Daily Reading Passages

Click below for access to the passages. Biblegateway.com is an excellent site with many versions of the Bible. The link below opens in NIV.  Youversion.com is a new site that allows you to annotate your own Bible, make notes, and comments once you create an account. That link opens in the TNIV version. Other versions are available at both sites.

Coaching Comments

Today's Old Testament reading, Exodus Exodus 15:19 - 17:7, is the first installment of the long journey that the trip to the promised land is going to become. Egypt is behind them. Hope is ahead of them. And there are going to be lots of difficulties along the way. As we go remember that God is doing two things. First, He is leading this group of people out of slavery to the Promise Land. You already knew that one. Second, He is creating a living parable that will shape the spiritual experience of His people forever.

The first episode is Marah and Elim. After seeing God deliver them supernaturally at the sea, The Hebrews got a little bitter about the fact that they didn't have water, and complained. Through Moses, God provided them with water, and renewed his covenant with Abraham with them. And all was well...

...Until a few days later when their food supplies started to run out, and they began to complain again. Saying (believe it or not!), "We were better off as slaves in Egypt!" Freedom is always scary, since it involves the unknown. Again God provided. But He did so in a way that would teach them a little more about depending on Him. He provided Manna in the morning, and quail in the evening, but the manna would only last for one day, and so they could only gather enough to eat for that day. The only exception to this was on Friday, when they would gather twice as much, so that they could rest on the Sabbath. And the Manna stayed fresh this one extra day. This was how God reintroduced the idea of the Sabbath rest, which had faded from memory during the slavery in Egypt. And all was well...

...Until they were thirsty again, and again complained that they had been better off as slaves. Why is it that we always want to return to our slavery? This time God provided miraculously by opening up a spring in a rock.

The New Testament reading, Matthew 22:1-33, continues with Jesus' teachings. First, we get the Parable of the Wedding Banquet. It comes in two parts. First, it's the story of a king throwing a banquet to celebrate the wedding of his son. But all the guests refuse to come, since they have more important things to do. So the king takes his invitations and sends them to any and everyone out in the streets, inviting them to this meal. This is a continuation of Jesus' conversation with the religious leaders from our last reading. He's pointing out again that the people who rightfully had invitations to the banquet (the Jewish people and their leaders) were refusing to respond, and that the consequences of that is that the invitation would be passed on to other people.

The second part deals with a man who showed up for the wedding but not in the right clothes. This offended the king and the man was thrown out. This is a warning to all those who receive the invitations - there is a preparation that must take place to enter this wedding feast. Being invited is not enough. In our case these wedding clothes are the righteousness of Jesus, provided to us when we accept our new position in Him. With God's invitation extended to us, and these new clothes of righteousness provided by the king, we can enter the wedding feast and celebrate.

The next scene shows the Pharisees next attempt to trap Jesus and expose him before the people. They had prepared a tricky question. "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" It might not seem so tricky to us, since it is probably most of our opinion that Christians will generally be good citizens and obey the law. But it wasn't so clear in Jesus' situation. Israel was an occupied country. And not only that, because of their theological background (everything we're reading in the Old Testament), they believed that Rome's occupation was directly in opposition to God who had given them this land. So, paying taxes to Caesar was an admission that Rome was sovereign, and thus, in some people's minds, a heretical position. But, on the other hand, since Rome was the occupying government, choosing not to pay taxes was a violation of Roman law that would be punished. So, the question was meant to put Jesus in a position of either discrediting himself before the people who were following Him, or getting in trouble with the Roman authorities. But Jesus' answer was a clever response that avoided either possibility, while at the same time offering a very important life perspective.

After this incident, some other teachers approached Jesus with a theological question. These were from the party of the Sadducees. Quick explanation: The Jewish people had a thousand years of theological ideas to discuss, and this often led to different sects, schools of thought, and even splinter groups. At the time of Jesus there were four different groups that were heavily influential. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the revolutionaries. The first two were the more prevalent, but the other two had their influence as well.

The Essenes were a sect that believed that mainstream Judaism was too liberal, and that the Roman occupation was God's judgment for sin. The only remedy, they believed, was greater holiness. To this end the Essenes withdrew from society like the early Christian monastics, and formed small strict communities in the desert, where the studies the sacred writings, prayed, and pursued holiness. Some people believe that John the Baptist spent some time with the Essenes since his preaching sounds very much like what we know of their teachings. The Essenes are also famous for the dead sea scrolls, since it was in the ruins of one of their hiding places that these texts were found.

The revolutionaries were actually a number of groups who believed that God was waiting for the Jews to take action against the Roman occupiers. For sometimes political, sometimes religious reasons, they advocated violent response against Rome. This mostly took the form of small terrorist actions. Some people have thought that Judas was a part of one of these groups, or at least in sympathy with them, and that his betrayal of Jesus (in his mind) was meant to motivate Jesus to reveal Himself as the Messiah. It's also pretty clear that Barrabbas, the murderer who was released instead of Jesus, was a member of one of these groups.

The most influential groups, though, were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were in some sense in control. The high priest at this point was a Sadducee as were many of the other priests. The Sadducees generally had a tolerant tone toward the Roman occupiers, on the basis that the survival of Israel depended on making Rome happy. Theologically, the Sadducees were more Greek and "modern." They didn't believe in an afterlife, or much supernatural intervention. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were the populist preachers and teachers. They studies the Torah, they worked hard at being faithful to its commands. Many of them were very rigorous in their religious practice, and they saw themselves as the "true" adherents of Judaism.

OK, with all that being said, it's the Sadducees who pose the next question to Jesus. Their question is a strange one. It takes the Jewish custom of the levirate law, or the kinsman-redeemer, and asks about its ramification for the afterlife. This was the custom that said that when a man died, his nearest male relative would marry his wife and provide him and heir. The Sadducees asked who this woman would be married to in the afterlife. Now, it's important to note that they were not interested in this answer seriously. This question was posed with the intention of exposing how ridiculous the idea of an afterlife was. It was mean to discredit Jesus in front of the people by making his teaching look inconsistent. But Jesus was smarter than this bunch too. He made two statements. First, He said, you completely misunderstand the idea of heaven. Things there aren't going to be like things here. Second, He said, you claim to follow the scripture, but scripture makes the claim that there is an afterlife. The inference here is, "Who's really discredited here?"

The Psalms reading, Psalms 27:1-6, is the first half of the 27th Psalm. It comes in two beautiful sections. First, David gives us a powerful statement of faith, trusting God for protection. Then, David shows why he had this faith. His heart is to be in God's presence. He knows that in that place there is safety. As he seeks God He will find the safety that God provides.

Today's reading in Proverbs, Proverbs 6:20-26, starts out with a general admonishing to live out all this wisdom, but turns again to warnings against adultery and sexual sin. Apparently men back then were just as open to these temptations as they are today. :-)

2007 Cohort Comments