Daily Devotional – May 29, 2020

Well, good afternoon on day 69, 69 we get to midnight tonight and then we have finished the 10th week of this lockdown crisis kind of stuff. Well, I hope your day is going well. It's one of those two rare spring days in in May here in Northwest Illinois.

It's supposed to be like this all weekend should be a great weekend to to get outside and enjoy the weather. We don't get enough of these. But anyway, it's a bit of a melancholy day in our household had to say goodbye this morning to one of our grandsons, the six year old who lives with us and keeps us keeps us on our toes and keeps our house alive.

But we had to had to send him off on a plane for a couple of months won't see him until the first of August. So it's gonna be a long, long couple of months for him. But anyway, speaking of the weekend, Governor Pritzker finally, finally relented from his excuse me from his authoritarian lockdown of churches late yesterday afternoon.

I'm not sure if you're aware of all the ins and outs of that. But one of the lawsuits against the governor reached the Supreme Court. I think it was last weekend, and Judge Kavanaugh was assigned to hear that emergency request.

So the Justice Kavanaugh ordered Governor Pritzker to respond to this emergency hearing thing by eight o 'clock last evening. So Governor Pritzker's response was essentially to scrap all the wording from his executive order that prohibited churches from meeting indoors in groups larger than 10.

Instead, everything is worded as recommendations or recommended guidelines. And essentially what that means is individual churches in different parts of the state can pretty much follow those recommendations as fits their circumstances.

Nobody's going to hold them to it. There's no law about it. There's no consequences if you don't, et cetera, et cetera. Now this is exactly the way it really should have been in the first place, I think, especially after that first 30-day executive order expired.

Give the people a little bit of respect and allow them to trust them to use good judgment and common sense. So anyway, we're going to be having on-site church this week again, but this Sunday it's going to be outside.

We're going to meet at 10 .30 in the morning. Still going to do the live streaming, so if you're not able to make it, just don't feel safe to get out or whatever, you can always tune in at 10 .30 Sunday morning for live streaming and outdoor service.

Do you remember the anxiety of young love? Well, apparently the quarantine orders have exacerbated that for some young couples. I saw a letter to Dear Abby, I think it was in this morning's paper, from a girl, I don't know if she told her age, but obviously like a teenage girl, who's afraid the lockdown is going to end up causing the love of her life of the last five months to break up with.

Her.

Apparently, they're not able to have any deep, meaningful conversations over Skype. Well, Abby kind of wondered if they actually had any before the lockdown. Oh, to be young again, huh? Or not? Well, in my more important reading this morning, in the Word, I was reading in John chapters 18 and 19, and those chapters cover the miscarriage of justice against Jesus as he was interrogated by Pilate.

Do you remember that scene? At first, Pilate tried to get out of dealing with the Jesus problem by telling his Jewish accusers, you guys just handle it yourselves. Well, they countered, we can't because we're not allowed to put anybody to death.

Well, that got Pilate's attention, so he was basically stuck with it. So then he asked Jesus a series of questions. And his first question was, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus responded to that with a question of his own.

He said, well, is this your opinion of me, or is that something, a bug that somebody else put in your ear? Well, Pilate replies, your own people turned you over to me. So Pilate didn't really answer Jesus' question.

But then Pilate asks the next question, what have you done? What have you done? Well, interestingly, Jesus doesn't answer this with anything he's actually done. Instead, he just starts talking about his kingdom.

He says, it's not an earthly kingdom where my followers would take up arms and fight like earthly kingdoms do. I mean, that's what kings do. They lead people into war against other kings and try to take over territory.

And my followers aren't interested in that. My kingdom, Jesus insists, is not from this world. Ah, that gives Pilate an opportunity to circle back around to his initial question. So you are a king then, Pilate responds and presses in a little bit.

But Jesus really doesn't give him anything to go on. Instead, Jesus declares his purpose for coming into this world. I've come to bear witness to the truth, Jesus says. Those who are of the truth, listen to my voice.

Do you get the implication there? Don't listen to Jesus and you're locked into some kind of lie or deception. Like maybe Jesus' accusers? Or maybe like Pilate himself? Yeah, like Pilate himself, because what he does next is he waxes a bit philosophical and asks his next question.

What is truth? Pilate wonders. He doesn't really wait for an answer. Instead, he just turns away and he goes back to the crowd and he tries to get the crowd to agree to release Jesus. Of course, they're not going to have anything of that.

So instead, what they do is they ratchet up their antagonism toward Jesus and they accuse him of blasphemy by saying that he declared himself to be the son of God. Hmm, that got Pilate's attention even more.

And it really rattled him. And so he got Jesus alone again and he asked him the fifth question. Where are you from? Silence, no answer. You will not speak to me? Again, silence. And then comes the question that, and the answer that really stood out to me in my reading this morning.

Pilate then asks, don't you know that I have the authority to let you go or to crucify.

You?

Aha, when all else fails, throw your weight around, threaten, cajole that lowly person into cooperation. Ah, but not so fast, Mr. Big Shot. Jesus is going to put you in your place. And he says this, you wouldn't have any authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.

I don't know if Pilate really understood the sense of that and the significance of that. He may have only thought about getting his authority from Caesar, but Jesus is talking about a higher authority than even that.

And those who are in authority need to remember this simple truth, that whatever authority they have is authority that has been delegated to them, it's been given to them from above. That kind of understanding will keep police officers from using callous, deadly, brute force simply to show that they're in control.

It'll keep mayors from threatening to close and shutter and maybe even tear down churches that don't comply with arbitrary, unjust mandates. And keeping that sense, that understanding in mind, that my authority is a derived authority, it comes from above, it'll keep governors from destroying people and their businesses with their impractical edicts issued just because they can.

How?

Well, a good dose of humility comes to the ruler or to the one in authority who knows that he's answerable to the God who gave him that authority. But this is something that those of us under authority also need to remember, don't we?

And we can, if we will remember this, we can learn to have a spirit of trust and dependence upon God who gives authority to men, that even despots and tyrants are in place because God for his own reason, his own purposes, has put them there.

And we may not know what those reasons or purposes are, at least not in the short term. We can also learn to be a bit more humble and self-controlled if we will remember that those who are in authority have their authority derived from the God who gave them that authority.

I think, for example, of those anarchists in Minneapolis. They have no sense of the providence and the sovereign rule of God. They have no patience for God. They have no patience for God to use those that are in authority to exercise their power rightly and justly against those who have terribly abused their authority.

Yes, I suggest we need to keep this in mind too. And so you see how terribly important it is to sift everything through a right knowledge of God and his word, isn't it? Doing so helps to keep those in authority from being authoritarian tyrants, and it helps to keep those under authority from being violent anarchists.

Let's thank God for his wisdom, for his providence, even in the setting up of rulers, both good and bad. So let's have a word of prayer. Our Father and our God, we do thank you today for your providence, for your sovereignty.

We thank you for those who are placed in authority over us to accomplish your purposes in our lives. Sometimes we don't like what they do, and sometimes we greatly appreciate what they do. But when all is said and done, we must primarily bow before you and give you thanks that you are in control, even in the good and the bad rulers over us.

Help us to keep in mind that those in authority over us have their authority from you, and may our rulers humble themselves at your feet and recognize their place before you. And this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen.

All right, well, I trust you'll have a good rest of your Friday afternoon and a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the beautiful weather. Get more of that liquid sunshine. No, we don't want any liquid sunshine.

We want the real stuff, the vitamin D sunshine. Have a great weekend. God bless.