FBC Daily Devotional – September 3, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well a good Friday to you. We are facing the weekend and looking forward to it I hope you're looking forward to the

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Lord's Day and gathering together with God's people and The worshiping and serving him at at church on Sunday.

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Hope you can make that well today We're reading in Judges 17 and 18 and the the last five chapters of the book of Judges are really

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Well, they're really depressing They really basically recount two big picture ideas chapter 17 and 18 show just how badly deteriorated things have become spiritually in Israel and chapters 19 through 21 show how degraded the nation's become morally during this period where everyone does what is right in his own eyes and So today's reading in Judges 17 and 18

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Show us illustrate for us how very concerned people can be with religion

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Well at the same time being very unconcerned with what God has to say

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About how to worship him and how to serve him. I mean there is but one God and Regardless of what all the other, you know with the global religions would say this is there's one

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God and Even those who affirm they believe in the one God the

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God of the Bible they can be very concerned with religion and the worshiping of that one

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God But be quite unconcerned with what he's has to say about how to go about worshiping and it's illustrated in this in this text

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So for example as the story begins, there's this man by the name of Micah.

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He steals his mom's silver He gets feeling guilty about it fun comes and confesses it and she says well, you know, bless the

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Lord for you There's an expression of religion right of faith in Yahweh the Lord God of Israel But then she says

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I'll tell you what I'm gonna dedicate that silver that you stole and have now given back I'm gonna dedicate that silver to Yahweh To make a graven image to make a carved image

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Wait a minute the God who said I am Yahweh your God You shall not make any graven images and yet that's exactly what she's going to do with that silver

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Micah her son then takes that image that mom has made for him builds a shrine

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Installs his son who's not a Levite not in the tribe of Levi of Levi which is required for the priesthood, but Micah builds a shrine installs his son as a priest and Eventually a

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Levite comes along His way and he finally enlists that Levite and says oh, you know now

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God's gonna bless me because I've got this shrine to God and I've got a Levite to To be my priest

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And Nothing to do with the the the tabernacle and the worshiping God at the tabernacle. He's got his own shrine

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He doesn't need the tabernacle in spite of what God has said and then along come this representative group from the tribe of Dan the

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Danites and They come to Micah's house, and they don't think anything whatsoever of stealing

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Micah's idol his shrine and Stealing his priest and taking them along with him luring him along with him a fellow

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Israelite and Supposedly for the religious benefit the Danites think if we take these

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Idols and we take the priest then God will bless us in our venture

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And then this is the Levite himself. He's supposed to be one who upholds the law and Teaches the law to others and yet he's nothing but a religious opportunist

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He's looking for the best opportunity He has to pad his life to make his life easy and what's in his own best interests rather than what?

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what God wants and Then finally the Danites they they erected this shrine and installed this

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Levite as the priest and his sons as their priests and Expect that you know now

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God is going to bless us another all of this all of this corruption religious spiritual corruption is kind of like religion as a good luck charm right

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If I if I just have this shrine God will bless me. Oh now. I've got a real Levite now

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God's really gonna bless me the Danites Oh, we're gonna get this guy shrine and God will bless us and we'll take his priest and God will really bless us.

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It's all religion as good luck charm Does that sound familiar? I? think there are a lot of professing

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Christians who are gonna go to church on Sunday because They think if they do God will bless them that's a good luck charm and They might even take their

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Bible with them because then God will really bless them And on and on we can go with different things religious accoutrements if you will

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Not really caring what God has to say about how he wants to be worshipped But taking these things incorporating these things into our lives so that well surely now

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God will bless me. Oh My friend. I hope that we will be determined to worship

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God in spirit and in truth as He wants to be worshipped Let's learn from these horrible mistakes that are recorded for us in the book of Judges and be otherwise

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Shall we our father in our God? I pray that when we gather together and on the

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Lord's Day as A people of God in the assembled place that you called us to worship you

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I pray that we will worship you in spirit and in truth and we ask it in Jesus name.

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Amen All right, well I hope you'll have a good rest of your Friday and a wonderful weekend and especially made the highlight of it all be