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
The Old Testament reading today is Exodus 5:22 - 7:25. Things are getting difficult for Moses and Aaron in their mission to free the slaves. Moses shows a part of himself that is, well, frankly... a bit of a whiner. We'll see more of this later. But that just goes to show that we all have tough character challenges, even great Bible characters. But this difficulty is a part of God's plan. This deliverance will be supernatural and unmistakable. And so the plagues begin.
Reading through God's speech to Moses in 6:2-8, it is important to realize that part of what God is doing is re-introducing himself to the children of Israel. Remember that nearly four hundred years have passed since the patriarchs. Three generations have passed since Joseph was alive. And at this point, it is safe to assume that the knowledge the Hebrews had of God was diminished and compromised by years of living among the idolatrous Egyptians. They were slaves of the most powerful nation in the world. In this culture gods were considered to be geographic in power, and so the gods of Egypt had to have been powerful. And so Yahweh God was reintroducing Himself to a people whose vision of Him had long-since clouded. Part of the reason for the plagues was to show God's power in comparison to the gods of the Egyptians. Each plague represented God taking control of a different realm of authority that supposedly belonged to a different Egyptian god. But there was spiritual warfare going on. When Moses presented one miraculous act, Pharaoh's priests and sorcerers duplicated it themselves, convincing Pharaoh to ignore Moses. More to come...
Back in Matthew 18:21 - 19:12, our New Testament reading, Jesus' teachings continue.
Peter comes to Jesus to ask about the limits of forgiveness. Jesus responds with the famous, "Seventy times seven" quote and the parable of the unmerciful servant. Essentially, every one of us has been forgiven such a colossal debt by God that none of us has the credibility to hold anything against the people who offend us. God's amazing forgiveness ought to overwhelm us and flow through us to even the people who have wronged us.
A little later the Pharisees challenged Jesus on the subject of divorce. This was a controversial subject at the time with different rabbinical school teaching different standards and practices for when and how a man could divorce his wife. (Wives couldn't initiate divorce.) But Jesus draws their attention back to God's original plan, saying that Moses' laws about divorce were stopgap measures to keep sinful men and women who refused to find reconciliation a way to keep from killing each other. (OK, that last part is my interpretation, but it's pretty close, I think.) The bigger picture that Jesus pointed out was that marriage was not a contract that could be nullified. It was a life-long covenant that needed to be protected and taken seriously. Leaving it lightly and moving on was a sin. You can see how powerful and radical Jesus' teaching on this was, because the people's response to him (given their understanding of marriage) was that if this was true, it would be better to avoid marriage all together.
The Psalms reading for today is another "Top Ten" passage in the Bible, the 23rd Psalm, Psalms 23:1-6. It's a beautiful picture of God's intention for the relationship between us, and a powerful image for us to hold onto as we press forward through the difficulties of life. This is another one to put on your list to memorize.
The reading in Proverbs today, Proverbs 5:22-23, wraps up the final warnings against adultery. Be sure your infidelities will be found out, and if you lack discipline in these matters, it will lead you astray from the path of life.
2007 Cohort Comments
Comments (4)
Rich Rawlins said
at 10:07 am on Jan 28, 2009
As I've been continuing to study our OT passages, it is becoming increasingly more obvious to me that God does have conversations with certain people and appears to actually show up on the scene at certain times. I still don't understand this, or at least why there's been a change. It is definitely a different form of communication than what goes on today. In this passage, it's glaringly obvious, at least to me, that Moses is not "praying" and then trying to hear some still small voice inside. He's having a real conversation with God/Yahweh. I'm curious if anyone in here has ever wondered or entertained the thought that God, Lord, Lord God, El, Elohim, Yahweh, Jehovah, etc., might not be the same entity? Some of this stuff just doesn't ad up to me. Also, in the coaching comments Marc states there were other gods and the gods of Egypt had to be powerful. Who were those "gods?" And what's with pharos' sorcerers. How were they able to change a stick into a snake and copy God's whole Nile into blood thing. That's pretty spooky weird if you sit and think about it. (continued...)
Rich Rawlins said
at 10:09 am on Jan 28, 2009
In the NT Jesus drives home the fact that forgiving people is huge. So far in my life this has not been a big problem for me. The fact that I need so much forgiveness I think makes it easy for me to forgive others. However, I've often wondered what it would be like if I had to forgive someone for something really huge. Would I be able to forgive someone who murdered my child, who rapped my wife, who molested my daughter? I don't know. I hope I never have to endure such a test.
Guys... I think I'm screwed on the whole divorce thing. I don't know what to do. This probably isn't the time or place to get into it. I feel so bad for the hurt my son has had to deal with from my divorce. I can't even explain it. I mean, when two people get divorced, they steal a child's most valuable possession... his family. I so bad wish I could do things over again and figure out how to have kept things together. Sometimes I think I should be able to continue to wait and hope that my sons mother would turn things around and come back home, but it's almost been 20 years. It would never happen for so amny reasons. I wish, at least for my sons benefit, that marriage really was till death do us part. I'll guess I should probably leave it at that.
...rich
Jacqui Wheelhouse said
at 10:29 am on Jan 28, 2009
Rich, God intended for his kids to become one and be one with Him. So when we do something outside of His original design, we face all kinds of discomfort and pain and repercussions. I know what you are talking about and sorry for your broken heart. Marriage was meant to last for eternity. We were designed for life, not death. So you aren't screwed up in your thinking. It's just the reality of sin that has scarred your heart in this area. The beauty in all of this messed up crazy world, is that God is our restorer and healer. He wins the battle with the enemy and we get to celebrate in that victory in the end, when satan is defeated and crushed. While we are here, we get
to press into the heart of God and let Him touch those hurting places of our souls. I am praying that whatever residue is left inside of you from this wound, would be saturated with God's healing oil. That the longings and aches that you have felt over the losses through the years would be touched by the hand of your Father and healing would fill all those nooks and crannies of the heart. That you would be free to laugh and love and have peace in your heart with no regrets.
Lord, set Rich free to be the man of God you are calling him to be in you. Thank you for his ginormous desire to learn and understand who you are and what this life is all about. Bless him today. In Jesus' name. Amen
Marc Schelske said
at 1:48 pm on Jan 29, 2009
Hey Rich - I love your engaging thoughts on this stuff.
I am with you on the change in communication. I don't have a good answer for it, and I have never found one in the Bible itself. The closest thing that we have to address this is Hebrews 1:1-2. It says there that "in the past" God spoke to his people though prophets and in other various ways, but now (as of the writing of Hebrews) God is speaking to us through His Son. And we know from the rest of the NT that God commissioned the church to carry on this message. So, it's possible that God intends the church to speak out and as a result is choosing to not do the same kind of in-your-face communication as we find in the ancient OT a lot, and then a bit in the NT. I don't really know and I don't particularly like this answer. I wonder about it myself.
As for the idea that the God of the OT and the NT being different - you're not alone in wondering that. In fact, that's one of the core beliefs of a number of strains of the early gnostic heresies, and it can still be found today in various corners of the theological world. It can be very hard to reconcile the two together. One of the things that makes it tough for me to follow that track is Jesus' own teaching. He very clearly identified the God of the OT as His God and father. As a follower of Jesus, contradicting His teaching is a tough place for me to go. ;-) A great resource on this subject is a little book called "Whose Afraid of the Old Testament God?" by Alden Thompson.
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