For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Those who plot evil have already made a mistake and it will only get worse from there. Those who plan to do good receive love and kindness (this is not just a matter of having good intentions, but making actual thought-out plans). It is hard work that leads to success and profit, talking about what you are going to do accomplishes nothing.
The psalmist continues today on expounding on how we can see God’s glory and power in the world around us. What more is there to say than this:
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
I will praise my God to my last breath!
May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
John 3:22-4:3 For a period of time, John the Baptist and Jesus were both preaching and baptizing in the Judean countryside. Apparently a Jew used the example of what Jesus was doing to make a point in an argument with some of John’s disciples. They went to John to complain that Jesus was taking followers away from John and his teaching. John told them that this was the way it should be. John says something here that each of us should echo when it comes to Jesus. We must become less and less so that He can become greater and greater. Let us strive so that everything we do turns attention not to ourselves, but to Jesus.
Judges 19-20:48 This is a fairly horrific story. There is an interesting point that comes up in several different ways in this story. The Levite passed by and traveled later into the day to avoid staying among strangers. He chose instead to stay among those who he thought were more like himself and thus safer to stay with. The people of that town betrayed that common bond and committed a heinous crime. When the rest of the people of Israel heard of this atrocity, they sent word to the tribe of Benjamin requesting that they surrender the men of this town for justice. Rather than bringing their close kinsmen to justice for their crime against more distant kinsmen, they came to their defense. The end result of their decision to fight against their kinsmen being brought to justice was tragedy for the entire tribe of Benjamin. Similar things happen in the world today when people come to the defense of those undeserving of such defense because of some tenuous claim of kinship. When a group of people stands up to prevent justice being served on those who have acted wickedly, things will not end well.
