Today our passages are Isaiah 22:1–24:23; Galatians 2:17–3:9; Psalm 60:1-12; and Proverbs 23:15-16. The readings are from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. If you find these readings helpful, please consider sending an offering directly to Cove Presbyterian Church, 3404 Main Street, Weirton, West Virginia or through PayPal by using the link below.
Isaiah 22-24:23 (The Message)
Isaiah 22
A Country of Cowards
1-3 A Message concerning the Valley of Vision: What's going on here anyway?All this partying and noisemaking,
Shouting and cheering in the streets,
the city noisy with celebrations!
You have no brave soldiers to honor,
no combat heroes to be proud of.
Your leaders were all cowards,
captured without even lifting a sword,
A country of cowards
captured escaping the battle.
You Looked, but You Never Looked to Him
4-8In the midst of the shouting, I said, "Let me alone.Let me grieve by myself.
Don't tell me it's going to be all right.
These people are doomed. It's not all right."
For the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
is bringing a day noisy with mobs of people,
Jostling and stampeding in the Valley of Vision,
knocking down walls
and hollering to the mountains, "Attack! Attack!"
Old enemies Elam and Kir arrive armed to the teeth—
weapons and chariots and cavalry.
Your fine valleys are noisy with war,
chariots and cavalry charging this way and that.
God has left Judah exposed and defenseless. 8-11You assessed your defenses that Day, inspected your arsenal of weapons in the Forest Armory. You found the weak places in the city walls that needed repair. You secured the water supply at the Lower Pool. You took an inventory of the houses in Jerusalem and tore down some to get bricks to fortify the city wall. You built a large cistern to ensure plenty of water.
You looked and looked and looked, but you never looked to him who gave you this city, never once consulted the One who has long had plans for this city.
12-13The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
called out on that Day,
Called for a day of repentant tears,
called you to dress in somber clothes of mourning.
But what do you do? You throw a party!
Eating and drinking and dancing in the streets!
You barbecue bulls and sheep, and throw a huge feast—
slabs of meat, kegs of beer.
"Seize the day! Eat and drink!
Tomorrow we die!"
14God-of-the-Angel-Armies whispered to me his verdict on this frivolity: "You'll pay for this outrage until the day you die." The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, says so.
The Key of the Davidic Heritage
15-19The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, spoke: "Come. Go to this steward, Shebna, who is in charge of all the king's affairs, and tell him: What's going on here? You're an outsider here and yet you act like you own the place, make a big, fancy tomb for yourself where everyone can see it, making sure everyone will think you're important. God is about to sack you, to throw you to the dogs. He'll grab you by the hair, swing you round and round dizzyingly, and then let you go, sailing through the air like a ball, until you're out of sight. Where you'll land, nobody knows. And there you'll die, and all the stuff you've collected heaped on your grave. You've disgraced your master's house! You're fired—and good riddance! 20-24"On that Day I'll replace Shebna. I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah. I'll dress him in your robe. I'll put your belt on him. I'll give him your authority. He'll be a father-leader to Jerusalem and the government of Judah. I'll give him the key of the Davidic heritage. He'll have the run of the place—open any door and keep it open, lock any door and keep it locked. I'll pound him like a nail into a solid wall. He'll secure the Davidic tradition. Everything will hang on him—not only the fate of Davidic descendants but also the detailed daily operations of the house, including cups and cutlery.25"And then the Day will come," says God-of-the-Angel-Armies, "when that nail will come loose and fall out, break loose from that solid wall—and everything hanging on it will go with it." That's what will happen. God says so.
Isaiah 23
It Was All Numbers, Dead Numbers, Profit and Loss
1-4 Wail, ships of Tarshish, your strong seaports all in ruins!When the ships returned from Cyprus,
they saw the destruction.
Hold your tongue, you who live on the seacoast,
merchants of Sidon.
Your people sailed the deep seas,
buying and selling,
Making money on wheat from Shihor,
grown along the Nile—
multinational broker in grains!
Hang your head in shame, Sidon. The Sea speaks up,
the powerhouse of the ocean says,
"I've never had labor pains, never had a baby,
never reared children to adulthood,
Never gave life, never worked with life.
It was all numbers, dead numbers, profit and loss." 5When Egypt gets the report on Tyre,
what wailing! what wringing of hands!
Nothing Left Here to Be Proud Of
6-12Visit Tarshish, you who live on the seacoast.Take a good, long look and wail—yes, cry buckets of tears!
Is this the city you remember as energetic and alive,
bustling with activity, this historic old city,
Expanding throughout the globe,
buying and selling all over the world?
And who is behind the collapse of Tyre,
the Tyre that controlled the world markets?
Tyre's merchants were the business tycoons.
Tyre's traders called all the shots.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies ordered the crash
to show the sordid backside of pride
and puncture the inflated reputations.
Sail for home, O ships of Tarshish.
There are no docks left in this harbor.
God reached out to the sea and sea traders,
threw the sea kingdoms into turmoil.
God ordered the destruction
of the seacoast cities, the centers of commerce.
God said, "There's nothing left here to be proud of,
bankrupt and bereft Sidon.
Do you want to make a new start in Cyprus?
Don't count on it. Nothing there will work out for you either." 13Look at what happened to Babylon: There's nothing left of it. Assyria turned it into a desert, into a refuge for wild dogs and stray cats. They brought in their big siege engines, tore down the buildings, and left nothing behind but rubble.
14Wail, ships of Tarshish,
your strong seaports all in ruins!
