Daily Word, Pentecost 10A

Daily Word, Pentecost 10A

Daily Bible Readings for the Week of the Tenth Sunday of Pentecost, Year A

Join us for Morning Prayer in the chapel, Monday through Friday* at 8:30am, where we read and discuss these Scriptures and pray together. We do the same during Vespers in the parsonage Sunday evenings at 6pm. Join us! The parsonage is across the street from the church. 

Our readings for the week of the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost are listed below. Each verse is linked and will open to Biblia so you may read online. Click the link to read online or read in your Bible. The additional reading each day speaks to the common conversation between the three readings.

Restored Community

Israel’s success at Jericho stems from strict obedience, cementing Joshua’s authority. Yet, Achan’s secret theft proves that one person's sin can stall the progress of the entire community. Despite further failures like the Gibeonite deception, God routinely intercedes to secure victory. Joshua's farewell leaves the nation with a stark demand for complete loyalty to God's law.

Paul translates Old Testament covenant loyalty into how the church must work out its governance and mission. Unity in the church will be found in mutual accountability and love rather than conquest. The strong must yield their personal freedom to protect the weak, carrying each other's burdens in a shared community of faith.

Jesus provides the ultimate model of self-discipline and self-denial. By choosing submission over violence, his death becomes a cosmic victory and a redeeming sacrifice anticipated at the Last Supper. As the sin of one man, Achan, brought down the community, the sacrifice of one man, Jesus, for the sins of the many, has restored the covenant community

Sunday: Joshua 6:15–27; Acts 22:30–23:11; Mark 2:1–12

...the Word of God is more than a book of information. It not only tells about sin and salvation, but it delivers from sin and confers salvation. It not only points out the way of life, but it leads, nay more, we might say, it carries us into and along that way. It not only instructs concerning the need of the Holy Spirit, but it conveys that Spirit to the very mind and heart. It is indeed a precious truth, that this Word not only tells me what I must do to be saved, but it also enables me to do it. It is indeed the principal of the means of Grace. It is the vehicle and instrument of the Holy Spirit. Through it the Holy Spirit works repentance and faith. Through it He regenerates, converts, and sanctifies.

G. H. Gerberding, The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1887), 124–125.

Monday: Joshua 7:1–13; Romans 13:8–14; Matthew 26:36–46

That confidence, moreover, which enables us perseveringly and energetically to resist the rising of a temptation to evil, I would describe in the words of Luther, when he says: “It matters not that a man feels evil desires, provided only that he strives against them. For this reason such a one must not judge by his feelings, as if he were therefore lost; but must wrestle with the remainder of sin, which he feels, all the days of his life, and must allow the Holy Spirit to work in him, and must sigh without intermission that he may become free from sin.

G. Chr. Adolph von Harless, System of Christian Ethics, ed. William Findlay, trans. A. M. Morrison, vol. XIX, Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, Fourth Series (Edinburgh, IN; London; Dublin, CA: T. and T. Clark; Hamilton and Co.; John Robertson and Co., 1868), 261.

Tuesday: Joshua 8:1–22; Romans 14:1–12; Matthew 26:47–56

The conditions on which [David's] government will be established. Not by his policy, armies, and fleets; but by loyal obedience to God. This the rule for nations, leaders, and king. God purposes and arranges not in disregard to our response to his commands. 1. The constant obedience of the sovereign. “I will establish his kingdom for ever, if he be constant to do my commandments.” The security and perpetuity of Solomon’s reign depended upon this condition. 2. The intelligent obedience of the people. “Keep and seek for all the commandments” (1 Chronicles 28:8). Seek, inquire to know; then keep, practise what you know; all commandments. Obedience intelligent, obedience impartial, and obedience uniform, the triple conditions of temporal prosperity, of real establishment of families and nations — the only way to enjoy our inheritance and to transmit it safely to our successors. “That ye may possess this good land, and leave it for an inheritance for your children after you for ever.

James Wolfendale, I & II Chronicles, The Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary (New York; London; Toronto: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1892), 129.

Wednesday: Joshua 8:30–35; Romans 14:13–23; Matthew 26:57–68

On the basis of 1 Corinthians 9:19 (Though I be free from all men yet have I made myself servant unto all), Luther lays down two principal points: first, that by faith the Christian is a free lord over all things and subject to none; secondly, that by love he is servant to all things and subject to every one; the former looking chiefly to man’s relation to God, in a state of grace and justification, as a new, regenerate, and spiritual man; the latter, to his being still in this world, and under the duties which his calling and condition of life impose upon him. By faith the Christian is united to Christ, and whatever belongs to Christ belongs to the Christian. Christ’s righteousness, life, and salvation have freed us from sin, death, and hell, and from the law. But as Christ took upon himself the form of a servant to minister unto us, thus the Christian, being himself free from all works by faith, resigns his own liberty in order to do to his neighbor as Christ has done to himself. For the Christian does not live in himself but in Christ and in the brethren; in Christ by faith, in his fellow-men by love. By faith he soars upwards to God, by love he stoops to his fellow-men. “And this is the true Christian liberty, not a liberty from works (ab operibus), but from those false, presumptuous opinions concerning works (ab opinionibus operum), which seek justification through works.”

Adolph Spaeth, “Freedom,” in The Lutheran Cyclopedia, ed. Henry Eyster Jacobs and John A. W. Haas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 186.

Thursday: Joshua 9:3–21; Romans 15:1–13; Matthew 26:69–75

In this sense Christ wills, as Luther maintained in his Theses, that a Christian’s whole life shall be one of repentance. Of repentance, however, in the sense of restoration to divine grace after sin, the dominant element is faith, which lays hold on the promise of that grace; for contrition of itself, were it ever so perfect, could not merit God’s grace.

Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908–1914), 447.

Friday: Joshua 9:22–10:15; Romans 15:14–24; Matthew 27:1–10

“When we swear, we always combine two things together, viz. that we call upon God for help and protection, and imprecate His punishments upon ourselves. It is as if we would say: According as God helps me or not: if I hold to my oath, so may He be gracious unto me: if, however, I deceive any one by it, so may He punish me. Such is a very beautiful service of God and invocation.

G. Chr. Adolph von Harless, System of Christian Ethics, ed. William Findlay, trans. A. M. Morrison, vol. XIX, Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, Fourth Series (Edinburgh, IN; London; Dublin, CA: T. and T. Clark; Hamilton and Co.; John Robertson and Co., 1868), 334.

Saturday: Joshua 23:1–16; Romans 15:25–33; Matthew 27:11–23

Boldly, at length, does he carry out the comparison of that which Christians should become for their brethren with that which Christ has become for them all — to the following most profound and comprehensive summary: “The blessings of God must flow from one into others and become a common possession, so that each one shall take the same interest in his neighbor as though his neighbor were himself. They flow from Christ into us: from us they must flow into others who are in need of them, and in such a way that I must place before God even my faith and righteousness for my neighbor, to cover over his sins, to take them upon myself, and act precisely as though they were my own, just as Christ has done for us all.

Charles E. Hay, “Translator’s Preface,” in The Theology of Luther in Its Historical Development and Inner Harmony, trans. Charles E. Hay, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1897), 417. 

*We do not meet in the chapel on Saturdays. On Sundays, we meet in the parsonage at 6pm to discuss the readings.

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