Daily Word, Pentecost 16

Daily Word, Pentecost 16

Daily Bible Readings for the Week of the Sixteenth Sunday of Pentecost, Year Two

Click HERE for an online Jigsaw puzzle of the above Scripture graphic.

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 Sixteenth 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.

Daily Psalm readings are found here. The Service of Morning Prayer is here.

Sunday: Job 11:1–9,13–20; Revelation 5:1–14; Matthew 5:1–12

The eye of [Luther's] faith is...always directed upon the incarnate Christ. To Him he constantly points his hearers. In the effort to become a partaker of salvation, and to be sure of his part in it, he holds simply to Him in whom he finds the Holy Scriptures testifying that Eternal Mercy offers itself to men, and in whose person, life and death he sees the revelation of that mercy. 

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), 104.

Monday: Job 12:1–6, 13–25; Acts 11:19–30; John 8:21–32

The continuing or remaining in the Word of Christ is the characteristic of the true disciples of Christ, the adhering strictly to the Word which He has left for our instruction in the gospels and epistles. There we find Jesus revealed, and through the understanding of Jesus as the Christ we have true knowledge, the knowledge of the truth; and that knowledge is the only factor which will give us true liberty. Without Christ, all men are servants, slaves of sin (Romans 6:17–20). But in Christ there is deliverance from sin, true freedom. Only those men are truly free that have accepted the salvation of Jesus; only they have a will which is interested in good works and able to perform them. That is the wonderful liberty of the Christian of which Luther wrote in such powerful words.

Paul E. Kretzmann, The Popular Commentary of the Bible: The New Testament, vol. 1, The Popular Commentary of the Bible (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1921), 458.

Tuesday: Job 12:1; 13:3–17, 21–27; Acts 12:1–17; John 8:33–47

But those who force themseves upon us with the boast that they do it for the sake of Christian love, on account of the truth and that the Holy Spirit constrains them to do so; and that they seek nothing but the salvation of souls; of all such be on your guard, for the devil has most certainly sent them, and not God.

Martin Luther, “Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Third Sermon: Mat. 7:15–23),” in Luther’s Church Postil: Gospels: First to Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, ed. and trans. John Nicholas Lenker, vol. IV, The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Lutherans in All Lands Co., 1904), 269–270.

Wednesday: Job 12:1; 14:1–22; Acts 12:18–25; John 8:47–59

From this we may well understand what Christ meant by the word “keep;” it is not such keeping as one keeps the law by good works; for this word of Christ must be kept in the heart by faith and not by good works. The Jews rage fearfully against Christ, that Abraham and the prophets are dead; they know nothing of what it is to “keep,” to “die,” or to “live.” And to “keep” is not said in vain; for there is a conflict and battle when sin bites, death presses and hell faces us; then we are to be in earnest in holding firmly to the Word and let nothing separate us from it. Thus you see how Christ answers the Jews and praises his own teachings. You say, my Word is of the devil, and wish to sink it to the bottom of perdition; on the contrary I say to you that it has divine power in it, and I exalt it higher than the heaven of heavens, and above all creatures.

Martin Luther and John Sander, Devotional Readings from Luther’s Works for Every Day of the Year (Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1915), 103–104.

Thursday: Job 16:16–22; 17:1, 13–16; Acts 13:1–12; John 9:1–17

Though God’s will and power be a sufficient reason of any evil inflicted upon men, yet He never inflicts it but for the great end of advancing His glory, and that usually in the way of their good. This glorious design of bringing these calamities on men is expressed in these words" “That the works of God,” etc. And the works that God intends thus to glorify are usually these: 1. The miraculous works of His power; 2. The works of His grace.

Let us apply this resolve of Christ, in the words of the text, to all the rugged instances of Providence. "The peremptory way in which men often judge is highly odious to God, more especially on account of the cause of it — curiosity. This is but one remove from rebellion, as breaking through all the bounds God has set about the secrets of His counsel” (South).

W. Frank Scott, John, The Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary (New York; London; Toronto: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1892), 266.

Friday: Job 19:1–7, 14–27; Acts 13:13–25; John 9:18–41

On the contrary, a man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous. Thus we simply interpret justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favour as if we were righteous; and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ

John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 303.

Saturday: Job 22:1–4, 22:21–23:7; 10:1–9, 16–22; Acts 13:26–43; John 10:1–18

If we now scrutinize more carefully that righteousness, by which God in Christ makes us righteous, it will be found to embrace, first of all, THE REMISSION OF THE GUILT, under which the believer groans.

Without attempting any sharper discrimination of the elements embraced, he uses the term in general in such a way as evidently to include in it the IMPLANTING OF A DISPOSITION IN HARMONY WITH RIGHT AND WITH GOD’S WILL and a consequent RIGHTEOUS BEHAVIOR on the part of man. It carries with it particularly the idea that man is “made righteous” (justificetur). It is this new attitude, this new behavior of man, that he has in view when he speaks of righteousness as a righteousness “in the spirit before God.” It is a state of righteousness in man’s own inner nature, a righteous behavior from simple righteous disposition.

With this righteousness comes PEACE. Christ himself, in whom we are righteous, is our Peace. In Christ we have further, according to Psalm 51:13, the “free” (freiwilliger) spirit, i. e., the spirit of liberty, as opposed to the spirit of fear, the servile spirit of the Law. This spirit makes free servants of Christ.

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), 99-100.

*We do not meet on Saturdays. However, we meet on Sundays at 6pm in the parsonage (directly across the street) at 6pm to discuss the readings. Join us!

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