249. Saturday after Trinity Sunday.
Give us, O God, thy Spirit;
and create in us new
and pure hearts. Amen.
Ezekiel 36, 25-27. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
❦
The heart of the children of the world clings to the things of this world. They love and trust in themselves, or in other men, or in riches and power; and if they have no temporal treasures and pleasures, they pursue them, and are unhappy because they do not have them. “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” But the Lord has cleansed the faithful from all their “filthy idols.” From all! If there be anything which you still love more than the Lord, your heart is not right before him. The life of the Spirit, the living stream of love, sweeps the idols away. Do believers, then, not love the gifts of God, such as wife, children, country, home? Yes; they love them and enjoy them as being the gifts of God; but the heart belongs to the Lord first and last, and “there is none upon earth that they desire beside him.”
“The stony heart,” of which the Lord here speaks, does not feel the correction which God administers, and is not willing to obey his commands. Some are entirely callous to the operation of the Spirit, and thus live in a feeling of absolute security, and hasten with closed eyes toward eternal perdition. Others occasionally have a sensation of unrest; and still others feel their conscience torturing them all the time; but they love the darkness more than the light, harden their hearts against God’s call, and become more and more obdurate. — In regard to the children of God the case is an entirely different one. Their conscience is alive and tender; they feel the wrath of God and the love of God; they have that “godly sorrow,” and they have joy in the Lord; they fear to do anything against his will, and they can find no peace until they have the assurance of his grace. They submit to his will, patiently accept correction from him, and strive in their conduct to please him, in opposition to their self-will and the lusts of the flesh. The pure and heavenly image of the Lord is stamped upon them with greater and greater clearness; the Spirit fashions them ever more closely after Jesus, the perfect model. In their conduct among men this new heart manifests itself in kindliness, in mercy, in love of peace, in meekness, and in all manner of goodness toward their friend and enemy.
Lord, grant that we may experience this miracle of a new creation, and that the new mind in us may increase “unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Help me to walk in thy ordinances, and to keep thy statutes. Amen.*
Holy Ghost, with power divine,
Cleanse this guilty heart of mine;
In thy mercy pity me,
From sin’s bondage set me free.
Holy Ghost, with joy divine,
Cheer this saddened heart of mine;
Bid my many woes depart,
Heal my wounded, bleeding heart. [TLH 234; LSB 496]
* Here the head of the family says a short morning or evening prayer in his own words, and closes with the Lord’s Prayer and the Benediction. This is to be done every day. If the stanzas are not sung, they may be read in their proper place before the impromptu petition and the Lord’s Prayer.