The Daily Bible Readings for SATURDAY, September 19, 2020

The Daily Readings

SATURDAY, September 19, 2020

Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Exodus 16:22-30; Matthew 19:23-30

The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV)

Today’s Verse-of-the-Day: Ephesians 4:29

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Today’s Readings:

Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45

Remembering the wilderness

1 O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people.

2 Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.

3 Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord.

4 Seek the Lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore.

5 Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth;

6 O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of Jacob his chosen.

37 He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes.

38 Egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them.

39 He spread a cloud for a covering; and fire to give light in the night.

40 The people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.

41 He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river.

42 For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant.

43 And he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness:

44 And gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the labour of the people;

45 That they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. Praise ye the Lord.

Exodus 16:22-30

Manna and the sabbath

16:22 And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.

23 And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the Lord: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.

24 And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein.

25 And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto the Lord: to day ye shall not find it in the field.

26 Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.

27 And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

28 And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

29 See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.

30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

Matthew 19:23-30

The last will be first

19:23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?

26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

30 But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.

Optional parts of the readings are set off in [square brackets.]

The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel lessons are from The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV).

The Daily Bible Readings are selected from the Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings, a three-year cyclical lectionary. We are currently in Year A. Beginning with the first Sunday of Advent in 2020, we will be in Year B. The year which ended at Advent 2019 was Year C. These readings complement the Sunday and festival readings: Thursday through Saturday readings help prepare the reader for the Sunday ahead; Monday through Wednesday readings help the reader reflect and digest what they heard in worship. Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings, copyright © 2005 Consultation on Common Texts. www.commontexts.org
The Daily Readings for SATURDAY, September 19, 2020
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Exodus 16:22-30; Matthew 19:23-30 (KJV)

Prayer of the Day for SATURDAY, September 19, 2020

Prayer of the Day

SATURDAY, September 19, 2020

You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

— Exodus 19:4–6

Lord our God and our Father, we thank you for all the light you let shine on earth to gladden our hearts. Your light shows us how to live in your creation with open eyes and open hearts, accepting in a childlike way all the good gifts from your hand. How much good you send to many sorrowful hearts, and how much strengthening to those in weakness, poverty, and sickness! Grant that we may recognize what comes from you, that we are not cast down in spirit but mount up again and again on wings like eagles. May we learn to say at all times, "Through how much need has not our merciful God spread out his wings to protect us!" Amen.

Verse of the Day for SATURDAY, September 19, 2020

Ephesians 4:29

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Read all of Ephesians 4

Listen to Ephesians 4

The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV)

Ichthus Ministries Daily Devotions — For Our Best

For Our Best

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives." It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? ... For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

— Hebrews 12:5-7, 11

C. S. Lewis makes an interesting point about kindness. In his book The Problem of Pain, he observes that kindness is not demanding. Think about that. You might see a homeless man and give him five bucks. That was kind, but you didn't demand anything of him. Lewis points out that love is different than kindness. Love makes demands. If you showed love to that man, you'd stop and get involved. If he lost everything, you wouldn't give him $5, but would take him someplace to get back on his feet. If you smelled liquor on his breath, love would talk tough. "Drink yourself to death, or let's go to the detox center right now." Acts of random kindness are fine, but they are not demanding. Love is demanding.

While God has given you many mercies, many demonstrations of kindness, the main thing for you to know about your God is that He is love (see 1 John 4:8). God has loved you from eternity. Before sin and Satan ruined God's perfect world, God loved you. Before we wandered into our caves of pain and suffering, God the Father decided—and His Son most willingly agreed—to come into the world. The suffering and death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins was determined before the creation of the universe. So great is the love of God for you!

God the Father loves you as a parent loves their child, but parental love is also demanding. It's not content with the status quo. Do you keep your grown-up dependent at home when your child should be independent and out of the nest? No, love pushes the child to change, to grow into someone more mature, someone better. That's how our Father is with us in our pain and suffering. In this world, God stands with us in life, training us so you and I will grow to be the mature Christians His love envisions.

Finally, remember this. The One who is with you in your pain and suffering, the One with scars on His hands and feet, knows how to get out of caves. That's what Jesus' resurrection is all about. Don't despair. If not today, if not tomorrow, there are better days coming. Jesus burst forth from the cave of His tomb and promises to lead you to a better tomorrow. As Psalm 42 says, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation" (Psalm 42:5).

Heavenly Father, teach us by Your love to trust in You through all life's circumstances. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Dale Meyer

Reflection Questions:

1. Were your parents strict on you growing up?

2. How might God discipline those whom He loves? Can you give an example?

3. If you raise children, how similar is your manner of discipline to your parents? Is that a good or bad thing?

Use these devotions in your newsletter and bulletin! Used by permission; all rights reserved by the Int'l LLL (LHM).
C. S. Lewis makes an interesting point about kindness. In his book The Problem of Pain, he observes that kindness is not demanding. Think about that. You might see a homeless man and give him five bucks. That was kind, but you didn't demand anything of him. Lewis points out that love is different than kindness. Love makes demands.

