Daily Word
Daily Bible Readings for the Week of the Eighteenth Sunday of Pentecost, Year Two
Scripture Text: Acts 16:31
Click HERE for an online Jigsaw puzzle of the above Scripture graphic.
Join us for Morning Prayer in the chapel (well, in the counting room until the construction is finished), 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 Eighteenth 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 38:1,18–41; Revelation 18:1–8; Matthew 5:21–26
This I say that we may know how to instruct and direct those (if such we should meet with) who are being afflicted and tormented by such thoughts of the devil to tempt God, when he entices them to search the devious ways of God outside of revelation, and to grope about trying to fathom what God plans for them—whereby they are led into such doubt and despair that they know not how they will survive. Such people must be reminded of these words (Romans 11), and be rebuked with them (as St. Paul rebukes his Jews and wiseacres) for seeking to apprehend God with their wisdom and to school Him, as His advisers and masters, and for dealing with Him by themselves without means, and for giving Him so much that He must requite them again. For nothing will come of it; He has carefully built so high that you will not thus scale Him by your climbing.
F. Bente, Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, electronic ed. (Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 220.
Monday: Job 40:1–24; Acts 15:36–16:5; John 11:55–12:8
“But if you desire to proceed in the right way, you can do no better than busying yourself with His Word and works, in which He has revealed Himself and permits Himself to be heard and apprehended, to wit, how He sets before you His Son Christ upon the cross. That is the work of your redemption. There you can certainly apprehend God, and see that He does not wish to condemn you on account of your sins if you believe, but to give you eternal life, as Christ says: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,’ (John 3:16.)
F. Bente, Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, electronic ed. (Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 220.
Tuesday: Job 40:1; 41:1–11; Acts 16:6–15; John 12:9–19
If it be still objected, that our minds cannot possibly, in view of divinely implanted intellectual impulse, necessity and aspirations, be satisfied while such an evident contradiction faces them, Luther, in reply, simply denies our right to entertain such ambitious aspirations after knowledge. It is from just such intellectual strivings that he would divert our attention, in order to fix it upon those practical religious aspirations whose aim and object God has plainly enough set before us. He thus commends to us the fixing of the eye simply and directly upon Christ, a direct grasping of the blessings of salvation offered in the Word and sacraments.
Julius Köstlin, The Theology of Luther in Its Historical Development and Inner Harmony, trans. Charles E. Hay, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1897), 308.
Wednesday: Job 42:1–17; Acts 16:16–24; John 12:20–26
You are seeking and craving for peace, but in the wrong order. For you are seeking it as the world giveth, not as Christ giveth. Know you not that God is "wonderful among His saints," for this reason: that He establishes His peace in the midst of no peace, that is, of all temptations and afflictions? It is said, "Thou shalt dwell in the midst of thine enemies." The man who possesses peace is not the man whom no one disturbs—that is the peace of the world; he is the man whom all men and all things disturb, but who bears all patiently, and with joy. You are saying with Israel, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace. Learn to say rather with Christ, "The Cross, the Cross," and there is no cross. For the Cross at once ceases to be the Cross as soon as you have joyfully exclaimed, in the language of the hymn—“Blessed Cross, above all other, one and only noble tree.”
Henry Wace, “On the Primary Principles of Luther’s Life and Teaching,” in Luther’s Primary Works: Together with His Shorter and Larger Catechisms, ed. and trans. Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1896), 433.
Thursday: Job 28:1–28; Acts 16:25–40; John 12:27–36a
They who are truly enlightened do not rest satisfied with clear notions, but desire to have their practice conformable to the convictions of their minds: they therefore take the word of God as a light to their feet and a lantern to their paths: they strive to walk in the fear of the Lord all the day long: this, I say, is the best evidence of their wisdom; for indeed it is the very beginning of wisdom; as Solomon has observed, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;” and as Job also says, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is understanding.”
Charles Simeon, Horae Homileticae: Hosea to Malachi, vol. 10 (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1832), 162.
Friday: Esther 1:1–4, 10–19; Acts 17:1–15; John 12:36b–43
One fear casts out another; and where men are feared, there God, his counsel and word, are despised and made light of.
Augustus Herman Franck, Nicodemus; Or, A Treatise Against the Fear of Man (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1831), 103.
Saturday: Esther 2:5–8, 15–23; Acts 17:16–34; John 12:44–50
As for evil, though God does not will or cause it,—for, on the contrary, He prohibits sin and truly deplores the death of a sinner—yet sin and death could never have entered the world without His permission. Also the will of fallen man receives its power to will from God, and its every resolve and consequent act proceeds just as God has foreseen, ordained, or permitted it. The evil quality of all such acts, however, does not emanate from God, but from the corrupt will of man.
F. Bente, Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, electronic ed. (Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 209–210.
*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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Rev. Dr. Mark E. Ryman has served as Pastor for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Salisbury, NC, since 2021. Previously, Pastor Ryman served congregations in North Carolina and Ohio, as well as a call to specialized ministry with Sola Publishing.
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