Friday, September 22, 2023

Joel 1:1–12

¹The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel.

²Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? ³Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. ⁴What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.

⁵Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. ⁶A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. ⁷It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.

⁸Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the husband of her youth. ⁹Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the LORD. ¹⁰The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails. ¹¹Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. ¹²The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree-- all the trees of the field--are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away.

 

 

Psalm 79

¹A psalm of Asaph. O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple, they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble. ²They have given the dead bodies of your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth. ³They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead. ⁴We are objects of reproach to our neighbors, of scorn and derision to those around us. ⁵How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire? ⁶Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the kingdoms that do not call on your name; ⁷for they have devoured Jacob and destroyed his homeland. ⁸Do not hold against us the sins of the fathers; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need. ⁹Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name's sake. ¹⁰Why should the nations say, "Where is their God?" Before our eyes, make known among the nations that you avenge the outpoured blood of your servants. ¹¹May the groans of the prisoners come before you; by the strength of your arm preserve those condemned to die. ¹²Pay back into the laps of our neighbors seven times the reproach they have hurled at you, O Lord. ¹³Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will praise you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.

 

 

Romans 11:1–10

¹I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. ²God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don't you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah--how he appealed to God against Israel: ³"Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me"? ⁴And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." ⁵So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. ⁶And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.

⁷What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, ⁸as it is written:

"God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day."

⁹And David says:

"May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. ¹⁰May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever."