Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America

Thursday after Judica

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Pastor Dulas under Devotions
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Scripture: Micah 3:9-12 (NKJV)


3:9 Now hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity,


10 Who build up Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity:


11 Her heads judge for a bribe, her priests teach for pay, and her prophets divine for money. Yet they lean on the Lord, and say, “Is not the Lord among us? No harm can come upon us.”


12 Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the temple like the bare hills of the forest.


Devotion


Today’s reading fleshes out the theme of Judica. How ungodly is the nation? “Her heads judge for a bribe, her priests teach for pay, and her prophets divine for money.” Justice—whether temporal or spiritual—meant to spring from the Word of God and sound reasoning was exchanged for greed. We also see this in Christ’s Passion: wicked leaders gladly gave money for the betrayal of their enemy and used political coercion to ensure an evil result at His trial.


Money and honor are not only used this way still in secular things, but even within visible Christendom. Those who use social media know that your beliefs are openly denied and derided. People mock the idea that God created the heavens and the earth in the way He said He did, that Jesus is God the Son who died on the cross and rose again on the third day, and other such basics truths. In their opinion, such views are not to be spoken in public without ridicule, much less are they to determine how you live. Self-important commenters insist that Christian ideas are not to govern how you serve in public office—if you should even be allowed to vote, much less be elected. Even people and organizations that claim to be Christian ridicule a six day creation or that we hold the death of Christ to be what gives us life. They teach falsehoods about righteousness by our attempts to keep moral teachings, and quite often they are more outspoken against the orthodox Church than the atheists are.


We pray: O Lord, thank You for comforting us through Micah, assuring us that those who claim You while rejecting Your Word will not prevail, nor continue safely in their blasphemy. Teach them, with us, always to honor Your Word, apart from which none truly honor You. Amen.


Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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