Jer. 27:1–11
27:1 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah early in the reign of Josiah’s son, King Zedekiah of Judah. 2The Lord told me, “Make a yoke out of leather straps and wooden crossbars and put it on your neck. 3Use it to send messages to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon. Send them through the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to King Zedekiah of Judah. 4Charge them to give their masters a message from me. Tell them, ‘The Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to give your masters this message: 5“I made the earth and the people and animals on it by my mighty power and great strength, and I give it to whomever I see fit. 6I have at this time placed all these nations of yours under the power of my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have even made all the wild animals subject to him. 7All nations must serve him and his son and grandson until the time comes for his own nation to fall. Then many nations and great kings will in turn subjugate Babylon. 8But suppose a nation or a kingdom will not be subject to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Suppose it will not submit to the yoke of servitude to him. I, the Lord, affirm that I will punish that nation. I will use the king of Babylon to punish it with war, starvation, and disease until I have destroyed it. 9So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, by dreams, by consulting the dead, or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be subject to the king of Babylon.’ 10Do not listen to them, because their prophecies are lies. Listening to them will only cause you to be taken far away from your native land. I will drive you out of your country and you will die in exile. 11Things will go better for the nation that submits to the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon and is subject to him. I will leave that nation in its native land. Its people can continue to farm it and live in it. I, the Lord, affirm it!”’”
(NET Bible)Ps. 1
1:1 How blessed is the one who does not follow the advice of the wicked,
or stand in the pathway with sinners,
or sit in the assembly of scoffers.
2Instead he finds pleasure in obeying the Lord’s commands;
he meditates on his commands day and night.
3He is like a tree planted by flowing streams;
it yields its fruit at the proper time,
and its leaves never fall off.
He succeeds in everything he attempts.
4Not so with the wicked!
Instead they are like wind-driven chaff.
5For this reason the wicked cannot withstand judgment,
nor can sinners join the assembly of the godly.
6Certainly the Lord guards the way of the godly,
but the way of the wicked ends in destruction.
(NET Bible)Acts 16:11–24
16:11 We put out to sea from Troas and sailed a straight course to Samothrace, the next day to Neapolis, 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of that district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. We stayed in this city for some days. 13On the Sabbath day we went outside the city gate to the side of the river, where we thought there would be a place of prayer, and we sat down and began to speak to the women who had assembled there. 14A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, a God-fearing woman, listened to us. The Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying. 15After she and her household were baptized, she urged us, “If you consider me to be a believer in the Lord, come and stay in my house.” And she persuaded us.
16Now as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit that enabled her to foretell the future by supernatural means. She brought her owners a great profit by fortune-telling. 17She followed behind Paul and us and kept crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” 18She continued to do this for many days. But Paul became greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out of her at once. 19But when her owners saw their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are throwing our city into confusion. They are Jews 21and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us to accept or practice, since we are Romans.”
22The crowd joined the attack against them, and the magistrates tore the clothes off Paul and Silas and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 23After they had beaten them severely, they threw them into prison and commanded the jailer to guard them securely. 24Receiving such orders, he threw them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
(NET Bible)As early as 1523 [Luther] wrote in Vom Anbetendes Sakraments: “Beware of this; forget knowledge and understanding that are so vainly exercised as to how it is possible for flesh and blood to be present, and because they cannot comprehend it refuse to believe it. Hold fast to the word that Christ spoke, ‘Take, this is my body, this is my blood.’ We must not wickedly trifle with God’s words as those who, without any clearly expressed warrant, want to give another meaning to some word differing from its natural meaning, as those do who sacrilegiously try to twist the word is into meaning ‘it signifies,’ and so distort this statement of Christ, ‘ is is my body,’ that it is to mean, ‘this signifies my body.’ But we shall and will simply stand by Christ’s words; He will not betray us, and we will repel such error with no other sword than the fact that Christ does not say, ‘this signifies my body, but this is my body.’ For if such evil frivolity be permitted in one place so that we could say, without any foundation in Scripture, that ‘is’ means ‘signifies,’ there would be no protection against a similar interpretation in any other case, and all Scripture would be nullified because there would be no reason why such wicked trifling could be permitted in one case and denied in another.” (30)
–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.