Daily Word

Daily Word

Daily Bible Readings for the Week of the Seventeenth 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 Seventeenth 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 25:1–6; 27:1–6; Revelation 14:1–7, 13; Matthew 5:13–20

In the fiery trial of suffering, we not only learn that all earthly things are utterly vain, but also that we ourselves are nothing, absolutely nothing before God, that with our deeds and our lives we cannot stand before God. And so we consider everything else as refuse and cling solely and exclusively to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to His precious blood, by which alone we can stand before God... Thus God has laid the cross upon all Christians, by which they are cleansed and purified, so that faith may remain pure, just as the Word is pure, that one may cling solely to the Word and trust in no other thing. 

G. Stöckhardt, Kommentar Über Den Ersten Brief Petri (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1912), 36.

Monday: Job 32:1–10, 19–33:1, 19–28; Acts 13:44–52; John 10:19–30

When [Luther] points men in simple faith to the Gospel, the object of the faith by which they are to be justified is yet ever for him the testimony of reconciling grace, not merely the New Law as the essential contents of the perfect commandments. Thus distinctly does the basis and central point of his convictions already manifest its power. It was yet to lead him, still further, to a clearer discrimination of the elements embraced in what he now designates as the Gospel, i. e., to separate the distinctive message of salvation, which works life, from the New Testament commandments, which are designed, in connection with the now properly understood requirements of the Old Testament, to convince men of sin and the wrath of God and to guide in their new course of life those quickened through the message of salvation. Only that message itself does he afterwards call “Gospel.

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), 117.

Tuesday: Job 29:1–20; Acts 14:1–18; John 10:31–42

From the year of our Lord 1518, to this day,” said Luther, “every Maundy Thursday, at Rome, have I been excommunicated and cast into hell by the Pope, yet live I still. For every year on Maundy Thursday (quando Christus instituit cœnam) all heretics are excommunicated at Rome, among whom I am always the first and chiefest. This do they on that blessed, sanctified, day, when they ought rather to be rendering thanks to God, for the great benefit of His holy supper, and for His bitter death and passion. This is the honour and crown which we must expect and have in this world.

Martin Luther, Luther’s Table Talk: Or, Some Choice Fragments from the Familiar Discourse of the Godly, Learned Man, and Famous Champion of God’s Truth (London; Dublin; Edinburgh; Newcastle upon Tyne: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green; Hatchard; Seeley; Rivingtons; W. Whyte and Co.; Finlay and Charlton, 1832), 223–224.

Wednesday: Job 29:1; 30:1–2, 16–31; Acts 14:19–28; John 11:1–16

[We] are to be thoroughly convinced that, even when [we] are oppressed with the sense of divine wrath and of abandonment by God, His grace is still unrecalled, and that God, in truth, is especially present with [us] in these very trials—that [we] are being chastened in mercy.

Julius Köstlin, The Theology of Luther in Its Historical Development and Inner Harmony, trans. Charles E. Hay, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1897), 460.

Thursday: Job 29:1; 31:1–23; Acts 15:1–11; John 11:17–29

The apostle here affirms that the gospel, i.e., the way of justification through Christ, in opposition to the legal system he had been condemning—was, in few words, preached to Abraham, being contained in that promise, “in thee shall all nations be blessed;” see Gen. 22:17.... “Hereof it followeth,” says Luther on the place, “that the blessing and faith of Abraham is the same that ours is, that Abraham’s Christ is our Christ, that Christ died as well for the sins of Abraham as for us.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: II Corinthians & Galatians, ed. Robert Frew (London: Blackie & Son, 1884–1885), 331.

Friday: Job 29:1; 31:24–40; Acts 15:12–21; John 11:30–44

“It is a mischievous thing,” said Luther, “that we, miserable sinful wretches, will upbraid God, and hit Him on the teeth with our works, and think to be justified thereby before God, but God will not allow thereof. My own conscience telleth me,” said Luther, “that I cannot be justified by works, yet the Papists will not believe it. We ought,” said Luther, “to say, with the fifty-first psalm, ‘Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that Thou mightest be justified in Thy sayings.’ We should remember that it is said, ‘Forgive us our debts.’ We ought to say at once, We neither will, nor desire to be, righteous before the judgment-seat of God; but, much rather, willingly to confess ourselves sinners. What could we more easily say than this, We, poor creatures, are sinners, but Thou, O God, are righteous?

Martin Luther, Luther’s Table Talk: Or, Some Choice Fragments from the Familiar Discourse of the Godly, Learned Man, and Famous Champion of God’s Truth (London; Dublin; Edinburgh; Newcastle upon Tyne: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green; Hatchard; Seeley; Rivingtons; W. Whyte and Co.; Finlay and Charlton, 1832), 186–187.

Saturday: Job 38:1–17; Acts 15:22–35; John 11:45–54

[Luther says...] “According to the judgment of reason it remains absurd that this just and good God should demand things that are impossible of fulfilment by free will, and, although it cannot will that which is good but necessarily serves sin, should nevertheless charge this to free will; and that, when He does not confer the Spirit, He should not act a whit more kindly or more mercifully than when He hardens or permits men to harden themselves. Reason will declare that these are not the acts of a kind and merciful God. These things exceed her understanding too far, nor can she take herself into captivity to believe God to be good, who acts and judges thus; but setting faith aside, she wants to feel and see and comprehend how He is just and not cruel....

“The reason why of the divine will must not be investigated, but simply adored, and we must give the glory to God that, being alone just and wise, He does wrong to none, nor can He do anything foolish or rash, though it may appear far otherwise to us. Godly men are content with this answer.” 

F. Bente, Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, electronic ed. (Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 218.

*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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