[1]Joshua 24:16 –This passage is the inspiration for the hymn, “From God can nothing move me” {LSB 524}.
The people react to Joshua’s commitment to serve the Lord. The people respond,
“We will not serve other gods.” If we
say of the Lord, “He is our God,” we
cannot serve any other.
Ironically this hymn was written specifically for
friends fleeing the 1563 plague in Erfurt to comfort them on their journey.
Johann Sebastian Bach used several of Helmbold’s hymn texts in his cantatas,
and stanza five of Von Gott Will Ich Nicht Lassen appears in Bach’s O heilges
Geist-und Wasserbad (O holy bath of Spirit and Water).
The hymn is set to the tune VON GOTT WILL ICH NICHT
LASSEN. This is probably the most well-known hymn of Ludwig Helmbold, a German
philosophy professor and poet of Lutheran hymns.
The Lord my life arranges;
Who can His work destroy?
In His good time He changes
All sorrow into joy.
So let me then be still:
My body, soul, and spirit
His tender care inherit
According to His will.
From Exodus 3, when Moses meets God, the great I AM,
in the burning bush. There the I AM says to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt and
have heard their cry. … I know their sufferings, and I have come to deliver
them.”
Here, even in the Old Testament, the Lord comes to His
people to comfort them. In the face of temptation, trial, and even slavery, the
Lord arranges our lives. None can destroy his work—not chariots, not Pharaoh
and all his hosts, not even Satan.
We need only be still, for He who led His people
Israel out of bondage in Egypt still comes to us with tender care to protect
and strengthen us in body, soul, and spirit.
Praise God with acclamation
And in His gifts rejoice.
Each day finds its vocation
Responding to His voice.
Soon years on earth are past;
But time we spend expressing
The love of God brings blessing
That will forever last!
How are we to respond to these great gifts? We shall
praise God and rejoice in His kindness! Just as He continues to come to us
daily, exactly where He promises to be, we daily find our response and our
purpose in Him, following His voice as He reveals it to us in Holy Scripture.
And though we know our earthly days are limited, our
Christian vocation is everlasting. We are freed in Christ to express the love
of God in service to our neighbor and in acclamation we return to heaven. Those
blessings Christ gives to us; and the blessings Christ gives to His people
through His gifts and through us, His servants, are everlasting—even beyond the
tomb of earthly death.[2]
A Collect
For blessing on the Word – Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is
proclaimed. Make it a word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own
and to confirm those who have come to saving faith. May Your Word pass from the
ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that,
as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it;
through Jesus Christ, my Lord.[3]
[2] https://blog.cph.org/worship/hymn-of-the-month-from-god-can-nothing-move-me
[3] Lutheran Service Book © 2006 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis
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