15-16For the next seventy years, a king's lifetime, Tyre will be forgotten. At the end of the seventy years, Tyre will stage a comeback, but it will be the comeback of a worn-out whore, as in the song:
"Take a harp, circle the city,
unremembered whore.
Sing your old songs, your many old songs.
Maybe someone will remember."
17-18At the end of the seventy years, God will look in on Tyre. She'll go back to her old whoring trade, selling herself to the highest bidder, doing anything with anyone—promiscuous with all the kingdoms of earth—for a fee. But everything she gets, all the money she takes in, will be turned over to God. It will not be put in banks. Her profits will be put to the use of God-Aware, God-Serving-People, providing plenty of food and the best of clothing.
Isaiah 24
The Landscape Will Be a Moonscape
1-3 Danger ahead! God's about to ravish the earth and leave it in ruins,Rip everything out by the roots
and send everyone scurrying:
priests and laypeople alike,
owners and workers alike,
celebrities and nobodies alike,
buyers and sellers alike,
bankers and beggars alike,
the haves and have-nots alike.
The landscape will be a moonscape,
totally wasted.
And why? Because God says so.
He's issued the orders. 4The earth turns gaunt and gray,
the world silent and sad,
sky and land lifeless, colorless.
Earth Polluted by Its Very Own People
5-13Earth is polluted by its very own people,who have broken its laws,
Disrupted its order,
violated the sacred and eternal covenant.
Therefore a curse, like a cancer,
ravages the earth.
Its people pay the price of their sacrilege.
They dwindle away, dying out one by one.
No more wine, no more vineyards,
no more songs or singers.
The laughter of castanets is gone,
the shouts of celebrants, gone,
the laughter of fiddles, gone.
No more parties with toasts of champagne.
Serious drinkers gag on their drinks.
The chaotic cities are unlivable. Anarchy reigns.
Every house is boarded up, condemned.
People riot in the streets for wine,
but the good times are gone forever—
no more joy for this old world.
The city is dead and deserted,
bulldozed into piles of rubble.
That's the way it will be on this earth.
This is the fate of all nations:
An olive tree shaken clean of its olives,
a grapevine picked clean of its grapes. 14-16But there are some who will break into glad song.
Out of the west they'll shout of God's majesty.
Yes, from the east God's glory will ascend.
Every island of the sea
Will broadcast God's fame,
the fame of the God of Israel.
From the four winds and the seven seas we hear the singing:
"All praise to the Righteous One!"
16-20But I said, "That's all well and good for somebody,
but all I can see is doom, doom, and more doom."
All of them at one another's throats,
yes, all of them at one another's throats.
Terror and pits and booby traps
are everywhere, whoever you are.
If you run from the terror,
you'll fall into the pit.
If you climb out of the pit,
you'll get caught in the trap.
Chaos pours out of the skies.
The foundations of earth are crumbling.
Earth is smashed to pieces,
earth is ripped to shreds,
earth is wobbling out of control,
Earth staggers like a drunk,
sways like a shack in a high wind.
Its piled-up sins are too much for it.
It collapses and won't get up again.
21-23That's when God will call on the carpet
rebel powers in the skies and
Rebel kings on earth.
They'll be rounded up like prisoners in a jail,
Corralled and locked up in a jail,
and then sentenced and put to hard labor.
Shamefaced moon will cower, humiliated,
red-faced sun will skulk, disgraced,
Because God-of-the-Angel-Armies will take over,
ruling from Mount Zion and Jerusalem,
Splendid and glorious
before all his leaders.
Galatians 2:17-3:9 (The Message)
17-18Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was "trying to be good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.
19-21What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
19-21What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
Galatians 3
Trust in Christ, Not the Law
1 You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it's obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough. 2-4Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God's Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!5-6Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.
7-8Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith? It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed in you."
9-10So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham, who lived by faith—this is no new doctrine! And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: "Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law."
Psalm 60:1-12 (The Message)
Psalm 60
And stalked off angry.
Come back. Oh please, come back! You shook earth to the foundations,
ripped open huge crevasses.
Heal the breaks! Everything's
coming apart at the seams.
3-5 You made your people look doom in the face,
then gave us cheap wine to drown our troubles.
Then you planted a flag to rally your people,
an unfurled flag to look to for courage.
Now do something quickly, answer right now,
so the one you love best is saved.
6-8 That's when God spoke in holy splendor,
"Bursting with joy,
I make a present of Shechem,
I hand out Succoth Valley as a gift.
Gilead's in my pocket,
to say nothing of Manasseh.
Ephraim's my hard hat,
Judah my hammer;
Moab's a scrub bucket,
I mop the floor with Moab,
Spit on Edom,
rain fireworks all over Philistia."
9-10 Who will take me to the thick of the fight?
Who'll show me the road to Edom?
You aren't giving up on us, are you, God?
refusing to go out with our troops?
11-12 Give us help for the hard task;
human help is worthless.
In God we'll do our very best;
he'll flatten the opposition for good.
Proverbs 23:15-16 (The Message)
13
15-16 Dear child, if you become wise,I'll be one happy parent.
My heart will dance and sing
to the tuneful truth you'll speak.
Verse of the Day
“[Wisdom from Above]Are any of you wise or sensible? Then show it by living right and by being humble and wise in everything you do.” - James 3:13
Today's passage is from the Contemporary English Version.
Thought for the DayEnglish critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism, T. E. Hulme wrote, “No history can be a faithful mirror. If it were, it would be as long and as dull as life itself. It must be a selection, and, being a selection, must inevitably be biased.”
A Joke for Today
"The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks erode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. Vegetables can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water.
"But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have eaten or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?"
A 75-year-old man in the front row stood up and said, "Wedding cake."
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