Wednesday after the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on November 9, 2022 by under
Scripture: Exodus 33:11-17 (NKJV)
33:11 So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.
12 Then Moses said to the Lord, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people.’ But You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight.’ 13 Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.”
14 And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 Then he said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.”
17 So the Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.”
Devotion
How can we find grace unless the Lord God goes with us? There can be no grace, no mercy for those who do not walk in the way of the Lord by faith. Those who are His are separated out, just as He sets us apart by clothing us with His righteous works and merits in Holy Baptism from the rest of the unbelieving world. In Holy Baptism He has placed His holy Name upon us. We remember that Name at the beginning of every Divine Service when the minister blesses us with the Invocation. He blesses us with the Name that declares that we are the people of the Lord God. We bear His Name just as we bear His works and merits through faith.
He calls us by this Name and we remember that He goes with us. We remember that He has gathered us out of all the nations to be His people. He has placed His Name upon us so that He will be our God. He has also come to us in our own flesh. He has clothed Himself in our flesh, so that He might clothe us in His righteousness; so that we might be His people, and we might go wherever He goes through faith. When we go with the Lord God, we find His grace and mercy always attend us: we are granted forgiveness and eternal life in Heaven.
Prayer: Almighty God, we beseech Thee, show Thy mercy unto Thy humble servants, that we who put no trust in our own merits may not be dealt with after the severity of Thy judgment, but according to Thy mercy; 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.
