Home > Reading > Daily Reading – April 20, 2019

Holy Saturday

“You are a chosen race” (1 Peter 2:9)

Reading: 1 Peter 2:4-10

Dear gracious and heavenly Father, You are our God with the power and the authority to choose and grant a new race. We thank You, holy God, for making us a chosen race through the powerful blood of Jesus Christ that was poured into our lives.

Gracious Jesus, in our fallen nature and in our sin, we were far from the covenant, never connected to the holy God. Through Your death, You washed away our sins, renewed our lives, and granted us a new name and identity. Today we are declared a chosen race. Please help us to always be thankful for Your amazing saving grace and help us to use this new name and nature to serve Your holy Church in total dedication and submission.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!

The season of Lent has typically held a special place in the life of the Church. Beginning with Ash Wednesday and culminating in the events of Holy Week, Lent is an invitation to focus on what is central to our faith. It has also become a time for personal and spiritual reflection on who we are as God’s people and on what God has given us so graciously in Christ.

In earlier times, Lent was a time to prepare for receiving Baptism. More recently it has become a time to lift up in worship and education the core teachings of our faith or to explore some of the major personalities who surround Jesus on His journey to the cross.

This devotional booklet is meant to enhance and enrich our Lenten observance. We have chosen two themes. One is a selection of biblical passages in which God is addressed as the “Great I Am.” The other is a selection of passages in which we are addressed as God’s people, “You are…”

It is our hope that, as we reflect on these passages from God’s Word, our faith in God may be strengthened and our commitment to His Word renewed.

It is also our prayer that, as we move from Ash Wednesday to Holy Week, we may join the two disciples of Jesus as they cried out, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32 ESV).

The Rev. Paull Spring, Bishop Emeritus
The Rev. Dr. Gemechis Buba, Assistant to the Bishop for Missions

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked (CEV) are from the Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission. Scripture quotations designated NASB or NASB95 are from the New American Standard Bible, © the Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Scripture quotations designated ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Proverbs 5 (ESV)

Warning Against Adultery

My son, be attentive to my wisdom;
incline your ear to my understanding,
that you may keep discretion,
and your lips may guard knowledge.
For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death;
her steps follow the path to Sheol;
she does not ponder the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it.

And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
lest you give your honor to others
and your years to the merciless,
10  lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
11  and at the end of your life you groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
12  and you say, “How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
13  I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14  I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”

15  Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16  Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
17  Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
18  Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19  a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
20  Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

21  For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths.
22  The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23  He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray.

Psalm 102 (ESV)

Do Not Hide Your Face from Me

102 A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

Hear my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you!

Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress!
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call!

For my days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.

My heart is struck down like grass and has withered;
I forget to eat my bread.

Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my flesh.

I am like a desert owl of the wilderness,
like an owl of the waste places;

I lie awake;
I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop.

All the day my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.

For I eat ashes like bread
and mingle tears with my drink,

10  because of your indignation and anger;
for you have taken me up and thrown me down.

11  My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.

12  But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;
you are remembered throughout all generations.

13  You will arise and have pity on Zion;
it is the time to favor her;
the appointed time has come.

14  For your servants hold her stones dear
and have pity on her dust.

15  Nations will fear the name of the Lord,
and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory.

16  For the Lord builds up Zion;
he appears in his glory;

17  he regards the prayer of the destitute
and does not despise their prayer.

18  Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord:

19  that he looked down from his holy height;
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,

20  to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die,

21  that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,
and in Jerusalem his praise,

22  when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

23  He has broken my strength in midcourse;
he has shortened my days.

24  “O my God,” I say, “take me not away
in the midst of my days—
you whose years endure
throughout all generations!”

25  Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.

26  They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,

27  but you are the same, and your years have no end.

28  The children of your servants shall dwell secure;
their offspring shall be established before you.

Hebrews 9:11–28 (ESV)

Redemption Through the Blood of Christ

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

This word of Luther spoken at Worms has o en, unfortunately, been misconstrued. It has been inferred from it that Luther here demanded an unrestricted liberty of thought and conscience, according to which there is no such thing as an objective authority outside of ourselves, and man is responsible to no one but himself, his own subjective, arbitrary conscience. It is not to be denied that natural man would find his greatest delight in such an absolute freedom of thought and conscience, just as such freedom sooner or later always leads to a dissolution of morality and religion but never serves to fortify the same. Such unrestricted individualism, centering only in itself, divorced from all objective authority, was, perhaps, advocated by Italian humanism but never by Luther. This needs no further proof even though historians like Harnack saw fit to write: “ The Reformation protested against all formal, external authority in matters of religion. Thus Luther also protested against the authority of the letter of the Bible.” Whoever appeals to the confession of Luther at Worms in support of this deliberately closes his eyes to the fact that Luther expressly declared, “my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” (19)

–Johann Michael Reu, Luther on the Scriptures

This daily Bible reading guide, Reading the Word of God, was conceived and prepared as a result of the ongoing discussions between representatives of three church bodies: Lutheran Church—Canada (LCC), The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC). The following individuals have represented their church bodies and approved this introduction and the reading guide: LCC: President Robert Bugbee; NALC: Bishop John Bradosky, Revs. Mark Chavez, James Nestingen, and David Wendel; LCMS: Revs. Albert Collver, Joel Lehenbauer, John Pless, and Larry Vogel.

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