FBC Daily Devotional – December 15, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Tuesday to you, December 15th, 10 days away from Christmas, and I hope your

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Christmas plans are going well and things are falling in place for you.

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I wonder if we're going to get any snow for Christmas. What do you think? I don't know, and I'm sure the kids are hoping for tons of snow between now and the

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Christmas holiday break, but I don't think that's going to happen. Anyway, I can take it or leave it, especially 24 hours after Christmas has passed.

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But that's me. That's just me. That's just my opinion. I don't want to cause any enemies over snow.

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That is absolutely for sure. Well, we've been talking the last several days in these devotionals about our spiritual health and vitality, and this discussion these last few days has been stimulated by a couple of things.

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One is an article that I saw in a paper about the COVID problem in our area, which stimulated my thinking and sent me to 3

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John 2, where John said, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul.

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So John is really kind of making a parallel there or using the spiritual vitality, things going well with the soul, as a benchmark for things going well in life and particularly with physical health.

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We are concerned a lot these days about physical health. A lot of people getting sick from COVID, then many, many, many, many deaths.

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So consequently, much has been said about trying to avoid the sickness, trying to keep it from spreading, and most recently about a vaccine.

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One of the great hopes that has been promulgated for overcoming COVID is a vaccine coupled with herd immunity.

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And what they tell you is that the majority of the people need to get a vaccine if we're going to have herd immunity.

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I'm not interested in debating that. There are all kinds of arguments on both sides of it, and that's not my point.

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What I want to get at today is that it is true that vaccines have been helpful to some degree in stopping diseases, smallpox, whatever the case.

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And again, I'm not interested in arguing that, but I am making the point that we're told by the scientific and medical community that get a vaccine and that will keep a disease at bay.

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Get your flu shot and you won't get the flu. Get the vaccine and you won't get COVID. That's the mantra anyway.

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That's what we're told. But how does that carry over into your spiritual health and vitality?

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Well, here's the problem with that. In the traditional sense of a vaccine, the vaccination will involve putting a bit of the virus, whatever it might be, into your body so that your body will trigger its immune system to fight that little bit of the virus that's put there.

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And then you're going to be immune. Your body will be able to fight off if that virus happens to come in in some other way.

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Now, as far as herd immunity, enough people gain immunity and then the virus loses its potency.

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But what about the parallels of that to our spiritual health and spiritual vitality?

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Well, when it comes to being immune to sin, there is no immunity this side of eternity.

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You can't get a vaccination for it. And especially in the traditional sense of the word, because you don't take in a little bit of sin and dabble with a little bit of sin with the thinking that, that'll make me immune from a bigger sin.

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No, you surely know better than that. You have probably experienced in your own life where you've dabbled with a little bit of sin and it's gotten you into greater and deeper depths of sin.

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That's not the way to go. Obviously, there is no such vaccine.

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Rather, I think a better approach would be to remember. And I just wanted to share several passages of scripture to help you remember the sin, the disease that had plagued your life and was killing you until the new birth.

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So, for example, 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 -11. Paul writes this.

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He says, But then he says this.

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And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, that is you were set apart, you were justified in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So, while there is no vaccination that you can get against sin and to make you immune to it, what you can do is remember what you once were before Christ saved you, before you were washed by the blood of Christ, before you were set apart for Christ, before you were justified in the sight of God in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. If there is any vaccination, it's not.

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I wouldn't even put it that way. But if there is any hope of immunity to sin, it is being in Christ Jesus.

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That is where you will be destined. Ultimately, there will be immunity against sin.

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Well, let me also remind you of Romans 6. It says, We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

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Again, this isn't a vaccination. This is the work of Christ. And in his crucifixion, when he died, you died.

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That the body of sin might be brought to nothing. This is the ultimate destination of the child of God.

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Immunity against sin is where you're headed if you are in Christ Jesus.

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Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

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The old is passed away, behold, the new has come.

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And that new that has come, it's like an inoculation in the sense that it will eventually eradicate all vestige of the disease of sin.

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And then finally, Ephesians 4, verses 17 -23. Paul says,

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Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

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Don't be ensnared by the virus of the futility of sinful thinking.

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No, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

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Remember one thing we said at the very beginning of this little series, that we need to start the starting point of spiritual vitality, spiritual health, is knowledge.

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Well, in our unconverted state, we are ignorant. And because of that ignorance, we have hardness of heart.

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He goes on to say, They have become callous and have given themselves to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

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But that is not the way you learned Christ, Paul says, assuming you've heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off the old man, the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

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Again, he's not talking about taking in a little sin as a vaccination, but what he is talking about is a complete inoculation where the old self is put off and all those corrupt desires, that former manner of life is put off and being renewed in the spirit of your minds so that you who are a new creation will eventually, will eventually have the disease of sin eradicated from your life.

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The more that we follow the prescription of scripture, the more that we put off the old self and we put on the new, we are renewed in the spirit of our minds, the more that occurs, the more the sin that dwells within us is surrounded by the good bacteria, if you will, of God's word, of God's truth, of holiness and righteousness, and it snuffs out the life of that sinful virus within us.

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Oh, yeah, there's no vaccine. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just take a shot, get a shot, and you'd never sin again?

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You'd never have another sinful thought, you'd never have another sinful word, you'd never do anything sinful for the rest of your life.

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Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Well, there is no shot, there is no vaccine, but there is a study day by day putting off the old self, putting on the new.

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Well, I trust as God gives you grace, you will walk in that newness of life and be experiencing day by day some victory over that disease, that virus that plagues us.

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I trust and pray that you will be spiritually healthy as well as physically healthy.

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Let's pray that God gives us that spiritual health, shall we? So our Father and our

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God, we do thank you today for all that you have given us in Christ Jesus.

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We thank you that those who are in him have crucified the old man, the old flesh, the old self, and now, oh

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Lord, give us grace so we might put it off. We are a new creation and we thank you that we are ultimately bound to be completely eradicated from the sin that dwells within us.

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How we long for that day, how we look forward to that day. Take us there, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

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All right, well have a good rest of your Tuesday. Trust God will bless you richly in it.