For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    If we use the wealth which God gives us to do His will, and thus honour Him, He will see that all of our needs are met and more.

    Yesterday I read the portion of this psalm which discussed the fact that the wicked believe they will face no consequences for their actions. The portion I read today reminds us that God hears the cries of the hopeless. He will hear their cries and will comfort them. God will bring justice to the fatherless and the oppressed. If we have fully put our trust in God, mere people will no longer terrify us.

    I wonder if the story of the paralyzed man in today’s passage contains part of the explanation of why we see so little healing in the Church today. Jesus recognized that the man’s first need was forgiveness of sin. It is worth noting that the passage does not say Jesus saw the man’s faith, rather He responded to the faith of those who brought the man to Him. Do we have the faith to bring our sick friends to Jesus?
    It is also worth noting that the teachers of the law responded to Jesus offering the man forgiveness by questioning His authority to do so. It was then that Jesus healed the man. Jesus demonstrated that He had the power to offer forgiveness by healing the man. In the same way, the Church today needs to show that it has the power to offer God’s forgiveness by healing the people around us. I fear that I have too little faith for this, but I will continue to ask God to give me faith.
    The story of the calling of Matthew, and what followed is important. First, Jesus called as one of His disciples a tax collector. That was bad enough, a rabbi not just accepting as his disciple one of the hated tax collectors, notorious sinners all, but actually calling the man to become His disciple. But Jesus than proceeded to hang out with the sinners who had been the tax collectors friends before he became His disciple. Surely, He should have called Matthew to have nothing to do with those sorts any more. At the very least, He should have shown His disdain for such people by having nothing to do with them.
    Instead, Jesus went and partied with them, telling those who complained that the healthy do not need a doctor. The important lesson for us here is this, how are we going to preach the Gospel to sinners if we do not know any? We see throughout the Gospels that not only was Jesus willing to go to parties thrown by sinners, He was enough fun at those parties that sinners kept inviting Him! Yet He never stopped calling on them to repent. If the “sinners” you know think you are boring, you are not following Jesus’ example.

    In this passage we see again the issue of marrying local women. First, we are told that Esau married two local women and that those women made life miserable for his parents. Then, further on, we have Rebekah tell Isaac that she would rather die than see Jacob marry a local girl. While this was partially a ruse to get Isaac to agree to send Jacob out of Esau’s reach, it seems likely there was enough truth to it for Isaac to believe it. I am still not sure what lesson we should take from this, but it is something I need to think about.