For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
The hard worker will have enough to eat and the person who is trustworthy will be richly rewarded, but those who seek a shortcut to success will end badly.
I will dedicate myself to obeying God. In order to do so I must stay away from those who halfheartedly follow his commands. I will meditate on God’s decrees and instructions. If we do what is right and just we have no need to tremble in fear of our enemies. If we faithfully serve God, He will teach us His decrees and deal with us from His unfailing love. I will love God’s commands more than wealth, or fame. God’s commands are right and every other way is false.
Peter warns us against false teachers and gives us information on how to recognize them. They are greedy and sexually immoral (note how Peter links these two types of sin, just as Paul does). They make up lies in order to get people to give them their money. They brag about themselves…and if you look closely at what they are bragging about there is nothing to it. False teachers use sexual immorality to lure in the unstable, trapping those who were just beginning to escape from a life of sin. They are arrogant and scoff at the supernatural, claiming to have the power to compel demons. They refuse to acknowledge the sin in their own lives while joining in “fellowship” with believers and calling for “unity” (by which they mean not calling attention to their sins, while they call attention to yours). It is worth noting that we should both avoid false teachers and watch out for signs that we are exhibiting some of the characteristics of false teachers.
This is the passage from which we get the idiom, “read the writing on the wall.” The main point of this passage is that by the time the writing on the wall appeared it was too late to do anything about the coming doom. The people at the banquet knew their history, but paid no attention to it. They arrogantly thought that they were in control of their own destiny, when their predecessors who had built the empire they controlled had been forced to acknowledge a Power greater than themselves. If we have not learned the lessons of history and turned to God before the writing on the wall appears, it will be too late. Not only will it be too late, but we will not understand the writing on the wall when it appears either.