Is. 34:1–17
34:1 Come near, you nations, and listen!
Pay attention, you people!
The earth and everything it contains must listen,
the world and everything that lives in it.
2For the Lord is angry at all the nations
and furious with all their armies.
He will annihilate them and slaughter them.
3Their slain will be left unburied,
their corpses will stink;
the hills will soak up their blood.
4All the stars in the sky will fade away,
the sky will roll up like a scroll;
all its stars will wither,
like a leaf withers and falls from a vine
or a fig withers and falls from a tree.
5He says, “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers.
Look, it now descends on Edom,
on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”
6The Lord’s sword is dripping with blood,
it is covered with fat;
it drips with the blood of young rams and goats
and is covered with the fat of rams’ kidneys.
For the Lord is holding a sacrifice in Bozrah,
a bloody slaughter in the land of Edom.
7Wild oxen will be slaughtered along with them,
as well as strong bulls.
Their land is drenched with blood,
their soil is covered with fat.
8For the Lord has planned a day of revenge,
a time when he will repay Edom for her hostility toward Zion.
9Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch
and her soil into brimstone;
her land will become burning pitch.
10Night and day it will burn;
its smoke will ascend continually.
Generation after generation it will be a wasteland,
and no one will ever pass through it again.
11Owls and wild animals will live there,
all kinds of wild birds will settle in it.
The Lord will stretch out over her
the measuring line of ruin
and the plumb line of destruction.
12Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom,
and all her officials will disappear.
13Her fortresses will be overgrown with thorns;
thickets and weeds will grow in her fortified cities.
Jackals will settle there;
ostriches will live there.
14Wild animals and wild dogs will congregate there;
wild goats will bleat to one another.
Yes, nocturnal animals will rest there
and make for themselves a nest.
15Owls will make nests and lay eggs there;
they will hatch them and protect them.
Yes, hawks will gather there,
each with its mate.
16Carefully read the scroll of the Lord!
Not one of these creatures will be missing,
none will lack a mate.
For the Lord has issued the decree,
and his own Spirit gathers them.
17He assigns them their allotment;
he measures out their assigned place.
They will live there permanently;
they will settle in it through successive generations.
(NET Bible)Ps. 13
13:1 For the music director, a psalm of David.
How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me?
How long will you pay no attention to me?
2How long must I worry,
and suffer in broad daylight?
How long will my enemy gloat over me?
3Look at me! Answer me, O Lord my God!
Revive me, or else I will die.
4Then my enemy will say, “I have defeated him.”
Then my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
5But I trust in your faithfulness.
May I rejoice because of your deliverance.
6I will sing praises to the Lord
when he vindicates me.
(NET Bible)John 6:60–71
6:60 Then many of his disciples, when they heard these things, said, “This is a difficult saying! Who can understand it?” 61When Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining about this, he said to them, “Does this cause you to be offended? 62Then what if you see the Son of Man ascending where he was before? 63The Spirit is the one who gives life; human nature is of no help! The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. 64But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus had already known from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65So Jesus added, “Because of this I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has allowed him to come.”
66After this many of his disciples quit following him and did not accompany him any longer. 67So Jesus said to the twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” 68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God!” 70Jesus replied, “Didn’t I choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is the devil?” 71(Now he said this about Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for Judas, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.)
(NET Bible)
Luther’s first statements concerning this matter we find in the marginal notes written by him in his personal copy of the Sentences of Lombardus, which, in 1510, as a Sententiarius he was called upon to teach. Here we find statements such as the following: “But you, dear reader, whoever you may be, take this as the word of a simple man: no one has ever yet had the experience that the vapors of the earth have illuminated the heavens, but rather that they hold back the light from the earth. By that I want to say that theology is heaven, or, to put it still better, the kingdom of heaven. Man is the earth, and his speculations are the vapors; now understand the rest and see for what reason there are such great di erences of opinion among the doctors. Note, too, that a swine has never been able to teach Minerva even though it o en imagines that it can.” “All light must come from revelation, the human understanding is unable to understand supernatural matters.” “For since no one has seen them, whatever is added to revelation is certainly nothing but human invention.” “Arguments based on reason determine nothing, but because the Holy Ghost says it is true, it is true.” In connection with a disputed question Luther affirms, “though many famous doctors hold this opinion, yet they do not have Scripture on their side but only arguments of reason. But I have the words of Scripture on my side in this opinion that the soul is the image of God, and so I say with the Apostle, ‘Though an angel from heaven, that is, a doctor of the Church, teaches otherwise let him be anathema!’” (13)
–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.