Daily Devotion for Thursday, June 4

Daily Devotion for Thursday, June 4

In the name of the Father, & of the Son, & of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Welcome to Purify the Heart where our thoughts are being replaced with God’s thoughts as we meditate upon His Word. A reading from John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. O Lord, have mercy on us. Thanks be to God. John 3:16 describes Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God, and that term “only-begotten” means that the Son of God is truly God, because begetting means of the same kind. Dogs beget dogs. Dogs don’t beget whales. Not because that would be weird; but because it’s impossible. So also man begets man, which is how we know that when Jesus of Nazareth was born of the virgin Mary, He became a true man. But even when He became true man, that was not the beginning of His entire existence. Rather, it was the beginning of the incarnation of the Son of God. The Son of God is not finite or limited, but is God. When we call Him the Son of God, a title for Jesus which we get from Jesus Himself, we’re not saying that He is less than the Father. As the Athanasian Creed confesses, He is only inferior to the Father with regard to His humanity; however, according to His divinity, He is equal to the Father. For us to call Him the only-begotten Son of God is to say that He is truly God. Having been begotten is not referring to His being born in time by the virgin Mary, but rather that He was begotten from eternity of the substance and divinity of God the Father. So he shares the attributes of God the Father. Just as God the Father is all powerful, all present, and all knowing, so also are those things true about the Son of God. The question then arises as to why the Son of God died if He’s truly God, who cannot die. And this is the great glory that is found in the doctrine of the incarnation. He who is truly immortal enters into our mortality by which He makes His immortality available to us. He who is truly God became truly man in order to reconcile God and man within His very person and by His work. Our sin, both inherited and actual, has separated us from unity with God. But God loved the world in this way that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, You have given us grace to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity by the confession of a true faith and to worship the Unity in the power of the Divine Majesty. Keep us steadfast in this faith and defend us from all adversities; for You, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen. The grace & peace of Christ be with you. Amen. Get full access to Purify the Heart at purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe [https://purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Daily Devotion for Wednesday, June 3

In the name of the Father, & of the Son, & of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Welcome to Purify the Heart where our thoughts are being replaced with God’s thoughts as we meditate upon His Word. A reading from Genesis 11: 1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. O Lord, have mercy on us. Thanks be to God. Did you hear the confession of the unity in the multiplicity? First we heard it with rebellious man, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves…” Though they were many, they wanted to make a singular name for themselves; the problem was that their unity was false because they were unified by making name for themselves over-against the name of God. This was a unified rebellion against their covenantal Maker. Then we heard the unity in the multiplicity again when God said, “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” The narrator continues, “So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth.” The One who said in the plural, “let us go down” is then described as the singular Lord. And what does He do? He destroys the false unity of the people and scatters them. On the day of Pentecost, which we read about in Acts 2, we’re told that while people from across the world were gathered into one place, they all heard the disciples of Jesus speaking in their own tongues or languages regarding the mighty works of God. The name of God is not merely what He’s called but who He is and what He does. When the Lord has His Christians preach His Gospel, the multiplicity of man are then able to be rightly united, not only with one another, but in the singular name of the Triune God. The persons of the Holy Trinity are then seen as working together for the good of mankind, God Himself desiring for man to be united to Him. Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, You have given us grace to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity by the confession of a true faith and to worship the Unity in the power of the Divine Majesty. Keep us steadfast in this faith and defend us from all adversities; for You, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen. The grace & peace of Christ be with you. Amen. Get full access to Purify the Heart at purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe [https://purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Daily Devotion for Tuesday, June 2

In the name of the Father, & of the Son, & of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Welcome to Purify the Heart where our thoughts are being replaced with God’s thoughts as we meditate upon His Word. A reading from Genesis 1:26-27 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. O Lord, have mercy on us. Thanks be to God. When God made man in His own image, He spoke in the plural “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And yet in the very next verse, the narrator (Moses) tells us “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” So within two verses of the first chapter of the Bible we have God described both in the plural and in the singular. This is to show the complexity of God’s essence in a simple, albeit somewhat confusing way. The reader, or listener, is led to ask, “So God is both many, and yet only one?” I like to put it this way: God is the unity of a multiplicity. On the one hand, we can’t really know what that means. How can God be three persons and yet one God? But a way for us to begin to comprehend the mystery of God is also given to us in those same verses, through the creature called “man” who was created in God’s image. Notice a similarity in confusing language: “Let us make man... And let them have dominion…. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Within the first two verses which describe man, again both singular and plural are used. It makes sense that the image bearer of God is going to reflect the essence of God. If God is a unity of multiplicity, then the only creature that’s going to reflect the image of God is naturally going to at least convey some kind of unity of multiplicity. And notice how that was described? Although “man” is singular, we’re told that God gave dominion to “them”, who are specifically male and female. The next verse after that we are then told, “And God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…”. So when the male and the female are united in the one-flesh union, the result is another human being added to the equation. Where 1+1+1=3, the 3 are one singular unit: a family. Hence the existence of the household community is the essential reflection of the relationship of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. Now something supremely complex is not only made simple, but supremely relevant. Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, You have given us grace to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity by the confession of a true faith and to worship the Unity in the power of the Divine Majesty. Keep us steadfast in this faith and defend us from all adversities; for You, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen. The grace & peace of Christ be with you. Amen. Get full access to Purify the Heart at purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe [https://purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Daily Devotion for Monday, June 1

In the name of the Father, & of the Son, & of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Welcome to Purify the Heart where our thoughts are being replaced with God’s thoughts as we meditate upon His Word. Yesterday, on Holy Trinity Sunday, I read the first part of the Athanasian Creed. Today, we finish with part two. It is also necessary for everlasting salvation that one faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is the right faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man. He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages; and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ: one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For as the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ, Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence He will come to judge the living and the dead. At His coming all people will rise again with their bodies and give an account concerning their own deeds. And those who have done good will enter into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire. This is the catholic faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved. Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, You have given us grace to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity by the confession of a true faith and to worship the Unity in the power of the Divine Majesty. Keep us steadfast in this faith and defend us from all adversities; for You, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen. The grace & peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Get full access to Purify the Heart at purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe [https://purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Daily Devotion for Sunday, May 31 (Holy Trinity Sunday)

In the name of the Father, & of the Son, & of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Welcome to Purify the Heart where our thoughts are being replaced with God’s thoughts as we meditate upon His Word. Today being Holy Trinity Sunday, I will be reading to you the first part of the Athanasian Creed. Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit: the Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Spirit uncreated; the Father infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Spirit infinite; the Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet there are not three Eternals, but one Eternal, just as there are not three Uncreated or three Infinites, but one Uncreated and one Infinite. In the same way, the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Spirit almighty; and yet there are not three Almighties, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; And yet there are not three Gods, but one God. So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord; And yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord. Just as we are compelled by the Christian truth to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so also are we prohibited by the catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords. The Father is not made nor created nor begotten by anyone. The Son is neither made nor created, but begotten of the Father alone. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding. Thus, there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity none is before after another; none is greater or less than another; But the whole three persons are coeternal with each other and coequal, so that in all things, as has been stated above, the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshiped. Therefore, whoever desires to be saved must think thus about the Trinity. Here ends the first part of the Athanasian Creed. Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, You have given us grace to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity by the confession of a true faith and to worship the Unity in the power of the Divine Majesty. Keep us steadfast in this faith and defend us from all adversities; for You, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen. The grace & peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Get full access to Purify the Heart at purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe [https://purifytheheart.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]