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Deuteronomy 26 (ESV)

Offerings of Firstfruits and Tithes

26 “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’ Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God.

“And you shall make response before the Lord your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, O Lord, have given me.’ And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. 11 And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you.

12 “When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled, 13 then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them. 14 I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean, or offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God. I have done according to all that you have commanded me. 15 Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us, as you swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.’

16 “This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. 17 You have declared today that the Lord is your God, and that you will walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules, and will obey his voice. 18 And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, 19 and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.”

Psalm 73 (ESV)

God Is My Strength and Portion Forever

73 A Psalm of Asaph.

Truly God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
my steps had nearly slipped.

For I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pangs until death;
their bodies are fat and sleek.

They are not in trouble as others are;
they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.

Therefore pride is their necklace;
violence covers them as a garment.

Their eyes swell out through fatness;
their hearts overflow with follies.

They scoff and speak with malice;
loftily they threaten oppression.

They set their mouths against the heavens,
and their tongue struts through the earth.

10  Therefore his people turn back to them,
and find no fault in them.

11  And they say, “How can God know?
Is there knowledge in the Most High?”

12  Behold, these are the wicked;
always at ease, they increase in riches.

13  All in vain have I kept my heart clean
and washed my hands in innocence.

14  For all the day long I have been stricken
and rebuked every morning.

15  If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

16  But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,

17  until I went into the sanctuary of God;
then I discerned their end.

18  Truly you set them in slippery places;
you make them fall to ruin.

19  How they are destroyed in a moment,
swept away utterly by terrors!

20  Like a dream when one awakes,
O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

21  When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,

22  I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.

23  Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.

24  You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.

25  Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

26  My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

27  For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

28  But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
that I may tell of all your works.

Luke 3:15–17 (ESV)

15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, 16 John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

[Luther continues in his exposition of John chapters 1 and 2]: “But we have to reckon, as all the histories do, that Christ was baptized in the thirtieth year of His life, that He began to preach a er His baptism and preached for three full years. e remaining time that followed the third year and was the beginning of the fourth, beginning with either the Festival of the Circumcision or Epiphany Day and continuing until Easter (which can be reckoned as almost a half year), He continued to preach, because He preached three and a half years (though it fell a little short of that time). So it could easily have been that when Christ was thirty years old and after He had been baptized, that in the first year of His activity and at the first Easter [Passover] of that period He did this, but it is a matter of no importance. When discrepancies occur in the Holy Scriptures and we cannot harmonize them, let it pass, it does not endanger the article of the Christian faith, because all the evangelists agree in this that Christ died for our sins. As for the rest, concerning His acts and miracles they observe no particular order, because they often place what took place later at an earlier date.” (46)

–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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