If you're running a bit behind this week due to the length of Psalm 119 use today and tomorrow to get caught up. If not, go ahead and reread that Psalm again this weekend....  Read More

Today's Reading: Mark 10:1-52We're going to focus on the parts of this chapter where Jesus reaffirms the Law. Although many claim that Jesus never addresses the issue of homosexuality, in verses 1-11, He clearly affirms the Biblical model for marriage: one man married to one woman for a lifetime.Then in the account of the rich young ruler in verses 17-31, Jesus commends the young man for following...  Read More

Today's reading: Matthew 5:1-48Most of you are probably familiar with this chapter, which is the beginning of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount". While some, even some Christians, have used God's grace as an excuse to violate God's Law, we see here that Jesus certainly did not intend for that to happen. In fact, Jesus actually holds His followers to a higher standard: anger is just as bad as murder; lus...  Read More

Today's reading: Psalm 119:1-176Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible with 176 verses. It has a similar length to some of the Bible's shorter books like Philippians, James, or Ruth!  So for this week, I'd suggest that you don't sweat it if it takes two or three days to read this chapter and you need to use the weekend to catch up on the rest of this week's readings.The structure of Psalm 1...  Read More

Today's reading: Deuteronomy 30:1-20Here we see that God will never force His people to do what He has commanded. He lays out for us the choice of obedience, which leads to life, or disobedience, which leads to death. That means that we can never blame God for our sin - that is always our choice.We also see here that God delights in forgiveness and restoration when we humbly come before Him and ac...  Read More

Today's reading: Deuteronomy 29:1-29The primary warning in this chapter is against going after other gods. Most of us are unlikely to worship gods of wood or stone, but we do have a tendency to serve other gods without even recognizing it. Anything that has a higher priority in our lives than our relationship with God is essentially another god. In our culture today, that could be our jobs, our ma...  Read More

Take some time today to go back over the devotions from this week and answer these two questions:What did I learn about God this week?Is there anything I need to do in my life in response? Confess? Repent? Make changes in my life?...  Read More

If you're all caught up with your reading take some time today to reflect on how you view God's commands. Do you think of them as God's best for you so you seek to obey them the best you can. Or do you view them as some kind of restriction that you try to skirt around?If you need to, use today to catch up if you've fallen behind in your reading....  Read More

Today's reading: Deuteronomy 28:1-68Here God lays out the blessings that will come to His people for obeying the Law and the curses that will come upon them when they disobey it. I find it interesting that the section that describes the curses is nearly four times as long as the section that describes the blessings. Perhaps that is because God already knows that the people are going to rebel again...  Read More

Today's Reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-25I want to focus today on two important truths in this chapter.First, God warns the people that when they get into the land He is going to give them and they get to enjoy the fruits of the labor of others, they are going to be tempted to forget God and ignore His Law. I think that is still a danger for us today. When things are going well, it's easy to ignore God ...  Read More

Today's reading: Deuteronomy 5:1-33As the people of Israel get ready to enter the Promised Land, they gather and Moses reminds them of the commands that God had given them 40 years earlier. You will note some differences between the wording here and that in Exodus 20. However, none of those differences change in any way the main idea of any of the commandments. Where Exodus 20 seems to be the exac...  Read More

Today's reading: Leviticus 16:1-34The very fact that the Day of Atonement (also known as Yom Kippur) existed is proof that man was incapable of fully carrying out God's Law. Therefore their sin had to be atoned for. The verb "atone" comes from a Hebrew word that means "to cover". In the Old Testament it describes the process by which sin was covered in order to reconcile sinful man to a holy God a...  Read More