#DailyDevotion God Has Delivered Us In Jesus Christ
Psalm 85 You have been gracious to Your country, O LORD; You have brought back Jacob from captivity. 2You have taken away Your people’s wrongs and covered all their sins. (Music) 3You have withdrawn all Your fury, You don’t let it blaze anymore.
This Psalm seems to be from the post-exilic era when the Jewish people returned from their exile in Babylon after 70 years. They thank God for being gracious to them. The LORD had brought them back from captivity, taken away their wrongs and covered all their sin. His anger no longer was blazing against them.
In baptism, our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ has brought us back from captivity. We were slaves to sin and the fear of death. When Jesus gives us His Holy Spirit in baptism, He gives us eternal life and frees us from being slaves. In baptism, Jesus covers us with His blood thereby taking away our wrongs and covering our sins. Having been baptized into Christ, we who were weak, ungodly, sinful and enemies of God, know the love of God, are given eternal life, and are made God’s friends.
4O God, our Savior, restore us, and don’t be provoked with us again. 5Will You be angry with us forever, and pour out Your anger throughout the generations? 6Will You not restore our lives again so Your people can delight in You? O LORD, show us your kindness and give us Your saving help.
Based on what the LORD has done by bringing His people back from exile the psalmist petitions the LORD, he prays these words. One might think because the LORD had already done these things in the first verses it is superfluous and unnecessary to pray them here. Our prayers however should be based on what God has done and promised in the past. He is asking God to be faithful to His name, the name revealed in Ex. 34:6–“the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to get angry, rich in love and faithfulness, 7continuing to show mercy to thousands, forgiving wrong, rebellion, and sin, without treating it as innocent, but disciplining children and children’s children to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers.”
Jesus is the manifestation and fulfillment of this name as He is LORD. He is the name of the LORD in human form. By His innocent suffering and death, Jesus gives us God’s mercy and grace. Jesus shows us God is slow to anger, rich in love and faithfulness, shows mercy to the world, and forgives wrong, rebellion and sin. By His death on the cross, He shows He does not treat sin as innocent. In joining us to His suffering and death in baptism and having us participating in His suffering, through this suffering, He disciplines us.
We too pray in our collects in Church for the LORD to do for us what He already has done for us and is doing for us. We pray these things so we do not forget that it is the LORD who has already answered our prayers, has already blessed us with His grace and is already doing for us what we ask Him to do. It acknowledges all the LORD has done for us and what He will fulfill in us, lest we forget. Praying to our Father for these things through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit keeps our hearts, souls and minds fixed on God through whom all good and perfect gifts come from and keeps us from looking elsewhere for them.
Heavenly Father, grant us Your Holy Spirit that our faith in You and Your Son, Jesus Christ, remain constant, be strengthened and persevere until we see our hope in Your promises fulfilled in the world to come, through Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit. Amen.