Matins Devotions: August 18-22
- Pastor Hans Fiene
- Sep 9, 2025
- 7 min read
MONDAY
“Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in.” So says the Psalmist. And so he says about you. Once you were a sinner lost in the barren wasteland of this sinful world, unable to bright forth the fruit of holiness from the lifeless soil. Once you were outside the city of righteousness, unable to open its door, unable to make the case that you belonged within its walls.
But then the Son of God came to you in the wilderness and made the case for you. The Son of God came to you in the barren wasteland and gave you the righteousness you couldn’t earn. When you were hungry and thirsty, when your soul fainted within you, Jesus became hungry and thirsty in your place. He hungered to make you righteous. He thirsted in His suffering upon the tree and then gave up His soul, His Spirit into His Father’s hands.
When you cried to the Lord in your trouble, your Lord cried out upon the cross. He cried out for your forgiveness. He cried out “it is finished,” destroying your sins, washing you clean, and making you worthy to enter the city. On the third day, in His triumph over the grave, He opened the gates of that city. And in the waters of your baptism, when He clothed you in His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ led you by the straight way into your new home, into the city of God, into the kingdom of your Father.
TUESDAY
In 1 Samuel 8, when the Israelites ask Samuel for a king, he ultimately tells his people, “you think you’re going to get someone who will make you strong and wealthy and respectable. But you’re going to get someone who will build his own strength and wealth and respectability off your backs. Your king is going to take your sons and daughters and put them to work in service of his own glory. He’s going to take your crops and your flocks. He won’t serve you. You’ll serve him.”
And here, in 2 Samuel 11, we see this prophecy fulfilled. David has been faithful, a loyal servant of the Lord, and a loyal servant of Saul, refusing to destroy the Lord’s anointed despite having multiple opportunities to do so. And yet, as he looks out from his royal house and sees the wife of his faithful servant Uriah bathing on the roof, David believes he is entitled to take what doesn’t belong to him. He’s allowed to claim the bride of another man because he is the king and the king can do as he pleases, so he thinks. His strength, his wealth, his glory–he uses them all to tear apart his people in service of himself. That is the way of the kings of this earth.
But thanks be to God that we belong to the King with a kingdom not of this earth. Thanks be to God that we belong to the King who had all the strength, all the wealth and glory and who used them all to make us His own. So when the false kings of this world, when the false kings and false idols we made of our own hearts left us broken and lifeless in the wilderness of sin, our King Jesus Christ mounted His throne of nails and wood outside Jerusalem. And there, the Son of David and Uriah’s wife was pierced to a tree and served us by giving us everything. He gave us the wealth of His kingdom with His forgiveness, gave us the strength of His righteousness with His mercy, gave us the glory of His kingdom with His dying breath. Giving up everything for His enemies to make them His brothers–that is the way of the King of Kings.
WEDNESDAY
It’s a tough thing to consider the death of David’s firstborn son with Bathsheba. His father was the guilty one. David was guilty of adultery, guilty of murder, guilty of despising the commandments of God in pursuit of his own glory. David was the one who deserved death. And yet, David’s son is the one who goes into the grave. God takes the life of the innocent offspring and spares the lives of the guilty. Why would God do this to an innocent child? How is that fair? How is that just?
There is much to wrestle with in these questions. And yet, in the end, this isn’t the last time an innocent Son of David and Bathsheba would die as punishment for his sin, is it? About a thousand years later, the Son of David, the Son of Solomon, the Son of Joseph would be pierced to a tree outside of Jerusalem. The Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, would die for David’s sins upon a tree. There, on the cross, He shed the blood that took away His father’s condemnation, His mother’s condemnation, just as He took away your condemnation.
And so, if God would give up His innocent, only begotten Son to win eternal life for you, for David and Bathsheba, and for their firstborn son who went into an early grave, then we can trust in His goodness in all things. We can trust that what looks like cruelty to us is the right thing at the right time in the story of salvation. On the last day, David, Bathsheba and both of their sons will shine in glory, as will we, the glory purchased for us by their Son and their Lord, Jesus Christ. In all things, God is good. May we trust in His goodness always.
THURSDAY
When God speaks, He creates reality. When God spoke “let there be light,” light came into existence. When He commanded Adam to become a living creature by breathing into him the breath of life, the reality of human existence began. That which wasn’t now was. When Jesus declared, “Father, forgive them” upon the cross, through that same power, the Son of God took your sins out of existence. That which was was now no more. And when the Spirit spoke in the waters of your baptism, you who were once a child of sin became a child of God. That which was one thing became another thing.
So now, you are the other thing, the holy thing, the pure thing, no matter what Satan or the world or your sinful flesh may tell you. You are not a worthless sack of flesh. Rather, the Lord formed your inward parts and knitted you together in your mother’s womb because he wanted you to rest with your flesh in His arms forever. You are not an accident, not a mistake, not a meaningless ball of muscle and blood. You are fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who has taken you out of this world of sin and given you His kingdom.
Though the world may not see you, though those you want to love you may treat you as invisible and worthless, you are not hidden from your Lord. And the One who made you in secret does not have secret love for you. He confessed it before the sight of the world in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Once you did not exist, but God’s love for you existed. So He made you, the one who once was not. Once you were lost in the darkness of your guilt. But then the Son of God made the sins that condemned you no more and gave you the right to live in His light forever. Once you were an orphan outside the Kingdom. But now the Holy Spirit has made that orphan into His royal Son of God through the waters of baptism. He has spoken. That’s the new reality.
FRIDAY
In the days since the sexual revolution, Christians often embrace a rather bad habit when it comes to understanding St. Paul’s words in Ephesians 5, in particular when Paul says that women are to submit to their husbands. We know we’re supposed to believe what the Bible says, but bad actors demanded that “submit” included things it shouldn’t include, like accepting abuse or infidelity, and so we explain away the word “submit” until it doesn’t mean anything anymore, until it doesn’t require anything of you. “‘Submit’ doesn’t mean ‘obey’ or ‘yield to,” we often insist. “It just means ‘respect,’” or something else that doesn’t actually require you to submit to someone you don’t want to submit to. As our culture began to swing towards the left, a political term I use rather trepidatiously, we redefined a biblical concept so we could swing along.
Well, now as many aspects of our culture swing to the right (again “trepidatiously,”) I’ve noticed that we’ve started to do the same thing with our understanding of the word “love.” For some time, bad actors have insisted that “love” included things it shouldn’t include, that it meant you had to embrace people’s sins and perversions, that you had to sacrifice your own culture to welcome theirs, whatever it might be. And so, in the backlash, we’ve explained the idea away. Love, we insist, doesn’t mean giving of yourself to people outside of your family or self-chosen community. It doesn’t mean changing your life for people who shouldn’t be in your life in the first place. Love doesn’t mean anything that would require us to love someone we don’t want to love.
Such qualifications cannot survive the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, however. Love is patient and kind. It’s not arrogant or rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way. It bears all things and endures all things. In other words, love is not content if your final words to the sinner are, “I find your sin repulsive.” It is not content to tell the hungry, “you’re somebody else’s problem.” It is not content to tell the criminal, “you’re not safe around my family,” without ultimately praying for him and helping to build a world where the criminal can become a healthy neighbor.”
Love is not content for love to mean nothing because, for Christ, it meant everything. It meant dying for those who hated Him and pierced Him. It meant giving up everything for strangers and enemies. Love meant giving you everything when you deserved nothing. Let “love” mean “love” and you will better know the love of Christ.
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