Standing Strong Through the Storm — WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO DO GOD’S WILL

WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO DO GOD’S WILL

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

— 2 Corinthians 4:7

Our Open Doors colleague, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, shares the following insight from his teaching, “Why I Need to Encounter the Persecuted Church.”

While living in Hong Kong, I used to make a point of having dinner with many of the Open Doors supporters worldwide that gave up some holiday time to courier Bibles into China. Often in the course of their travels some of them would meet famous house church leaders and say, “To be truthful, I was a bit disappointed in the meeting.” They would add something like, “I thought these people would be remarkable saints, and of course they were, but they were also quite prejudiced, or rude, or had some other feature that I did not think worthy of a very spiritual leader.” They assumed that the persecuted were “super-saints.” But they are not.

It is a very unfortunate trend to idolize the persecuted. We assume that if a Christian survives twenty years in a stinking prison cell they are in a completely different spiritual category from ourselves. They are of course different in what they have experienced, but that does not necessarily make them more spiritual. As J.C. Ryle once put it, “Even the best of men are only men at the best.” They often retain the blind spots and prejudices of their culture.

On one occasion I was taking a distinguished Bible teacher to meet a revival leader in Lanzhou, Gansu province. This Chinese leader had seen over 50,000 people come to know the Lord through his ministry over a ten-year period, but to our amazement, he taught that “you can only come to faith on a Sunday.” He had been taught Christianity by his beloved grandmother, who believed the Lord would only listen to pleas for repentance on a Sunday. We talked and argued about this, and eventually, he threw us out shouting, “You just hate my Granny.” I hear now, years later, that he has extended the “repentance period” to Saturday as well. Yet he is still an extremely effective evangelist despite this chronic, man-made obstacle he has erected to the grace of God!

Surely the great point is this: flawed as some Chinese leaders were, they did the will of God mightily. They labored in a country that has seen the number of Christians grow from less than one million in 1949 to over eighty million today—the largest revival in the history of Christendom. God didn’t stop pouring out his Spirit because his saints were imperfect.

If the persecuted teach us anything, it is that God will work through us even despite our prejudices, blind spots, and eccentricities. If we offer ourselves, we will be used…as we are.

We do not have to be perfect to do God’s will. Otherwise, no one could.

RESPONSE: Today I will walk in faith thankful that I do not have to be perfect to do God’s will.

PRAYER: Thank You, Lord, that You can still use me with all my imperfections and blind spots.

Standing Strong Through The Storm (SSTS), a daily devotional message by SSTS author Paul Estabrooks. © 2011 Open Doors International. Used by permission.
Our Open Doors colleague, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, shares the following insight from his teaching, “Why I Need to Encounter the Persecuted Church.”

The NIV Couples Devotional - Saturday, September 19, 2020

How True Love Behaves

1 John 3:11–24

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

— 1 John 3:18

Television personality Art Linkletter once asked a little girl if she knew what true love was. She thought for a moment and then said, “Love is when your mommy reads you a bedtime story. True love is when she doesn’t skip any pages.”

The apostle John would have agreed. It’s easy to pledge love in the heat of passion or during the quiet intimacy of a Valentine’s Day dinner. But true love has to deal with short fuses, tired bodies, overextended commitments, and inconvenient interruptions every day. And yet it keeps on giving.

The church at the end of the first century was wrestling with a philosophic aberration of Christian doctrine called Gnosticism. Gnosticism played up the spiritual nature of humanity and downplayed its physical nature. Some select people believed they had a spark of divinity trapped in their flesh. Only the religious elite had the secret information (gnosis means “knowledge”) that would help them transcend their evil flesh. To them, Jesus was a heavenly visitor who came to this world like a ghostly apparition; he never actually became flesh and blood, for all flesh is evil and a divine spirit would never become human. Salvation consisted of secret chants and rituals that prepared one for release into the transcendent world. Gnostics ignored the physical needs of others and disdained those who did not share their secret inspiration.

John wrote about the true Spirit of God, who helps us know that Jesus actually came in the flesh. The “true love” of God put Jesus into our world, not just to float around like a ghostly figure with meaningless chants and rituals, but to struggle with the world’s problems and difficulties as a person of flesh and blood. Such true love helped those who were cold and hungry and in need of shelter. True love dug in and got dirty.

So it is in marriage. One couple I used to know never figured that out. The wife was addicted to romance novels and TV soap operas. For her, a constant flow of romantically charged passion was the only sure sign of love. When her husband came home from a hard day at his job too tired to court her, or when hours of cleaning or cooking took the fairy-tale bliss out of her week, she couldn’t take it. Eventually, she filed for divorce. She’s probably still looking for that make-believe kind of happiness.

The apostle John urged the church to believe in a God who physically came into our world to be with us in our struggles. Furthermore, he calls us to imitate God’s love by investing our energy in the day-to-day messiness of the real lives of others. We need to see others—especially our spouses—with our Father’s eyes, touch them with our Savior’s hands, and be inspired by the Spirit’s passion as we act out true love.

Wayne Brouwer

Let’s Talk

• What is the romantic temperature of our relationship? Hot? Lukewarm? Frosty? How does each of us feel about that? Why?
• How do we express our love for one another in words? How do we express it in deeds and actions?
• What do we need to keep in mind in those times when we don’t feel like loving? How can actions move our relationship forward when words become meaningless?

