Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene. . . .[Mark 16:9]
Of all the people Jesus could have appeared to first after His resurrection, He appeared to Mary Magdalene. It is interesting to think about, because among the Jews of the day, the testimony of a woman was not held in high regard. In fact, some of the rabbis falsely taught that it was better for the words of the Law to be burned than to be delivered by a woman. Yet Jesus chose a woman to be the first herald of His resurrection.
It is also worth noting that women were the last at the cross and the first at the tomb. Mary had courage that many of the men did not have when Jesus was crucified. She stood by Him through it all. In fact, the Bible tells us that after He was crucified, Mary "observed where He was laid" (Mark 15:47). She watched as they took His crucified body from the cross and wrapped it and placed it in a tomb that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. And Mary, along with the other women, was at the tomb very early on Sunday morning to demonstrate her love for Jesus by anointing his body with spices (see Mark 16:1–2).
And her love was rewarded. God said, "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God rewards the person who is diligent. And for those who will take time in their day to seek the Lord, for those who will take time to read His Word, for those who will take time to wait upon Him, He will reveal His truths to them.
Share this today:
Today's Bible Reading
Judges 13:1 Again the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective, and Adonai handed them over to the P’lishtim for forty years.
2 There was a man from Tzor‘ah from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoach; his wife was barren, childless. 3 The angel of Adonai appeared to the woman and said to her, “Listen! You are barren, you haven’t had a child, but you will conceive and bear a son. 4 Now, therefore, be careful not to drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean. 5 For indeed you will conceive and bear a son. No razor is to touch his head, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb. Moreover, he will begin to rescue Isra’el from the power of the P’lishtim.”
6 The woman came and told her husband; she said, “A man of God came to me; his face was fearsome, like that of the angel of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. 7 But he said to me, ‘Listen! You will conceive and bear a son, so now don’t drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb until the day he dies.’”
8 Then Manoach prayed to Adonai, “Please, Adonai, let the man of God you sent come again to us and teach us what we should do for the child who will be born.” 9 God paid attention to what Manoach said, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but her husband Manoach wasn’t with her. 10 The woman hurried and ran to tell her husband, “Here! That man, the one who came to me the other day, he’s come again!” 11 Manoach got up, followed his wife, went to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to the woman?” He answered, “I am.” 12 Manoach asked, “Now, when what you said comes true, what are the guidelines for raising the child? What should be done for him?” 13 The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “The woman should take care to do everything I said to her. 14 She shouldn’t eat anything that comes from a grapevine, she shouldn’t drink wine or other intoxicating liquor, and she shouldn’t eat anything unclean. She should do everything I ordered her to do.”
15 Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Please stay with us a bit longer, so that we can cook a young goat for you.” 16 The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “Even if I do stay, I won’t eat your food; and if you prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to Adonai.” For Manoach did not know that he was the angel of Adonai. 17 Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Tell us your name, so that when your words come true we can honor you.” 18 The angel of Adonai answered him, “Why are you asking about my name? It is wonderful.” 19 Manoach took the kid and the grain offering and offered them on the rock to Adonai. Then, with Manoach and his wife looking on, the angel did something wonderful — 20 as the flame went up toward the sky from the altar, the angel of Adonai went up in the flame from the altar. When Manoach and his wife saw it, they fell to the ground on their faces. 21 But the angel of Adonai did not appear again to Manoach or his wife. Then Manoach realized it had been the angel of Adonai. 22 Manoach said to his wife, “We will surely die, because we have seen God!” 23 But his wife said to him, “If Adonai had wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, and he wouldn’t have shown us all this or told us such things at this time.”
24 The woman bore a son and called him Shimshon. The child grew, and Adonai blessed him. 25 The Spirit of Adonai began to stir him when he was in the Camp of Dan, between Tzor‘ah and Eshta’ol.
14:1 Shimshon went down to Timnah, and in Timnah he saw a woman who was one of the P’lishtim. 2 He came up and told his father and mother, “I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the P’lishtim. Now get her for me to be my wife.” 3 His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my people? Must you go to the uncircumcised P’lishtim to find a wife?” Shimshon said to his father, “Get her for me. I like her.” 4 His father and mother didn’t know that all this came from Adonai, who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the P’lishtim. (At that time the P’lishtim were ruling Isra’el.)
