Tuesday after the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on October 3, 2023 by under
Scripture: Hebrews 4:9-13 (NKJV)
4:9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.
11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
Devotion
In the Large Catechism, Luther urges the Christian to believe what God’s Word declares concerning the nature of the fruits of the flesh (Gal. 5:19 sqq.) and exhorts: “Therefore if you cannot feel it, only believe the Scriptures. They will not lie to you, and they know your flesh better than you yourself.”
This is what God’s Word declares to us today: “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” We need that Word because (to again quote the Large Catechism) “… that we do not feel it [the corruption of our nature] is so much the worse; for it is a sign that there is a leprous flesh which feels nothing, and yet rages and consumes. Yet, as we have said, even if you be quite dead to all sensibility, only believe the Scriptures, which pronounce sentence upon you.”
The conviction of the Law and the consolation of the Gospel are applied to us again and again throughout our lives so that we might be sustained in faith to enter into that promised “rest for the people of God.”
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.
