THE WEEK OF TRINITY X - TUESDAY

LESSON: PSALM 95:6‒11

“The days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:43‒44

These words of Jesus were fulfilled about forty years after this when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the manner described by Jesus. Let us learn a lesson from this, because it certainly concerns us and all other men.

This is no joking matter, and we have no reason at all to suppose that our experience will be so different. The Jews refused to believe it until they experienced it personally. We are now being visited by God. He has opened to us His treasure, His holy Gospel, by which we learn to know His will and to see how we have been held fast in the devil’s power.

No one is prepared to accept it in all seriousness. We even despise it and make fun of it. No city, no prince or ruler, is really thankful to God for this gift. And what is even more serious, there are those who persecute and revile the Gospel.

God is patient and bides His time for a while. If we simply misread open facts and push matters too far, however, He can take His Word away from us, and the same wrath which fell upon the Jews can also fall on us. For we have the same Word, and the same God and Christ that the Jews had. We, too, will suffer the same punishment that the Jews suffered, for the same sin that they committed, despising and rejecting God’s Word and, more particularly, His Gospel of salvation in Christ. “Today, when you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7).

SL 11:1471 (10‒14)
AE 78:346-361

PRAYER: Lord God, Your warning voice is always quite plain. We have no one but ourselves to blame if we fail to recognize the day of Your visitation. Keep us always fully aware of the serious nature of Your offer of salvation, in and through Christ our Savior. Amen.