Daily Devotional – Sept 23, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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Daily Devotional – Sept 24, 2020

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Oh man, I love the change of seasons. I appreciate the cooler temperatures, but at the same time, the year is winding down.

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Well, we're also in the middle of a week, and that means we're heading toward the downside of the week.

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Week's winding down. How's your week going? You staying with it and seeing the

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Lord work in your life in any particular way? What kind of answers to prayer have you seen this week?

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It's always good to reflect back, and even as you begin in the morning, to stop and think about the last 24 hours.

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What did you pray for yesterday that you've seen the Lord answer that prayer even today?

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So, just some good exercise to go through. Well, when I was 13 years old,

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I think it was, probably the middle of my eighth grade school year, I had a friend.

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He was from church, was a good friend, good influence. You'll understand why here in just a minute.

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But anyway, we were at a Juul store in Chicago area. I lived in Lombard, and we were together.

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We walked from my house up to the Juul for something, and we're in the Juul store, and it also had a bunch of other stuff, like a

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Juul -Osco combined. So, we're in that store, and I see this pen that I think it's really cool, and my friend says to me,

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I'll bet you can't steal it. I'll bet you can't get out of here with that.

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And I'm like, I'm not going to steal. He says, I dare you. I dare you.

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So, I said, okay, and I tried to figure out, okay, how can

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I swipe this pen so that I don't get caught? And I succeeded.

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It was a pen worth a buck, I think it was, and got it in my coat or something.

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I can't even remember how I concealed it, but I got it out of the store, and that became my favorite pen for a while.

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The favorite pen didn't last very long. It eventually got, actually, that same friend got mad at me one day, and he took that pen, and he threw it out into a field somewhere or something, and it was gone.

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And he said, it was a stolen pen anyway. All right, so that was when

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I was 13 years old. I forgot about that incident for a couple of years, and during those years of 14, 15, 16 years of age,

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I really wasn't too concerned about trying to live a teenage life that was pleasing to the

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Lord. I really wasn't on my radar screen. I was trying to fit in.

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I was trying to be with the crowd and all that kind of stuff, until I was 17. And when

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I was 17, the Lord really worked in my life and really convicted me about a lot of things, and I rededicated my life to the

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Lord and turned it over to Him and had a definite determination.

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I wanted to do right. I wanted to do what the Lord would have me to do with my life. And interestingly, almost immediately after I had come to that point of conviction and decision,

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I was reminded of that pen incident three and a half years earlier, and I knew what

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I needed to do. I went back to that store, and I took a couple of dollars, maybe three dollars.

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I can't remember exactly how much, but I figured interest and penalty on the thing, and I asked for a manager, a store manager.

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Store manager comes up to me, and I said, a couple of years ago, I came in the store and I stole a pen, and I want to make it right here.

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You need to take this. And I offered him the money. He said, well, thank you for coming and telling me, but I don't need your money.

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I said, no, you need to take this. What I did was wrong, and I'm sorry, you need to take this money.

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He said, well, okay. And he took it, and end of the story.

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I walked out of there, and my conscience was clear. My conscience was clear.

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Thomas Boston, an old Puritan, long gone by now, he made this statement years ago.

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He said, there is a tribunal erected in every man where conscience is the accuser, witness, and judge.

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And that was certainly true for me on that day and when I was 17 years of age. My conscience accused me.

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It was a witness against me, reminding me of what I had done and how I had done it, and it was a judge telling me

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I was guilty. I was guilty of stealing, and I needed to make it right.

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The thing about that statement is it's even true for unconverted people, for those who are not

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Christians, and their conscience can actually end up being in line with God's law to some degree.

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For example, listen to what Paul says in Romans 2, verses 14 and 15. He says, for when

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Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves even though they do not have the law.

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They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

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So here are people who don't even really know God's word. They don't know God's law, but they know when they have violated it.

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Their conscience tells them when they have violated it, and we see this true even in our world today.

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Most people don't even bother going to church anymore, but even though people don't go to church and they don't have anything to do with God's word, the

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Bible, and they aren't taught it, they don't learn it, they still have a sense of right or wrong. Where did that come from?

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It came from that tribunal that's erected in every man. There's a story in John's gospel, a story of the woman taken in adultery, that illustrates how the conscience, when it's rightly pricked, can actually cause a person to walk away from being judge and jury and executioner.

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So the conscience can help us to do the right thing, but it can also help us to turn away from being an inappropriate judge.

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So these guys, they brought this woman who they say was taken in adultery, and they wanted

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Jesus to command her to be executed, to say that, yes, she ought to be executed.

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That was the Old Testament law, that a woman, a person, a couple taken in adultery were subject to the death penalty, to be stoned.

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And so they came to Jesus and they told Jesus, this woman was taken in the act of adultery and she needs to be stoned, doesn't she?

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And Jesus, while they were going through all of this, he stooped down and he wrote some things in the ground.

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And then when they continued to ask him, we read in John 8, 7 through 9, that he stood up and said to them, let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.

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And once more, he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone.

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Why did they walk away when they heard it? Because their conscience pricked them.

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They realized that they were not themselves without sin and therefore they didn't have the basis, the justification for condemning her when they were just as guilty.

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Their conscience did that. There's a tribunal erected in your own heart and mind where your conscience is your accuser, your witness, and judge.

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A well -informed conscience, shaped and molded by the

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Word of God, is a valuable asset. Value it. Let me encourage you to pay attention to it.

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Whatever you do, don't squelch it. Don't squelch it. So as we pray today, let's give thanks to the

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Lord for this gift of the conscience and let's be sensitive to it.

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So our Father and our God, we do thank you for this important part of our being that helps us, leads us to do the right thing when we listen to it, when it is indeed informed by your

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Word. So Lord, help us not to take it for granted. At the same time, help us not to squelch it, to not listen to it and ignore it.

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Help us to be attentive even to this gift that you've given to us. And this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.

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Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your Wednesday and trust the