Good Morning, Lord!
I Am Baptized
God saved us, not because of works done by us in
righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration
and renewal of the Holy Spirit. (Tit. 3:5 ESV)
Make the sign of the cross as you say, “In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
A Morning Prayer
O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to You be all glory and
honor today and every day eternally! I rise from sleep, and am reminded that
one day I will rise from death because of Your salvation. I make my bed, and
remember that You make all things new. Amen.
I Believe …
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe
in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by
the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true
faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole
Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true
faith. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and
the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and
give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.
This is most certainly true.
Bible Reading – Psalm
7
A Shiggaion[a] of David, which he sang
to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
7 O Lord my God, in you do
I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
3 O Lord my God, if
I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend[b] with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend[b] with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
8 The Lord judges the
peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,[c]
O righteous God!
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,[c]
O righteous God!
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man[d] does not repent, God[e] will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
17 I will give to
the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.[1]
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.[1]
Psalms like Psalm 7 (and Psalm 5, although I didn’t
address this when we went through it) are called Imprecatory Psalms. These are
Psalms that call for God’s judgement and wrath to fall upon his enemies. These
can be difficult. How do they fit with the call to love our neighbor, to love
mercy, and to forgive those who sin against us?
Some thoughts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer might be helpful
here:
The enemies
referred to here are enemies of God’s cause, who lay hands on us because of
God. Therefore it is nowhere a matter of personal conflict. Nowhere do those
who pray these psalms want to take revenge into their own hands; they leave
vengeance to God alone (cf. Rom. 12:19). Therefore they must abandon all
personal thoughts of revenge and must be free from their own thirst for
revenge; otherwise vengeance is not seriously left to God. Indeed only those
who are themselves innocent in relation to the enemy can leave vengeance to
God. The prayer for the vengeance of God is the prayer for the carrying out of
God’s righteousness in the judgement of sin. This judgement must be made known
if God stands by Gods Word, and it must be made known to those upon whom it
falls; with my sin I myself belong under this judgement. I have no right to
want to hinder this judgement. It must be fulfilled for God’s sake. And it has
certainly been fulfilled in a wonderful way.
God’s vengeance did
not fall on the sinners, but on the only sinless one, the Son of God, who stood
in the place of sinners. Jesus Christ bore the vengeance of God….
It is good and right to want God to destroy sin, and we
actively pray for him to fight on our behalf against powers we cannot overcome.
When we pray, “deliver us from evil,” in the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking him to
come to our rescue and to exert his power against the evils that attack us. The
mystery in all this is that God defeats evil through Jesus, the Holy One, going
to the cross to die on our behalf. By his death he becomes our refuge from
God’s wrath, and our mission as Christians is to draw others into this refuge,
to invite them into this salvation. This is because we have come to know there
is no other savior, and no other hope for those who are outside of this refuge,
and in love for our neighbor we call them to come to the God who, in love,
destroys evil to save his people.
Question for Meditation
What does this reading teach you about Jesus, what He said
and did, or what He wants His followers to believe? What does it teach you
about God’s love and forgiveness?
What does this reading lead you to be thankful for?
What behavior, thought, or attitude does this reading
challenge? What sin does it lead you to confess?
How might you pray for God to have a richer impact on your
life through this reading?
Petitions of the Lord’s Prayer
The Fifth
Petition: “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us.”
Heavenly Father, do not look at our sins, or deny our prayer
because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor
have we deserved them, but we ask that You would give them all to us by grace,
for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. But you have
given Your Son, our Savior, Jesus to bear our sins in His body on the cross and
given us forgiveness for His sake. For Jesus’ sake help us to sincerely forgive
and gladly do good to those who sin against us. Amen.
Prayer
Pray for your
spouse, parents, family, and friends – and for your enemies.
Benediction
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father,
who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort
your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. (2 Thess. 2:16-17
ESV)
[1] English
Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard
Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good
News Publishers.
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