Jan 13, 2024
GENESIS 24:
In Genesis 22, Isaac asked, “I see that you have the coals and the
wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide one.”
It is amazing to me that Moses adds the proverb, “even today people say, “On the Lord's mountain he provides.” In our time, we easily see how this points to the provision of the Lamb of God on the mountain called Calvary.
JOB 13:
As we saw in chapter 12, Job by now is pretty ticked off, starting
off with,
“Yes, you are the voice of the people.
When you die, wisdom will die with you.
Note the irony Job points out:
4 Even my friends laugh at me now;
they laugh, although I am righteous and blameless;
but there was a time when God answered my prayers.
5 You have no troubles, and yet you make fun of me;
you hit someone who is about to fall.
6 But thieves and godless people live in peace,
though their only god is their own strength.
MARK 8b:
In yesterday's reading, Jesus fed the 4,000, and then the Pharisees
demand a miraculous sign ‘showing God’s approval’— literally a sign
‘from heaven’. The reading yesterday ended with the disciples not
understanding what Jesus meant by
15 “Take care,” Jesus warned them, “and be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”
NLT Translation notes:
Mrk. 8:23 Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of
the village. Then, [applying his own spit to//spitting
on] the man’s eyes, he laid his hands on him and
asked, “Can you see anything now?”
[The Greek does actually say that Jesus 'spit' in the man's eyes,
but to spit in someone's face is so objectionable that more than
one translation softens this a bit!]
27 Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages
near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked them,
“[What do people say as to the position/role I am
assuming?”//Who do people say I am?”]
[Normally in our
language if Jesus said, “Who do people say I am,” the answer would
be “Jesus”. Jesus was not asking about his name, so we need a
different question opener than “Who”.]
28 “Well,” they replied, “some say [you are taking the
position of] John the Baptist, some say [you are
replacing] Elijah, and others say you are [filling
the role of] one of the other prophets.”
29 Then he asked them, “[But in your opinion, whose
position am I taking?”//But who do you say I
am?”]
…
31 Then Jesus began to tell them that [he— as] the
Son of Man, must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the
elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He
[said, “I will be] killed, but three days later
[I will/he would] rise from the dead.
[The changes in this paragraph are made to show that Jesus is not
talking about some third person named the Son of Man, but about
himself. Even in English, a man seldom talks about himself using
the pronoun 'he'.]
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.