Matins Devotions: August 25-28. 2025
- Pastor Hans Fiene
- Sep 9, 2025
- 6 min read
MONDAY
On the one hand, it’s a little weird that “Rumpelstiltskin” is one of the most famous fairy tales. It’s weird how a woman has to weave straw into gold or die, as decreed by the king. It’s weird that she is approached by a little demon-like creature who then tells her he’ll only rescue her the final time if she gives him her firstborn child. Then it’s weird how the creature says he will let her keep the child if she figures out his name. Why is this a story? Who is this for? “Cinderella” has a happy ending where a poor girl becomes a princess. Hansel and Gretel kill the witch themselves. But Rumpelstiltskin stomps his foot on the ground in anger after his name is revealed, and gets swallowed up by the ground. Not a sad ending, but sort of a weird one. That’s on the one hand.
On the other hand, perhaps “Rumpelstiltskin” is so enduring and ubiquitous because, intentional or not, it works rather wonderfully as an imperfect allegory for the joy we find in confessing our sins. God tells the sinner she must accomplish the impossible, spinning the commandments into righteousness. Despite her inability to do this, the King still claims her as His bride. But the demon she once trusted insists on taking from the woman what is most precious to her. And the church’s only way of escape is speaking the demon’s name out loud, a name that the King Himself ultimately reveals to her. And when she speaks that name, the sin that hounded the woman is swallowed up into hell, unable to grieve her anymore.
“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away, through my groaning all the day long.” So says David in Psalm 32. But when he acknowledged that sin, when he spoke its name out loud, the sin that haunted him was swallowed up into death. When David spoke the name of that sin out loud, his God covered him, by faith, in the blood that David’s Son would shed for him, forgiving all David’s transgressions. God heard David speak the name of his sin out loud, and God responded by sending down the righteousness of Christ that split the ground and cast the demons hounding David into the pit. So it was for David. So it will be for you. Speak the name of your Rumpelstiltskin. Confess your sins, hear the word of absolution, and watch the demons drown in the depths of the earth.
TUESDAY
“How precious is your steadfast love, O God?” So David asks rather rhetorically in these words from Psalm 36, but it’s still a valuable question to answer. How precious is the steadfast love of God? How much is it worth? Where does it rank in terms of the treasures of this world?
Well, the steadfast love of God is greater than everything because those who possess the steadfast love of God already possess everything. No king or emperor on earth is surrounded by as much splendor and majesty as the lowest saint of heaven is when he’s surrounded by the songs of the angels and the radiating favor of God.
The steadfast love of God is greater than the love of this world. The love of men grows cold. Men devour those they love. And even when the love of men is faithful, it’s not all-powerful. No amount of an earthly father’s love can stop his children from going into the grave. But the love of your Heavenly Father can and has. The love of your Father in heaven will never expire, never run out. He will never leave you for someone or something who has more to offer Him because His love is born entirely from His desire to offer you and give you everything. The love of your Father in heaven has no limits. There is no problem it cannot solve. And for those who possess this love, they cannot go into the grave. They can only go into a bed in the earth, a resting chamber from which they will one day arise and then live with Him in glory forever.
Through the blood of Jesus Christ, you have been covered in the steadfast love of God. The greatest treasure of all was made your own when the Son of God died for your sins, rose for your justification, and claimed you in the waters of your baptism. In His light you can now see the light. You can see the precious shining jewel of your Father’s righteousness, a light that will never fade.
WEDNESDAY
St. Paul is not a gnostic. He doesn’t dismiss the flesh of man as a prison containing his soul. He doesn’t consider things made of matter to be trash that weigh down the greater spiritual or hidden things. He speaks frequently in his epistles about the goodness of our flesh, about how Jesus won salvation for us with His own flesh and blood, with His very viscera. And so, in our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, Paul is not rejecting the fleshliness of Christ or man. So he’s not rejecting the fleshly realm when he says, to paraphrase, “we once regarded Christ according to flesh, but no longer do and therefore we no longer regard anyone according to the flesh.”
Rather, Paul is ultimately saying, “once we saw Jesus as a mere man. Some saw him as a holy man worthy of honor, some saw him as a blasphemous man worthy of death. But now we know that He is the Son of God, born of a virgin, born with uncorrupted flesh that remained uncorrupted. That flesh was torn apart for us at Calvary and won eternal life for us. Because of that flesh, we will be glorified on the last day. All the sins and impurities of this world will be burned off of us. And all the fleshly divisions that men use as lenses to understand the world will have burned away. And since that will happen then, that’s how we view everyone now.”
In Christ, there is no rich and poor, no foreigner or citizen. There is no slave or free, no social pariah or honorable citizen. In the church, there are only those who have been made brothers through the blood of Christ, only those who have been covered in the same radiant glory that destroys the sinfulness of the flesh and promises us glorified bodies where we will rejoice with God forever.
Because of the new creation Jesus brought about, that’s how Jesus views us. And because that’s how Jesus views us, that’s how we can always view each other.
THURSDAY
When the author of 1 Kings tells us that Solomon “loved many foreign women,” we probably shouldn’t take that to mean that King Solomon was an incurably hopeless romantic. Though Solomon certainly knew how to write love poems, it’s best to understand that phrase as a way of indicating that Solomon united himself to many women. Like so many royal marriages in the past, these were political alliances, ways for Solomon to strengthen relations with the surrounding nations. That’s why he took Pharoah’s daughter as a wife. That’s why he took wives from the surrounding Moabites and Hittites and so on. Even though God had commanded the men of Israel not to do so, Solomon thought he was above this command. He thought he could bring peace to his people by uniting himself to foreign brides. But, of course, the end result was war. These foreign wives led Solomon to commit idolatry, which led to God raising up enemies against Solomon and tearing his kingdom apart after his death.
But in Jesus Christ, we see quite the opposite. Jesus doesn’t want to bring a peace that will end in a generation. He wants to bring a peace that will last forever. And so, Jesus doesn’t court the idolaters of the world and make alliances with them. He doesn’t seek foreign wives. Rather, He faithfully serves His bride the Church. He goes to the cross and breathes His last to rescue His bride from her enemies. He lets the serpent strike his heel so He can crush the serpent’s head and set the woman He loves free from the devil’s grasp. Jesus shows faithfulness to His bride in Jerusalem, and then invites the foreigners not to be foreigners in His presence, but to join His bride, to join His nation.
Thanks be to God that we have a better king than Solomon in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God that we have the King who gave us eternal life not by chasing after many wives, but by giving up everything to make one bride His own.
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