5 Shimshon went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion roared at him. 6 The Spirit of Adonai came powerfully upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had been a young goat. But he didn’t tell his father or mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her.
8 Awhile later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. 9 He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn’t tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.
10 His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet — this is what the young men used to do. 11 When the P’lishtim saw him, they provided thirty companions to be with him. 12 Shimshon said to them, “Let me present you with a riddle. If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes. 13 But if you can’t solve it, you give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes.” They answered, “Tell us the riddle, we want to hear it.” 14 So he said to them,
“Out of the eater came food;
out of the strong came sweetness.”
Three days passed, and they couldn’t solve the riddle. 15 On the seventh day, they said to Shimshon’s wife, “Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the riddle. Otherwise we’ll burn down your father’s house and you with it. You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn’t you?” 16 Shimshon’s wife went to him in tears and said, “You don’t love me, you hate me! You told a riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven’t told me the answer.” He said to her, “Look, I haven’t even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell you?” 17 But she had been crying throughout the seven days of the banquet; so on the seventh day, because she had kept pressing him, he told her the solution; and she passed it on to her people. 18 Then, before sundown on the seventh day, the men of the city said to him,
“What is sweeter than honey?
and what is stronger than a lion?”
Shimshon answered,
“If you hadn’t plowed with my young cow,
you wouldn’t have solved my riddle now.”
19 Then the Spirit of Adonai came over him powerfully. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty of their men, took their good clothes, and gave them to the men who had “solved” the riddle. He was boiling with rage, so he went straight up to his father’s house, 20 and his wife was given to the companion who had been best man at the wedding.
15:1 But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, “I want to go to my wife in her room.” But he wouldn’t let him. 2 Her father said, “I really thought you hated her altogether, so I gave her to your best man. But her younger sister — isn’t she even prettier? Why not take her instead?” 3 Shimshon said to them, “This time I’m through with the P’lishtim! I’m going to do something terrible to them!” 4 So Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes. Then he took torches, tied pairs of foxes to each other by their tails, and put a torch in the knot of every pair of tails. 5 Then he set the torches on fire and let the foxes loose in wheat fields of the P’lishtim. In this way he burned up the harvested wheat along with the grain waiting to be harvested, and the olive orchards as well. 6 The P’lishtim asked, “Who did this?” They answered, “Shimshon the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, because he took Shimshon’s wife and gave her to his best man.” Then the P’lishtim came up and burned both her and her father to death. 7 Shimshon said to them, “I will certainly have my revenge on you for doing such a thing; but after I do, I’ll stop.” 8 Infuriated, he began killing them right and left; it was a massacre. Then he went down and stayed in the cave at the ‘Eitam Rock.
9 The P’lishtim went up, pitched camp in Y’hudah and attacked Lechi. 10 The men of Y’hudah said, “Why are you attacking us?” They replied, “To arrest Shimshon, that’s why — to treat him the way he treated us.” 11 Then 3,000 men from Y’hudah went down to the cave at the Eitam Rock and said to Shimshon, “Don’t you know that the P’lishtim are our rulers? What are you doing to us?” He answered, “I’ve only treated them the way they treated me.” 12 They said to him, “We’ve come down to arrest you and hand you over to the P’lishtim.” Shimshon replied, “Swear to me that you won’t fall on me yourselves.” 13 They said to him, “No, but we will tie you up and hand you over to them. However, we promise not to kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he got to Lechi, the P’lishtim came running and shouting at him; and the Spirit of Adonai came on him powerfully. The ropes on his arms became as weak as burnt flax and fell from his arms. 15 He found a fresh donkey jawbone, took it in his hand, and with it he struck down a thousand men. 16 Shimshon said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey I left heaps piled on heaps!
With the jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men!”
17 After he finished speaking he threw the jawbone away, and the place came to be called Ramat-Lechi [jawbone heights].
18 Then he felt very thirsty, so he called on Adonai, saying, “You accomplished this great rescue through your servant. But am I now to die from thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God made a gash in the crater at Lechi, and water came out. When he had drunk, his spirit came back; and he revived. This is why the place was called ‘Ein-HaKorei [the spring of him who called], and it is there in Lechi until now. 20 He judged Isra’el in the period of the P’lishtim for twenty years.
