FBC Daily Devotional – March 4, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday to you. I hope your week's going well, gotten over the hump, and now we're on our way toward the weekend.

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Are you following the scripture reading? Today we're reading in Exodus 13, 14, and into chapter 15.

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And there are three little ideas that I want to pass along, not particularly related to one another, but they came out in this reading.

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And one of them is that, and I'm sure you've experienced this in your life, that sometimes the

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Lord makes us take the long way. Have you noticed that? You know, it's like the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and the

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Lord doesn't take us on a straight line. In fact, most of the time he doesn't take us on a straight line. And often,

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I think, we wonder why. You know why? Wouldn't it be a lot better if I just was able to go straight, a straight line from here to there?

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We have a little insight into this in chapter 13, in verses 17 and 18, and listen to what it says.

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I hope you pick this up. It says, when Pharaoh let the people go, so this is, you know, they've gotten out of Egypt.

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When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, though that was near.

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In other words, he didn't take them the shortest way from point A, Egypt, to point

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B, Canaan, the land of promise. Because doing so, they would have gone right to and through the land of the

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Philistines. He didn't take them that way, even though that was closer. Why not?

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It goes on to say, for God said, lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.

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In other words, God knew what lay ahead on that road, and there would be some brutal fighting that would occur because of the

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Philistines. And God knew the people weren't ready for that, weren't ready for what the

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Philistines would throw up at them. And by the way, when you think about all that they did experience in the route that he took them, how much more difficult, and even the way he took them, there were occasions where they said, we should just go back to Egypt.

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Why don't we just go back to Egypt? We should just stay in Egypt. You know, they still had that kind of an attitude. So if they had that attitude with the way

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God did take them, what must it have been like? What must have been in store for them if they had gone and faced the

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Philistines in battle? Well, they never knew. They never knew.

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And it struck me that oftentimes the Lord will take us down along crooked roads, if you will, to get from point

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A to point B, and we don't understand why, and we may never, we may never, we may never know the conflict, the challenge, the heartache, or whatever that would have been, would have come our way if we'd gone straight from A to B.

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We just wouldn't know. God in his grace does know. And in his care for his children, he leads us in the right way, even though it may not be the shortest and most direct way.

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So that was one idea. Another idea is that comes out in verse 15 of chapter 14, when, you know, the people come up to the

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Red Sea and they're, you know, they look behind them and here come the Egyptians. They look in front of them and there's the

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Red Sea, and they feel like they're in a pickle and they're stuck. And Moses is obviously like, okay, what do

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I do about this? And in verse 15, the Lord says to Moses, why do you cry to me?

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Tell the people of Israel to go forward, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

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Why do you cry to me? Does that sound a little odd? And then wouldn't it be just natural for us to be crying to the

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Lord under such circumstances? Here's the point. There's a time for prayer, to be sure.

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There's a time for prayer, but there's also a time to act, to act.

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And praying about it, continuing to pray about it can actually be a means of procrastinating.

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He's been given direction, he's told what to do. Now's not the time to keep praying about it.

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Now's the time to act. I found that interesting. I don't always know when that time is.

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I don't always know the limit of that, but sometime in the middle of it,

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I figure it out that I'm just putting off what I should be doing and I'm procrastinating and I'm just using this spiritual exercise as an excuse to put off what

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I ought to do. So let that be a challenge to us. And then the third idea that I wanted to get across comes out in chapter 15 with this song of Moses.

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You think about this. After such clear divine intervention, how can you not sing a song of praise?

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How can you not do this? And this song that Moses wrote, it's not only a praise song, but it's a teaching aid.

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It's a teaching aid. This song is going to be stuck in the hymnal of Israel for centuries to come.

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And the people of Israel would sing this song of Moses over and over and over and over again in future generations.

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And in doing so, they would be reminded time and again of all that God has done in delivering his people from the bondage of Egypt.

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It stands, as verse 13 of chapter 15 says, it stands as a testimony to the steadfast love of the

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Lord. The song says, you have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed.

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Oh, you know what? He still does. He still does. Our God in his steadfast love leads the people whom he redeems, leads them out of bondage and leads them on sometimes not the easiest, straightest, most convenient path in our way of thinking.

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But he nevertheless, in his steadfast love, redeems his people. I trust that you're trusting in him.

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You're looking to him to lead you in his steadfast love. He certainly will. And I also hope that by his grace, the complaining about the path, the difficulty, the challenges of the path that you're on will be kept to a minimum and that what will strike you when you start to complain is, what am

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I missing by going on this difficult path that would have been so much more difficult had

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God not led me here? Well, may these thoughts encourage us today. So have a good rest of your

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Thursday and let's pray and ask God to help us keep these thoughts in our minds in difficult days.

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Our Father and our God, we thank you that your steadfast love, in your steadfast love, you lead the people whom you've redeemed.

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Thank you for your faithfulness through the years. We also thank you, Father, that in your wisdom, you lead us in paths that we may not understand.

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Oh, give us grace to trust you, even in those difficult paths that are not nearly as hard as what they might have been.

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We thank you for all that you do for us, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, again, have a good rest of your