A brief prayer is offered that you can add to your daily prayers this week. The scripture is from our Sunday Service Bulletin for today where we start a Lenten sermon series on the theses in Dr. Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. This is Luther’s attempt to show what was wrong with the church in his time.
OT Reading- Exodus 33:12-23, English Standard Version (ESV)
12 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 favor in my sight.' 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." 14 And he said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." 15 And he said to him, "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" 17 And the LORD said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." 18 Moses said, "Please show me your glory." 19 And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." 21 And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen."
Devotion: Is God really hiding from us?
Sometimes, even we believers, wonder if God is hiding from us and the world. We pray but don’t seem to get results even if we are “only” asking for clarity in His guidance. How come our community outreach isn’t working as well as we think it should? Why is all the misery happening in today’s world? Where is our God who [we feel] needs to some out and help us deal all this nonsense? In our OT text today: Exodus 33: 20 the Lord God is telling Moses that he will not be able to see His face. How did Moses [and we] deal with an invisible God? Five hundred years ago, Dr Luther was providing 28 theses in a Heidelberg lecture to support his belief that the church of the time was getting it wrong. Theses 20 & 22 [Hint: browse http://bookofconcord.org/heidelberg.php] are talking about how theologians see good and evil, and of the visible and invisible things of God. Luther’s view on the revelation of God was the Incarnation [God manifests Himself Human] and how God [as the Christ] sacrifices Himself on the cross at Calvary. Today we may not seem to be able to find God in certain times and situations but we can all take comfort in that one most singular revelation 2000 years ago when His Son, the Christ, died for our sins. He will become eternally visible to us when we leave this world. When this happens, and we are accounting for our sinful life here, we now have the awesome comfort that our risen Savior will have our back, tipping the eternal judgement scales our way. God’s peace!
We pray: “Thank you, risen Lord, for our salvation. Amen”