Thursday after the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on October 5, 2023 by under
Scripture: Ezra 9:6-9 (NKJV)
9:6 And I said: “O my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. 7 Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been very guilty, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to humiliation, as it is this day. 8 And now for a little while grace has been shown from the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. 9 For we were slaves. Yet our God did not forsake us in our bondage; but He extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem.
Devotion
The people had been brought back from their time of captivity, and the remnant had seen the beginning of the restoration of Judah. But the beginning of the ninth chapter of Ezra records that still the people had not learned to separate themselves from the world: “When these things were done, the leaders came to me, saying, ‘The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, with respect to the abominations of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of those lands. Indeed, the hand of the leaders and rulers has been foremost in this trespass.’” (9:1-2)
The prayer of Ezra acknowledges the wickedness of the people, and implores the Lord to remember the mercy which He has shown countless times toward His saints. We have no works to appeal to as meriting the mercy of the Lord; rather, anything good is simply the fruit of that faith which He sustains in us. Therefore, day by day, we come before the Lord in repentance, desiring to be freed from the temptations which afflict us day by day in this fallen world.
Prayer: Lord, we beseech Thee, grant Thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow Thee, the only God; 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.
