FBC Daily Devotional – December 28, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Monday to you, Monday after Christmas and first day of the week that's leading to the end of this year, end of 2020.

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Boy, how many people are looking forward to that, aren't they? This sort of a magical notion that when the clock strikes 12 on Thursday night and 2021 is ushered in and all of a sudden, all of last year's problems or this year, as I should say, will fade into oblivion as we join in the glorious new day of a new year.

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Well, that all remains to be seen, I'm sure. Well, I trust you had a good Christmas and today, well, actually through this week,

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I want to talk about a very common occurrence after Christmas, after the holidays, and that is what we could call the post -holiday blues, post -holiday depression.

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I've felt this at times in the past, you do all of this building up to the

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Christmas celebration and you get all the gifts, you have the parties, you have the family over, you go visit the family, you do all of your stuff that you do together as a family or as a church.

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You have all the different Christmas stuff and it's such a buildup and anticipation and you go through all of this and then comes

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Christmas day and there's all the excitement and opening the gifts and spending time with one another and family and so on and so forth.

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And then it's the next day, the day after. 24 hours ago, everybody's happy, everybody's joyful, all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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And now 24 hours later, you can kind of feel the blues settling in as all of the hype is now passed.

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As I said, I've felt that before and I felt myself saying in the middle of that week between Christmas and New Year's that, well, the holidays aren't completely over, there's still

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New Year's. Well, I don't know if you ever have to deal with that or have how to cope with life after the tinsel and the garland come down, but is there any help if I'm struggling with coming down with the tinsel and garland too?

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Well, through this week, I want to share some tactics with you that I think will help you and me in three different battlegrounds of potential depression.

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And one of those battlegrounds is the battleground of circumstances. There's some things to be aware of related to our circumstances.

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And of course, the circumstance today is that you're now a few days after Christmas celebration is over.

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And most likely, some of you may still yet be having Christmas get -togethers, but the day will come if it hasn't already.

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And that's the circumstance. So there are some things we need to be aware of related to those circumstances.

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And today I want to share one of those, and that is we need to be aware of the powerful temptations that can come our way on the downside of an emotional high.

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And I think one of the most poignant examples of that in Scripture is with David and the incident with Bathsheba in 2

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Samuel 11. And it's often been said that the greatest temptations come after great victories.

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Have you experienced that? Have you found that to be true? Some of the greatest temptations that you've faced have come after some of your great victories.

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Well, this is certainly the case in David's situation, David's circumstances. They're celebrating the great victory that they have experienced over Syria.

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We read about that back in 2 Samuel 10 verses 18 and 19. There we read, "...the

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Syrians fled before Israel, and David slew the men of 700 chariots of the

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Syrians and 40 ,000 horsemen, and smote Shobak, the captain of their host who died there.

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And when the kings that were the servants of hated razors saw that they were smitten before Israel, they made peace with Israel and served them.

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So the Syrians feared to help the children of Ammon anymore." Wow, what a victory.

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Here the Syrians are now made subjects to Israel. They've entered into peace and so forth.

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And then there's Ammon. The Ammonites had called the Syrians to come help them. And the

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Syrians have now said, nope, we're not going to do that anymore. And as far as Ammon is concerned, Ammon is surrounded.

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They've been largely defeated. And one of the main cities is now surrounded.

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So it's just a textbook case of what's going to happen next. So we read about that in verse one of chapter 11.

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It says, "...it came to pass after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent

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Joab and his servants with him and all Israel. They destroyed the children of Ammon and they besieged

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Rabbah." So Ammon is defeated and Rabbah, the city of the

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Ammonites, is surrounded. And it's really just a matter of time. This is a siege and those things eventually result in the siege city being taken over.

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So look at the victories and how exciting this was. So you're talking about emotional highs.

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There's certainly that involved here in this case. It's kind of like the images that we've seen after VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, when the

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Allied forces defeated the Germans and then the great celebration that was experienced after the defeat of the

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Japanese in World War II. So as a nation, we've experienced those kinds of victories and elation that goes with it.

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And it's that emotional high that then opens the way for temptation to find its route in.

