FBC Daily Devotional – December 6, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Monday to you. We're entering into the first full week of December. Excuse me.

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Hope you had a good weekend and were able to get to God's house, worship the Lord together yesterday, and hope it was a great blessing to you.

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Well, today, let me ask you this. How do you respond when you don't get something that you really want?

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And let's think about it in a couple of different ways. Let's think about it, first of all, from the standpoint of something you really want that you should be able to have.

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Now, I'm not going to try to itemize what those possible things are, but how do you respond to those things?

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How does that hit you? Okay, let's think of it another way. How do you respond when you can't get something you really want and you really don't have a claim to it anyway?

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All right, well, if you've read today's readings, read in 1 Kings 20 and 21, you know what

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I'm getting at. I'm talking about the reaction of King Ahab when he wanted that special vineyard,

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Jaboth's vineyard, and he couldn't get it. And rightly so. He wanted the vineyard, but that was

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Jaboth's property by inheritance, and that land needed to pass on to his family after him.

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And so when the king came and said, how much do you want to sell that to me for? He said, nope, not going to sell it. It's the family property.

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And what did Ahab do? Ahab went back and sulked. He pouted because he couldn't get what he wanted.

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Let's think about a few different things about this king. All right. In the first place, that's one thing, how he handled rejection, how he handled it when he couldn't get what he wanted.

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That indicated that the man is a very, very weak character. He's not able to say, okay, and then go on.

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Another thing about him has to do with his wife. You know, a good woman can make a man, a bad woman can break him.

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And I'm not suggesting that Ahab's problems are all the fault of Jezebel.

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No, not at all. They are his own fault, but Jezebel was nevertheless quite the wicked woman.

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And if this is seen nowhere else, it's seen here in this passage where, you know, she walks in and Ahab is sulking.

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She says, what's the matter? He says, I want Naboth's vineyard and he won't give it to me. So she said, okay,

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I'll take care of this. So apparently without any knowledge of the king, Ahab, Jezebel schemes and has

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Naboth killed, executed, and then seizes his property. And then goes back to the king says, it's all yours.

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And I think it'd be a little naive to believe that Ahab had no idea what happened here.

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He knew that that property came to him in, well, not ethical manner, not an ethical way.

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And yet nevertheless, he took it. So here's the thing. He had a bad woman and this evil woman caused him to, it was a source of further problems for him.

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It encouraged him to do wrong and he didn't have the character to stand up to her.

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So that's a couple of things. And the third thing I want you to notice is that real repentance does matter.

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It really does. So the Lord comes to Ahab and says, confronts him about this stealing of Naboth's vineyard.

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And consequently, you're going to suffer for it. The Lord says, you're going to pay for it dearly.

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And the end of the chapter tells us in verse 27. So it was when

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Ahab heard those words that he tore his clothes. He put sackcloth on his body and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went about mourning, weeping, crying.

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And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite saying, you see how Ahab has humbled himself before me?

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Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring calamity in his days.

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I will bring it in the days of his sons who were just as evil, if not more so than Ahab.

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Now what's the point? Ahab did evil. He had a very wicked heart.

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He had a heart that could not take no for an answer. He had a heart that was willing to accept that property that was obtained through murder and deceit and deception.

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And nevertheless, he was perfectly happy with that vineyard.

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But then when God confronted him with his sin, he humbled himself.

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He wept over it. And the Lord said, I will defer the judgment.

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I will defer the calamity as a result of his repentant heart. So real repentance does make a big difference.

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So if you've been putting off repentance, the Lord has been convicting you and confronting you with sin.

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Don't put it off any longer. Truly deal with it and confess it.

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Turn from that sin. It does make a huge difference. And then let's go back to a couple of those other things.

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If you're a wife, are you a wife that encourages goodness and righteousness in your husband and your spouse?

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I trust you are. If not, let me encourage you to repent and be the kind of wife that can be a help to your husband to do right and to make good choices.

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And then men, how are you doing with handling rejection? When you're told no, you can't have what you want, you think you deserve.

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That tells a lot about your character. So learn to accept no. Learn to accept no when you shouldn't have what you're after.

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All right. Some good lessons from Ahab and his wretched wife today. So Heavenly Father, I pray that from this passage we would be challenged and you would work in our hearts and draw us closer to yourselves no matter what our condition may be right now.

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Lord, if we need to repent, give us true repentance, we pray. We ask these things in Jesus' name.

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Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Monday. Hope your week gets off to a great start.