FBC Daily Devotional – April 1, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, this is Maundy Thursday, tomorrow, Good Friday, Day of the

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Lord's Crucifixion, and leading up to Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, when our

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Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week, the Lord's Day. So, on this particular day, this evening, we're going to have an evening service, a

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Maundy Thursday service, and it'll meet at 7 o 'clock. And so what we do is we spend some time reading the scriptures, we read the account of the night of Jesus' betrayal, his time at the table with the disciples, we commemorate the

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Lord's table together, we reflect on the scene in the

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Garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas and turning

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Jesus over to the authorities. Then follow him to that so -called trial, first in the courtyard of the high priest and then before Pilate, before finally ending the evening with the crucifixion.

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It's kind of a sober, somber service, but it's a needful one.

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It's needful because it highlights our need of the Savior who did what he did for us, but then it also prepares us for the joy that comes in the morning, resurrection morning, in just a couple of days.

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So if you can make it tonight at 7 o 'clock, I hope you'll do so, encourage you to do so. So, full disclosure here,

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I made some kind of a goof. Somehow, I ended up copying the scripture reading for yesterday, the end of one quarter.

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Yesterday was March 31st, and at the time when I made up the scripture reading schedule that I did

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January, February, and March, and then at the beginning of March, middle of March, I made up the schedule for April through September.

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And when I made up the schedule for April, somehow I ended up putting down for April 1st, today, the same readings as I had yesterday.

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I don't know how I did that, but I could say something about it. It must be one of those things that comes with being past, well, into your sixth decade or something like that.

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I don't know. Whatever the case. So yesterday and today, you read

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Matthew 28 as well as Proverbs 9, 9, and 10. So yesterday

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I zeroed in on Matthew 28. So what I want to do today is zero in on Proverbs 9, 9, and 10.

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And no, this is not an April Fool's joke, okay? I thought about sharing some of the best

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April Fool's jokes I'd ever heard, but you can find those on your own. So I'll let you Google that and discover your own.

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But instead, let me focus on Proverbs 9, 9, and 10. I'll read it and then make a few comments.

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Verse 9 says, Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser.

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Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning. Then verse 10 says,

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So what's foundational to that wise man so that when he receives information and instruction, he can be wiser?

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What's foundational is the fear of the Lord. And verse 10 goes on to say, The knowledge of the

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Holy One is understanding. What's foundational to that man whom you're wanting to teach things for him to increase in learning, the just man?

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How will he really increase in learning? He will be just and have as a foundation a knowledge of the

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Holy One. So the fear of the Lord, the knowledge of the Holy One, there's a parallelism there.

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The beginning of wisdom and understanding, there's some parallelism there. And so the point that the writer of Proverbs is making is that if you really want to increase productively in learning and wisdom, the foundation of it all will be a fear of the

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Lord and a knowledge of the Lord, a knowledge of the Holy One, a knowledge of God.

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And here, I think, is the idea. Without that foundation, oh, you can certainly gain all kinds of information, and that information may help you to succeed, as they say, in the world's eyes, in the world's view of definition of success.

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But in reality, all of that increasing in knowledge, that gaining of information, it doesn't really produce anything helpful in terms of eternity, in terms of everlasting life, in terms of one's relationship with God.

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It's not going to make you any more godly if you don't already have a foundation of knowing

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God. It's not going to enhance, if I can use it this way, it's not going to enhance your standing with God in the least bit.

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You can be the most educated and have your head filled with more information than anybody else on the planet.

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God isn't going to be impressed by that. The beginning of it all, the foundation of it all must be the fear of the

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Lord. It must be a knowledge of the Holy One. Think about it even in our own culture.

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Think about our own culture. Just step back a minute and don't think about this on an individual level.

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Think about it on the culture -wide level. We in our world and in our

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Western culture are just absolutely inundated with information, aren't we?

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Knowledge is available like it has never been available in history.

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We have more available at our fingertips in one of these little devices than our grandparents, our parents and grandparents had in the largest libraries in the largest city.

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We have more available to us right here in this little device. That information is just exponentially expounding and expanding in our world.

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And yet look at our culture. It's fraying. It is decaying. It is descending at a rapid, rapid rate.

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There is more foolish application of knowledge today than there has ever been in history.

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We have become so smart, haven't we? We have become so intelligent that we think we know better about matters like gender than the

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Creator who really only created two. And so with our great knowledge and our great information we can take a child and we can pump them full of drugs and we can perform surgeries on them and we, in our great, wonderful, wise, smart intelligence can turn them into a gender that they're not, really.

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Aren't we smart? No. Without the foundation of the knowledge of the

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Holy and the fear of the Lord, all of the increase and accumulation of knowledge will just leave us all the more foolish in our application of what we learn.

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God help us. God help us to know Him. God help us to fear

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Him. And I trust indeed you do. I'm assuming that you wouldn't be paying a bit of attention to what's going on in these few minutes on these devotionals if you didn't already have a foundation laid of a fear of the

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Lord and a knowledge of the Holy One. And I hope that you can build on that even through these few minutes together.

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All right, well let's pray and ask God to truly increase our wisdom as we learn of Him.

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Father, give us that fear of You. Give us a knowledge of You that we can build upon and that we can increase in true knowledge and we can increase in biblical, godly wisdom that we might live the way

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You designed us to live in this world that You have created. This we pray in Jesus' name.

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Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your Thursday. And again,

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I hope you can join us for the Maundy Thursday service tonight at 7 o 'clock. If not in person, then perhaps by video.

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I'm still toying with whether or not we'll be able to pull that off. But check in tonight at 7 o 'clock on the church website and see if that video is running.