Television personality Art Linkletter once asked a little girl if she knew what true love was. She thought for a moment and then said, “Love is when your mommy reads you a bedtime story. True love is when she doesn’t skip any pages.”

John Piper Devotional — Our Unspeakable Privilege

Our Unspeakable Privilege

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”

— Exodus 3:14

One implication of the magnificent name, I AM WHO I AM, is that this infinite, absolute, self-determining God has drawn near to us in Jesus Christ.

In John 8:56–58, Jesus is answering the criticism of the Jewish leaders. He says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Jews then said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly! I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

Could Jesus have taken any more exalted words upon his lips? When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM,” he took up all the majestic truth of the name of God, wrapped it in the humility of servanthood, offered himself to atone for all our rebellion, and made a way for us to see the glory of God without fear.

In Jesus Christ we who are born of God have the unspeakable privilege of knowing Yahweh as our Father—I AM WHO I AM—the God

• who exists
• whose personality and power is owing solely to himself
• who never changes
• from whom all power and energy in the universe flows
• and to whom all creation should conform its life.

May those who know the name of God put their trust in him.
Could Jesus have taken any more exalted words upon his lips?

Un dia a la Vez — Dios es nuestro mayor defensor

Dios es nuestro mayor defensor

El que habita al abrigo del Altísimo morará bajo la sombra del Omnipotente.

— Salmo 91:1, RV-60

En el Manual de Instrucciones, Dios nos dice que «abogado tenemos para con el Padre, a Jesucristo el justo» (1 Juan 2:1, rv-60).

Sin embargo, para que esto sea así, debes creerle a Dios y tener tu fe puesta en Él, a fin de que veas este versículo hecho realidad en tu vida.

A cada momento vivimos situaciones donde decimos: «¿Quién podrá defenderme ahora?». Entonces comprobamos que solo Dios puede ayudarnos porque Él es omnipotente y omnipresente.

Creerle a Dios es un gran beneficio, pues aunque tal parece que esa situación que hoy vives es un callejón sin salida, Dios tiene la salida para todo problema. Él tiene la última palabra y es el que cambia los decretos de muerte a vida, de enfermedad a sanidad, de prisión a libertad, de culpable a inocente.

A Dios le interesa que nos vaya bien.

De modo que si quieres activar esa defensa a tu favor, debes dejar de luchar con tus propias fuerzas, debes dejar de pensar que te las sabes todas y rendirte por completo a Jesús.

Un Día a la Vez Copyright © by Claudia Pinzón
En el Manual de Instrucciones, Dios nos dice que «abogado tenemos para con el Padre, a Jesucristo el justo».

Хліб Наш Насущній — У фокусі

У фокусі

Читати: Дії 3:2-8, 16 | Біблія за рік: Еклезіястова 1–3 ; 2 Коринтян 11:16-33

Завантажити MP3

І через віру в Ім’я Його вздоровило Ім’я Його того, кого бачите й знаєте.

— Дії 3:16

Письменник Марк Твен говорив, що те, на що ми дивимося, і те, як ми це сприймаємо, може впливати на наші подальші кроки і навіть на нашу долю. Твен казав: “Не можна покладатися на свій зір, якщо ваша уява поза увагою”.

Апостол Петро також сказав про зір, коли відповів кульгавому жебраку, якого він та апостол Іван зустріли біля храмових воріт, що звалися Красними (Дії 3:2). Коли чоловік попросив у них грошей, Петро та Іван поглянули прямо на нього, і Петро промовив: “Подивися на нас!” (в. 4).

Чому він це сказав? Будучи посланцем Ісуса Христа, Петро імовірно хотів, аби жебрак перестав дивитися на власні обмеження, навіть на власну потребу в грошах. Подивившись на апостолів, чоловік мав побачити дійсність віри в Бога.

У відповідь апостол Петро сказав йому: “Срібла й золота в мене нема, але що я маю, даю тобі: у Ім’я Ісуса Христа Назарянина – устань та й ходи!” (в. 6). Потім Петро “підвів його. І хвилі тієї зміцнилися ноги й суглобці його!.. І, зірвавшись, він устав та й ходив, і з ними у храм увійшов, ходячи та підскакуючи, і хвалячи Бога!” (вв. 7-8).

Що сталося? Чоловік повірив Богу (в. 16). Проповідник Чарльз Сперджен закликав: “Просто зосередьте свій погляд на Ньому”. Якщо ми це робимо, то не бачимо перешкод. Ми бачимо Бога, Який розчищає наш шлях.

На чому ви зосереджені замість Бога? Перевівши погляд на Христа, що ви бачите у Ньому для свого життя?

Небесний Отче, якщо мої очі відвертаються від Тебе, зосередь мій погляд на Твоїй безмежній силі.

Автор Патриція Рейбон

© 2020 Хліб Наш Насущні
Письменник Марк Твен говорив, що те, на що ми дивимося, і те, як ми це сприймаємо, може впливати на наші подальші кроки і навіть на нашу долю.