Joel 1:1–12
1:1 This is the Lord’s message that came to Joel the son of Pethuel:
2Listen to this, you elders;
pay attention, all inhabitants of the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your whole life
or in the lifetime of your ancestors?
3Tell your children about it;
have your children tell their children,
and their children the following generation.
4What the gazam-locust left the ‘arbeh-locust consumed;
what the ‘arbeh-locust left the yeleq-locust consumed;
and what the yeleq-locust left the hasil-locust consumed.
5Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you wine drinkers,
because the sweet wine has been taken away from you.
6For a nation has invaded my land,
mighty and without number.
Their teeth are lion’s teeth;
they have the fangs of a lioness.
7They have destroyed my vines;
they have turned my fig trees into mere splinters.
They have completely stripped off the bark and thrown it aside;
the twigs are stripped bare.
8Wail like a young virgin clothed in sackcloth,
lamenting the death of her husband to be.
9No one brings grain offerings or drink offerings
to the temple of the Lord anymore.
So the priests, those who serve the Lord, are in mourning.
10The crops of the fields have been destroyed.
The ground is in mourning because the grain has perished.
The fresh wine has dried up;
the olive oil languishes.
11Be distressed, farmers;
wail, vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley.
For the harvest of the field has perished.
12The vine has dried up;
the fig tree languishes—
the pomegranate, date, and apple as well.
In fact, all the trees of the field have dried up.
Indeed, the joy of the people has dried up!
(NET Bible)Ps. 79
79:1 A psalm of Asaph.
O God, foreigners have invaded your chosen land;
they have polluted your holy temple
and turned Jerusalem into a heap of ruins.
2They have given the corpses of your servants
to the birds of the sky,
the flesh of your loyal followers
to the beasts of the earth.
3They have made their blood flow like water
all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury them.
4We have become an object of disdain to our neighbors;
those who live on our borders taunt and insult us.
5How long will this go on, O Lord?
Will you stay angry forever?
How long will your rage burn like fire?
6Pour out your anger on the nations that do not acknowledge you,
on the kingdoms that do not pray to you.
7For they have devoured Jacob
and destroyed his home.
8Do not hold us accountable for the sins of earlier generations.
Quickly send your compassion our way,
for we are in serious trouble.
9Help us, O God, our deliverer!
For the sake of your glorious reputation, rescue us.
Forgive our sins for the sake of your reputation.
10Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?”
Before our very eyes may the shed blood of your servants
be avenged among the nations.
11Listen to the painful cries of the prisoners.
Use your great strength to set free those condemned to die.
12Pay back our neighbors in full.
May they be insulted the same way they insulted you, O Lord.
13Then we, your people, the sheep of your pasture,
will continually thank you.
We will tell coming generations of your praiseworthy acts.
(NET Bible)Rom. 11:1–10
11:1 So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew! Do you not know what the scripture says about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 3“Lord, they have killed your prophets; they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life!” 4But what was the divine response to him? “I have kept for myself 7,000 people who have not bent the knee to Baal.”
5So in the same way at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6And if it is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. 7What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was diligently seeking, but the elect obtained it. The rest were hardened, 8as it is written,
“God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear,
to this very day.”
9And David says,
“Let their table become a snare and trap,
a stumbling block and a retribution for them;
10let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see,
and make their backs bend continually.”
(NET Bible)
Here we might add what Luther said in 1528 in his Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis … “So we must say that Matthew and Mark have placed after the New Supper what took place after the old Supper and is to be located there. For they were not greatly concerned about the order but were satisfied if they wrote history and truth. Luke, however, who wrote after them, states that the reason for his writing was that many others had written such accounts without regard to the order of events, and that he, therefore, had resolved to write them in proper order.” (47–48)
–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.