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July 2016

“BREAD OF LIFE” READINGS July 2016

Date Verse Reading Comments

Jul 1 TLH 322 Psalm 143 Confessing our failure to do God’s will, we trust both in His mercy and in His future guidance.

Jul 2 TLH 526 Psalm 3 Protection and deliverance come from the Lord.

Jul 4 TLH 577 2 Samuel 18:28-19:4 David’s love would have given his life for sinful Absalom. Jesus’ love gave His life for all poor sinners.

Jul 5 TLH 234 1 Corinthians 2:6-14 God’s “secret wisdom” is the Gospel, revealed by the Spirit, which no human mind could have
figured out for itself.Read More »“BREAD OF LIFE” READINGS July 2016

God’s Institution of Marriage

It’s the “Same Old Same Old”

“Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said,  ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh”

(Genesis 2:22-24 NIV 84).

“Same old same old.”

This is the answer I received from a friend when I asked how things were going for him at work. He went on to share that he was feeling a bit burned out and yearning for something new and different from his daily work routine.

People generally use the phrase same old same old in a negative sense to describe situations that are boring or annoying (and which they might like to have changed). Yet there’s a sense in which it may be understood positively. Take God’s institution of marriage, for example. Though large segments of our society are attempting to morph it into something new (the thinking goes something like “Why should we stay mired in the same old tired ideas of yesteryear? We need to change marriage’s definition so that it includes couples of the same sex”), yet for us Christians, marriage remains the “same old” lovely institution God ordained at the dawn of time when He created Eve for Adam (Genesis 2:19-22). We hold fast to what God teaches about marriage and His “same old” definition: marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman living together as husband and wife.Read More »God’s Institution of Marriage

“Lord, Who at Cana’s Wedding-Feast”

Hymn 620 is actually a prayer to Christ, offered in the context of a wedding ceremony.  When at that wedding we sing  “Thou dearer far than earthly guest,/ Vouchsafe Thy presence here” (verse 1), we are actually praying that Christ will be present at this wedding, even as He was present at the wedding in Cana, where He performed the first miracle in His public ministry.Read More »“Lord, Who at Cana’s Wedding-Feast”

“What a Contrast!”

“Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services. But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people’s sins committed in ignorance; the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience—concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation”  (Hebrews 9:6-10).Read More »“What a Contrast!”