I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I write this daily blog because it helps me pay closer attention to the Scripture as I read it. Before I started writing this blog I had trouble disciplining myself to read the Bible regularly, let alone every day. I hope that by posting my thoughts I can encourage others to regularly read the Bible (and perhaps my thoughts will give someone encouragement in their walk with Christ). In order to make it possible for others to use my blog as part of their daily Bible Study (the hubris of that idea never ceases to amaze me), I read the passages and write my thoughts a day, or more. in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.
Those who are generous and give freely to those in need prosper. Generosity brings about its own reward (and usually leads to greater material wealth).
Today’s psalm is on the same theme as yesterday’s psalm. I love reading psalms like today’s, they make me want to sing (which is not necessarily a good thing, as those who have heard me sing are aware).
Come and see what our God has done,
what awesome miracles he performs for people!
I cried out to God for help and he answered me. I confessed my sins and He rescued me from my troubles. God listened to me when I cried for help. He has tried me and put me through difficult times. God will purify me like silver and I will praise Him.
Levi, the tax collector become disciple, held a banquet for his friends to meet Jesus. The religious teachers asked Jesus’ disciples why He hung out with such low-lifes?
Jesus answered them by telling them that He had not come to reach the righteous, but rather He had come to reach the sinners. There are two questions we need to ask ourselves. Do we consider ourselves the righteous, or the sinners? The second is, are we Levi, introducing sinners to Jesus? Or are we the Pharisees, condemning Jesus for hanging out with the sinners?
Luke follows this up with three more stories which show us ways in which the religious teachers did not understand how God desires that we behave. They were more caught up in following the “rules” than in caring for their fellow-man.
Here at the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy, or “Second Law”, Moses summarizes the events that happened from when the people of Israel left Mt Sinai until they attempted to invade the Promised Land after initially refusing to enter. First, Moses recounted how he appointed judges over sections of the people in order to distribute the load of governing the Israelites, because it was too big of a task for one man to do by himself. This is an important lesson for leaders of any group as it grows in size, there needs to be leaders over subsets of the group. Notice that these judges were not just subordinates who took part of the load. They were each responsible for a specific group of people.
Moses then tells of how when they arrived at the border of the Promised Land, he encouraged them to invade immediately. However, they asked him to send scouts in to scout out the land first. Moses recounts that this seemed like a good idea to him, so he did sent in twelve scouts, one from each tribe. The scouts reported back that it was a good land, but they also reported that the people of the land were powerful. Moses recounted here how the people were afraid to enter the land despite all that God had done for them starting in Egypt. How often are we afraid to do what God calls us to do?
This passage reminds us that marriage is an economic partnership. We need to teach our young people this fact and encourage them to consider the economic factors when they are choosing a spouse. There are other factors which they must be taught to take into account, but the young do not naturally think about the economic consequences of their decisions.