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 finished out Numbers and starts us into Deuteronomy. (Numbers 36 - Deuteronomy 1:46)

The last entry in Numbers is a brief interaction with the women in the tribe of Manasseh who had already gotten permission to inherit land. Their relatives were worried that if they inherited land, and then married into another tribe, that land (which god had given to their tribe) would eventually be inherited into another tribe. God affirmed that their concern was a fair one, and rules were established that prohibited land being inherited away from the original tribe that it was given to. With that we head into Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy is a special book. Here we stop the forward progression of the story for a moment. Israel is camped on the banks of the Jordan. They have survived the forty years of wandering in the desert. It is nearly time for them to go in to take the land. Just before they go, Moses gives one final speech. The entire book of Deuteronomy is that speech. Probably it was actually a number of presentations over a period of time, but the point is the same. The whole book is Moses' final words to Israel before he dies and they go into the land without him. This book will look back in detail at everything that God brought the people through, in order to help them see more clearly who their God is and what the consequences are when they step out of His plan.

This book is the basis for a common Hebrew form of "sermon" called the Salvation History. We see this same pattern through the prophets, and even find it in a number of places in the New Testament (Stephen's sermon in Acts is one example.) The content of the sermon is made up of a spiritual history lesson, reviewing what God has done in the past as a way to inspire faith in Him for the future. It's a good habit to get into, for reviewing how God has worked in our lives shapes our view of Him into the future.

Today's passage in Deuteronomy covers everything that happened from the Exodus up until the people rebelled against God when the spies returned with their report. It's interesting to hear the story told again from Moses' perspective.

The New Testament reading, Luke 5:29 - 6:11, shows us a number of moments where Jesus and His ministry came into controversy with the established religious powers.

First, we see the calling of Levi Matthew. He was a tax collector. That meant that he was in the employ of the Roman occupiers, and seen by his fellow Jews as collaborator and traitor. He was ostracized for this. When he joined Jesus, he invited Jesus to meet some of his friends, no doubt other people on the fringe of society. Of course this offended the religious people who were watching Jesus, and they questioned his judgment.

They also questioned the devotion of his disciples' religious practice. They were not as strict as the disciples of John the baptist, or even the disciples of some of the Pharisee teachers. Jesus answered them with the parable of the new wine skins. God was doing something altogether new in Jesus. This would not be contained by the old boxes and practices. It could not be contained in the old preconceptions.

As if to illustrate this, Luke portrays next a sequence of Jesus' interactions dealing with the Sabbath. Everything Jesus did on the Sabbath came into question, and it proved to be the thing His opposition was most offended about. In fact, Jesus' position about the Sabbath is the first thing that got His opponents thinking of killing Him. The Sabbath had been established by God at creation, and reaffirmed for the Jews in their formational document, the Ten Commandments. It was clearly something that originated entirely in Divine authority. For Jesus to claim that He had authority over the Sabbath was a clear and incontrovertible claim to be Divine. When Jesus did these things, not only was He "breaking" the Sabbath rules, he was committing (in their minds) blasphemy. And yet, from Jesus' perspective, all He was doing was re-aligning the Sabbath with what God had intended all along.

The Psalms reading is the 66th Psalm. (Psalms 66:1-20) It's full of praise and adoration for the deliverance God has brought about. Even in the face of testing, and painful difficulties, God is worthy to be praised.

There is one important principle that is touched on in the last few verses of the Psalms. The writer says, "If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." This aligns with Paul's teaching in the first chapters of Romans. When we disobey God it hardens our hearts and makes it harder to hear Him. When we call out to God to intervene in our circumstances, and yet continue to nurture known sin in our minds and hearts, it limits the intimacy that is possible with God.

Proverbs 11:24-26 is the Proverbs reading for today. It includes three statements, all of them talking about the benefits and impact of generosity. In God's economy people who are generous always find that they themselves are blessed, while those who scrimp and clutch find themselves having a hard time making it. Using our resources to make a difference for others is a path that in the end sees generosity returned to us.

2007 Cohort Comments