Day 106 reading

Wisdom·Psalm 68:11–20

¹¹The Lord gives the command; a great company of women proclaim it: ¹²“Kings and their armies flee in haste; she who waits at home divides the plunder. ¹³Though you lie down among the sheepfolds, the wings of the dove are covered with silver, and her feathers with shimmering gold.” ¹⁴When the Almighty scattered the kings in the land, it was like the snow falling on Zalmon. ¹⁵A mountain of God is Mount Bashan; a mountain of many peaks is Mount Bashan. ¹⁶Why do you gaze in envy, O mountains of many peaks? This is the mountain God chose for His dwelling, where the LORD will surely dwell forever. ¹⁷The chariots of God are tens of thousands— thousands of thousands are they; the Lord is in His sanctuary as He was at Sinai. ¹⁸You have ascended on high; You have led captives away. You have received gifts from men, even from the rebellious, that the LORD God may dwell there. ¹⁹Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God of our salvation. Selah ²⁰Our God is a God of deliverance; the Lord GOD is our rescuer from death.

New Testament·Luke 11:32–54

³²The men of Nineveh will stand at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here. ³³No one lights a lamp and puts it in a cellar or under a basket. Instead, he sets it on a stand, so those who enter can see the light. ³⁴Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body is full of darkness. ³⁵Be careful, then, that the light within you is not darkness. ³⁶So if your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, you will be radiant, as though a lamp were shining on you.” ³⁷As Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee invited Him to dine with him; so He went in and reclined at the table. ³⁸But the Pharisee was surprised to see that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. ³⁹“Now then,” said the Lord, “you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰You fools! Did not the One who made the outside make the inside as well? ⁴¹But give as alms the things that are within you, and you will see that everything is clean for you. ⁴²Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint, rue, and every herb, but you disregard justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. ⁴³Woe to you Pharisees! You love the chief seats in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplaces. ⁴⁴Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without even noticing.” ⁴⁵One of the experts in the law told Him, “Teacher, when You say these things, You insult us as well.” ⁴⁶“Woe to you as well, experts in the law!” He replied. “You weigh men down with heavy burdens, but you yourselves will not lift a finger to lighten their load. ⁴⁷Woe to you! You build tombs for the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them. ⁴⁸So you are witnesses consenting to the deeds of your fathers: They killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹Because of this, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles; some of them they will kill and others they will persecute.’ ⁵⁰As a result, this generation will be charged with the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the foundation of the world, ⁵¹from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, all of it will be charged to this generation. ⁵²Woe to you experts in the law! For you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” ⁵³As Jesus went on from there, the scribes and Pharisees began to oppose Him bitterly and to ply Him with questions about many things, ⁵⁴waiting to catch Him in something He might say.

Old Testament·Deuteronomy 29–30

¹These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant He had made with them at Horeb. ²Moses summoned all Israel and proclaimed to them, “You have seen with your own eyes everything the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land. ³You saw with your own eyes the great trials, and those miraculous signs and wonders. ⁴Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear. ⁵For forty years I led you in the wilderness, yet your clothes and sandals did not wear out. ⁶You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am the LORD your God. ⁷When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out against us in battle, but we defeated them. ⁸We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. ⁹So keep and follow the words of this covenant, that you may prosper in all you do. ¹⁰All of you are standing today before the LORD your God—you leaders of tribes, elders, officials, and all the men of Israel, ¹¹your children and wives, and the foreigners in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water— ¹²so that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, which He is making with you today, and into His oath, ¹³and so that He may establish you today as His people, and He may be your God as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ¹⁴I am making this covenant and this oath not only with you, ¹⁵but also with those who are standing here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God, as well as with those who are not here today. ¹⁶For you yourselves know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we passed through the nations on the way here. ¹⁷You saw the abominations and idols among them made of wood and stone, of silver and gold. ¹⁸Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit, ¹⁹because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. ²⁰The LORD will never be willing to forgive him. Instead, His anger and jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse written in this book will fall upon him. The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven ²¹and single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. ²²Then the generation to come—your sons who follow you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land—will see the plagues of the land and the sicknesses the LORD has inflicted on it. ²³All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger. ²⁴So all the nations will ask, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’ ²⁵And the people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. ²⁶They went and served other gods, and they worshiped gods they had not known—gods that the LORD had not given to them. ²⁷Therefore the anger of the LORD burned against this land, and He brought upon it every curse written in this book. ²⁸The LORD uprooted them from their land in His anger, rage, and great wrath, and He cast them into another land, where they are today.’ ²⁹The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.

30“When all these things come upon you—the blessings and curses I have set before you—and you call them to mind in all the nations to which the LORD your God has banished you, ²and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey His voice with all your heart and all your soul according to everything I am giving you today, ³then He will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you from all the nations to which the LORD your God has scattered you. ⁴Even if you have been banished to the farthest horizon, He will gather you and return you from there. ⁵And the LORD your God will bring you into the land your fathers possessed, and you will take possession of it. He will cause you to prosper and multiply more than your fathers. ⁶The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. ⁷Then the LORD your God will put all these curses upon your enemies who hate you and persecute you. ⁸And you will again obey the voice of the LORD and follow all His commandments I am giving you today. ⁹So the LORD your God will make you abound in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your land. Indeed, the LORD will again delight in your goodness, as He delighted in that of your fathers, ¹⁰if you obey the LORD your God by keeping His commandments and statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to Him with all your heart and with all your soul. ¹¹For this commandment I give you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. ¹²It is not in heaven, that you should need to ask, ‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it for us and proclaim it, that we may obey it?’ ¹³And it is not beyond the sea, that you should need to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us and proclaim it, that we may obey it?’ ¹⁴But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may obey it. ¹⁵See, I have set before you today life and goodness, as well as death and disaster. ¹⁶For I am commanding you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and increase, and the LORD your God may bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. ¹⁷But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, but are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, ¹⁸I declare to you today that you will surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. ¹⁹I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, ²⁰and that you may love the LORD your God, obey Him, and hold fast to Him. For He is your life, and He will prolong your life in the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”