Monday after Cantate Sunday
Posted on April 29, 2024 by under
Scripture: Isaiah 14:1-3 (NKJV)
14:1 For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will still choose Israel, and settle them in their own land. The strangers will be joined with them, and they will cling to the house of Jacob. 2 Then people will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them for servants and maids in the land of the Lord; they will take them captive whose captives they were, and rule over their oppressors.
3 It shall come to pass in the day the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your fear and the hard bondage in which you were made to serve.
Devotion
“…they will take them captive whose captives they were, and rule over their oppressors.”
In order to understand God’s mercy, one must first consider God’s justice. We cannot have one without the other. In fact, the mercy of God is shown in God’s justice. His love for His people, for His Church, caused Him to bring the judgment of destruction upon Babylon.
This is not only a lesson for the people of Israel that Isaiah writes about at their point in history, but it applies also to the true Israel, the Church. The Lord has chosen His people in Holy Baptism and has kept them in the fellowship of the communion of saints by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when the Gospel is preached and believed, we are no longer captives to the world, the flesh, or the enemy.
By this faith, given as a gift, we are called to repay evil with good, which will heap coals over the head of our enemies (Rom. 12:20). The believer has rule over the oppressor, because the enemy has no rule over the Church. Therefore, walk in the truth of Christ, knowing that God has chosen you in Christ by Baptism, and every believer belongs to the true Israel, that is the Church.
Collect: O God, Who makest the minds of the faithful to be of one will: Grant unto Thy people that they may love what Thou commandest, and desire what Thou dost promise; that, among the manifold changes of this world, our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
