Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America

Tuesday after Ad te levavi, The First Sunday in Advent

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Pastor Dulas under Devotions
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Scripture: Acts 3:22-26 (NKJV)

22 “For Moses truly said to the fathers, ‘The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever He says to you. 23 And it shall be that every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’

24 “Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. 25 You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ 26 To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.”

Devotion

From his fall into sin mankind has always needed to hear and believe the message of the coming Savior whose plan was to rescue man from his inherited sin through His priestly sacrifice of His own body. This is the message that God called the prophets like Samuel and others to announce, how “these days” culminated in the coming of God’s Servant, Jesus Christ, who promised that as many as believed in Him, they would be called the sons of God.

During this Advent season we prepare our hearts and minds as we humbly remember the first Advent (coming) of the Savior, when God fulfilled the words of the prophets as He revealed Himself in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger as the God-Man, so that He might give His life as a substitute and ransom for sin on Calvary. To those who through faith believe in this miracle He gives the right to be called Sons of God as He still turns man from his iniquities. He rules our hearts and minds as King, and He remembers our sin no more (Jer. 31:31-34).

We pray: Stir up, we beseech Thee, Thy power, O Lord, and come, that by Thy protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Thy mighty deliverance; who livest and reignest with the Father 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.

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