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Bible Readings for Wednesday January 19th, 2011 – The 2nd Week of Epiphany *Click on each bible passage to expand the text. Psalm 40:6-17 6. Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

7. Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

8. I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

9. I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD.

10. I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

11. Do not, O LORD, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.

12. For evils have encompassed me without number; my iniquities have overtaken me, until I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails me.

13. Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; O LORD, make haste to help me.

14. Let all those be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt.

15. Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

16. But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the LORD!”

17. As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God. Isaiah 48:12-21 12. Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called: I am He; I am the first, and I am the last.

13. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they stand at attention.

14. Assemble, all of you, and hear! Who among them has declared these things? The LORD loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

15. I, even I, have spoken and called him, I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.

16. Draw near to me, hear this! From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there. And now the Lord GOD has sent me and his spirit.

17. Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go.

18. O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea;

19. your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.

20. Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it forth to the end of the earth; say, “The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob!”

21. They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split open the rock and the water gushed out. Matthew 9:14-17 14. Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”

15. And Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

16. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made.

17. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

“O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea.” – Isaiah 48:18

“Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” – Matthew 9:17

- Isn’t it a sign of God’s favor with us, especially Americans, that we are so prosperous? Even the poorest among us are like wealthy compared to some countries! Isn’t that a clear sign of God’s favor?

NO! Just who do you think “Jacob” is today? Every last one of us on this planet are God’s favored chosen people. And yet, only a fraction of the Earth’s peoples are “prospering”.

- Then, God is not showing us favor? He’s punishing those who don’t “have”, right?

NO! God is not the reason or the cause. We are. WE ARE! If we would only follow the commandments, there would not be such disparity and suffering in this world today.

- Which commandments?

Jesus boiled down all of the law and all of the prophets for us into two all-encompassing commandments:

Matthew 22 The Ultimate Commandments According to Jesus 36. ”Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

37. He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

38. This is the greatest and first commandment.

39. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

- How do two commandments help everyone prosper “like a river” and succeed like “the waves of the sea”?

If you love God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, then you will begin to see your true nature as a divine and flawed child of God, and you will begin to recognize God’s unmerited gifts in your life. Nothing is really yours to keep, not wealth, not stuff, not love, not even your life. It is all from God.

If you love another as yourself, then you will recognize that others have just as much unmerited love from God, and if they do not have something they need, and you do, then you are impelled by the spirit and gratitude to share what God has gifted to you, be it wealth, love, counsel, time, or wisdom. Even your life.

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” – John 15:13

It is in this scenario of selfless living that our prosperity and success begin to roll out from our center like waves, reaching ever farther, multiplying off other objects, joining with other waves and becoming even stronger. That is God’s vision for how we should live in communion with each other. Symbiotic, loving, and selfless with every action in our lives, guided by God’s unmerited love for us, and our unceasing gratitude for God’s favor.

- But there are so many other rules, and laws, and commandments! Don’t they still have value?

No patches of new cloth on old cloaks. No new wine in old wineskins. We live our lives according to the will, teachings, Grace (unmerited favor), and way of life revealed to us in Christ. We do not try and live according to him and to the Law and Prophets as well. They are not meant to be one. However, we are to live our lives informed by the grace revealed through the law and the prophets.

Without the law, we never would have known our limits: we had to fail in the law to need grace. The law and prophets have divine purpose, even today: to show the folly of works righteousness to anyone who would try to live according to the law. No one can live up to it, and if they “are”, they’re lying to themselves, and to God.

- But why? How does Grace help us love our God and neighbor as ourselves?

” They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split open the rock and the water gushed out.” – Isaiah 48:21

What if the Israelites had received this miracle water from a rock and not shared it with each other? Can you imagine such a callous and cold-hearted act?

Well, such is what we are doing today. Especially as American Christians, we have received so much “water from the rock”, and yet we are not sharing with our brothers and sisters in the desert with us.

Grace (unmerited favor) teaches us that we do not deserve the things we have, the love we receive, the wealth and security we treasure. We have them nonetheless, and because the automatic response to such a realization is gratitude, we then freely share of ourselves and our things in order to share Grace and create gratitude in others.