness is going to strengthen him as a leader and strengthen his realm.

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Oh, would we that we had good leaders. Our Father and our

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God, we don't always understand your ways. They are beyond us.

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I pray that you would give us grace simply to trust you and your providential workings even in the halls of Congress, in the

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White House, in the State House, in the government's mansions, and all those places of government leadership.

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May we trust you. May we trust you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

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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