FBC Daily Devotional – June 7, 2021

The Danger of Assumption and Misjudging Others

Well, a good Monday to you. Hope your week's getting off to a good start. Hope you had a great weekend. We're able to get to the Lord's house yesterday and rejoice and worship the Lord, rejoice in and worship the Lord.

At our church yesterday, we were able to share the Lord's Supper together. That's always a highlight of our month, for Sunday the month we do that. So, hope you've had a good weekend and looking forward to a good week this week.

Now, normally, and what I have done, I think all this year on these daily devotionals, is I've taken a subject or a topic or an idea from the daily readings. We have a Bible reading plan that we're following along and I take a few thoughts from the day's reading.

But I'm going to kind of cheat a little bit, not really cheat, but I'm gonna diverge from that path for just today and look at something that came up in yesterday's reading. And I want to do so because I think it's kind of an important thing.

Have you ever been victimized by supposition or.

Assumption?

How's that for a rhetorical question, right? You know, somebody comes by and they see the the surface of what's going on. They see the surface of things and because on the basis of what they see, what they observe, they suppose something is true and probably if you've been victimized by such suppositions, they didn't leave it there.

They went on to somebody else and they said, hey, did you know so-and-so that doesn't so or this is going on in their life or blah blah blah, whatever. It could actually be quite hurtful, quite painful.

Well, whatever the suppositions are that you have dealt with in your life, none could be quite as severe as the one we read about in yesterday's reading. In of all things, the genealogy of Jesus and it's what we read right at the very beginning of that genealogy.

Luke’s Account of Jesus “As Was Supposed” the Son of Joseph

Listen to what Luke records for us in chapter 3 verse 23. He says, now Jesus himself began his ministry at about 30 years of age, being, and then he puts in parentheses, as was supposed the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, and then he goes on, that Jesus, being about 30 years of age, being as was supposed the son of Joseph.

It was supposed that Jesus was the son of Joseph. So what that means is that those who didn't know the real story or those who heard the story and just simply didn't believe it, wouldn't believe it, they assumed that Jesus' real father was Joseph.

And so the tongues would wag and they certainly did when the two, Joseph and Mary, are betrothed to be finally married at some point. Remember that betrothal was legally as binding as a marriage. It just, they just didn't have all the rights and privileges of marriage yet.

But nevertheless, so they were betrothed and Mary is with child. It's a virgin birth. And she was perplexed by that. How am I gonna have a, how am I gonna have a baby boy? I've never known a man. And the angel explains, it's gonna be conceived by the Holy Spirit.

This is a virgin birth. Well, the townspeople of Nazareth, they didn't buy that. They just assumed that this is a good cover for you know, for the pregnancy before a finalized marriage and so forth. Well, there could never be any more serious supposition gone wrong than this one, could there?

Why the Virgin Birth Matters for Sinless Life and Salvation

If you think about this, if Jesus were the son of Joseph, if Joseph were Jesus's real father, then there would be no virgin birth. So, well, is that really that big of a deal? Well, yeah, that really, there really is that big of a deal because if there is no virgin birth, there is no sinless life.

And if there is no sinless life, there's no sinless sacrifice. And if there's no sinless sacrifice, then there is no Savior. And if there is no Savior, there's no way of obtaining eternal salvation, eternal life.

And if there is no way of obtaining eternal life, then there is no hope. There's absolutely no hope. So, none of the faulty suppositions about me or about you or anyone else for that matter are of such grave, grave consequence.

Oh, let's be thankful. Let's be grateful that this supposition was way off base. It was totally in error, totally wrong. And thankfully, the Lord has revealed to us, God in his grace has revealed to us the truth of the matter and the record of the life of this Jesus and how he came to be, how he came into this world and so forth.

A Warning Against Hasty Conclusions About Others

So, we can be thankful that that supposition is just nothing more than that, a supposition. But by the way, doesn't this also serve to somewhat of a warning to us against being too quick to suppose things?

Hmm, I think it does. We see things and we hear things and we suppose conclusions, we draw conclusions and reach facts, quote-unquote, about others, about other situations that, well, in the end may not be true.

So, I think we have to be careful about being too quick to suppose that certain things are so. Well, nevertheless, let this simple little statement, simple little statement, put in parentheses in our English translation, let this be a warning to us, a challenge to us to be careful in our suppositions and to be grateful that not all suppositions are true.

Thanksgiving for Christ’s Virgin Birth, Sinless Life, and Saving Work

So, our Father and our God, we're thankful today for our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, was our sinless sacrifice, our Savior. We thank you that because of his work on the cross and because of his sinless life, his perfect obedience, we have hope, we have a Savior.

We thank you for the wonderful grace and we pray that you would bless these thoughts to our hearts today. So, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, you have a good rest of your day today, whatever is left of it, and I trust you'll have a good week this first full week of the month of June.

A good day. God bless.