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And so because of the success in the previous year,

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David just, we read in verse one, "...tarried still at Jerusalem." Known victory.

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Victory was won and victory was sure. It was undoubted. It's going to come. Here's the emotional high.

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So David just goes home and doesn't feel that his presence is necessary and he can just go relax.

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And so off he goes. But that leads to the emotional pendulum swinging in the other direction.

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And you see that at the beginning of verse two, where it says, "...it came to pass in the evening that David arose from off his bed."

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Now this wasn't nighttime. It wasn't dark. It was just evening and David was just lounging and loafing.

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And is he experiencing a bit of a downer after all the emotional high?

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Just loafing around on his bed. Well, whatever the case, this powerful temptation did come his way at the end of verse two, as he stands there on his rooftop and he looks out across the way and he sees this beautiful woman

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Bathsheba washing herself. And she's very beautiful to look upon. Now I know some have said that, what in the world is this woman doing out there washing herself outside in public and all the rest of this stuff?

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Well, most likely she was in a very secluded rooftop, wasn't like Lady Godiva going down the middle of the road, and thought that she was screened from any view.

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And she was actually engaging in ritual purification. And we don't need to go into that, but this wasn't something risque on Bathsheba's part.

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She was carrying out a responsibility that she had, and she did so thinking that she was in privacy and obscured.

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But David saw her. And when David saw her, that led to the powerful temptation following the great victory to face him and he succumbed.

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And we read of that succumbing in verses two through four. So instead of rejecting the enticement that he saw, he indulged.

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He looked at this woman and she was very beautiful to look upon. In other words, he saw her and then kept looking.

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Instead of seeing her and turning away and saying, oh my goodness, I shouldn't have seen that.

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No, he saw her and he kept looking. He indulged instead of rejecting.

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And then he plotted instead of refusing. So even though this was very tempting and he succumbed to the indulgence of a gaze, he still could have refused.

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But instead of refusing, he plotted. So in verse three, he sent messengers and said, find out who this woman is.

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Who is this woman? He wanted to find out. He investigated. And in the investigation and finding out, he had a plan.

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He had a plot that he was working through his mind, and that plot was to bring her.

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So in verse four, that's what he did. He finds out who she is. He sends the messengers and tells the messengers to take her.

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And then instead of stopping things, he fulfilled them.

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She came to him and he lay with her. She came to him and he lay with her.

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He fulfilled instead of stopping. Well, that didn't solve his depression problems.

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Instead, what it did was just sank him into deeper feelings of despair. And now we know that because David wrote

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Psalm 51 as a psalm of repentance after this sin of Bathsheba and then the consequent effort to try to cover it all up.

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It sunk him in deeper despair. So we read in Psalm 51 verse eight, he cries out to the

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Lord and he says, make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which you've broken, the bones which you've broken may rejoice.

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He feels so miserable, it's as if his bones are all broken.

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And in verses 10 and 11, he says, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

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Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

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You sense the depth of his despair over his sin. Well, powerful temptations can come in our circumstance of having received and enjoyed some kind of an emotional high, some great victory, some reason to celebrate as Christmas is, and then after the celebration, watch out.

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Beware of powerful temptations. And so if you're just aware of the likelihood, that can help you be prepared, know that this possibility is coming.

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And if you've lived through this before, you know it's coming. So awareness of the likelihood can help you because it can help you be prepared to say no when you face those powerful temptations.

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And just the victory of saying no will be a great encouragement to you.

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Well, they're the battleground of circumstances. Beware of powerful temptations. Now tomorrow, we'll come back and look at another thing to be aware of related to our circumstances.

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For now, let's pray and ask God to give us wisdom and grace to battle even the post -holiday blues.

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And so our Father and our God, we thank you for the practicality of your word and how we can see even in the terrible failure of one of your choice servants, some insight and some principles to help us as we face powerful temptations.

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Grant us grace, Lord, to put these things into practice, we pray. And we ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

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All right, we'll have a good rest of your Monday and look forward to seeing you tomorrow. We'll continue thinking about, oh, how do we deal with post -holiday blues?