16:1 Shimshon went to ‘Azah, where he saw a prostitute and went in to spend the night with her. 2 The people in ‘Azah were told that Shimshon had come, so they surrounded the place where he was and also set an ambush for him all night at the city gate. Their plan was to do nothing at night, but to wait until morning and then kill him. 3 However, Shimshon stayed in bed until midnight; then he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts as well, pulled them up, bar and all, hoisted them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the hill overlooking Hevron.
4 After this, he fell in love with a woman who lived in the Sorek Valley, whose name was D’lilah. 5 The chiefs of the P’lishtim went up to her and said, “Coax him into telling you where his great strength comes from and how we can overcome him, so that we can tie him up and subdue him. If you do, each of us will give you 1,100 pieces of silver.” 6 D’lilah said to Shimshon, “Please tell me what it is that makes you so strong, and how someone could tie you up and subdue you.” 7 Shimshon replied, “If they tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have never been dried, I will become as weak as any other man.” 8 The chiefs of the P’lishtim brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings which had not been dried, and she tied him up with them. 9 Now she had people lying in wait in the inside room. So she said to him, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim have come for you!” But he snapped the bowstrings as easily as a piece of straw breaks when it touches fire, and the source of his strength remained unknown.
10 D’lilah said to Shimshon, “You’re making fun of me, telling me lies. Now, come on, tell me what it takes to tie you up.” 11 “All it takes,” he answered, “is to tie me up with new ropes that haven’t been used. Then I’ll become weak and be like anyone else.” 12 So D’lilah took new ropes, tied him up, and said to him, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim have come for you!” (The people lying in wait were in the inside room.) But he broke the ropes from off his arms like a thread.
13 D’lilah said to Shimshon, “Till now you’ve been making fun of me and telling me lies. Tell me what it takes to tie you up.” He said, “If you weave the seven locks of my hair across thread on a loom.” 14 So she fastened her cloth work in the loom with a pin and wove his hair in, then said to him, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim have come for you!” He awoke from his sleep and pulled away the loom pin and the interwoven cloth. 15 She said to him, “How can you say you love me when your heart isn’t with me? Three times you’ve made fun of me, and you haven’t told me the source of your great strength.”
16 Every day she kept nagging at him and pressing at him, till it bothered him to death, 17 so that he finally told her everything. He said to her, “No razor has ever touched my head, because I have been a nazir of God since I was born. If someone shaves me, then my strength will leave me; and I will be like any other man.” 18 When D’lilah saw that he had really confided in her, she sent and summoned the chiefs of the P’lishtim with the message, “Come up this one last time, because he has finally told me the truth.” The chiefs of the P’lishtim went up to her and brought the money with them. 19 She had him go to sleep in her lap and called for a man to shave off his seven locks of hair. Then she began tormenting him, but his strength had gone away. 20 She said, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim have come for you!” He awoke from his sleep and said, “I’ll get out this time, just as I shook myself loose before.” But he didn’t know that Adonai had left him. 21 So the P’lishtim seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to ‘Azah. There they bound him with two bronze chains and put him to work grinding grain at the mill in the prison. 22 However, after the hair on his head had been cut off, it began growing back again.
23 The chiefs of the P’lishtim assembled to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. As they celebrated they sang,
“Our god has handed over to us
our enemy Shimshon.”
24 Upon seeing him, the people praised their god:
“Our god has handed over to us
our enemy, who destroyed our land
and killed so many of us.”
25 When they were in high spirits they said, “Summon Shimshon to amuse us.” So they called Shimshon out of the prison, and he amused them. When they put him between the columns, 26 Shimshon said to the boy holding him by the hand, “Let me feel the columns supporting the building, so that I can lean on them.” 27 The building was full of men and women; and all the chiefs of the P’lishtim were there; in addition to them, there were about three thousand men and women on the roof, watching, as Shimshon performed. 28 Shimshon called to Adonai, “Adonai Elohim, just this once, please, think of me, and please, give me strength, so that I can take revenge on the P’lishtim for at least one of my two eyes.” 29 Shimshon got a good hold on the two middle columns supporting the building and leaned on them, on one with his right hand and on the other with his left. 30 Then, crying, “Let me die with the P’lishtim!” he pushed with all his might; and the building collapsed on the chiefs and on all the people inside. So he killed more at his death than he had killed during his life.
31 His brothers and all his father’s family came down, took him, brought him up and buried him between Tzor‘ah and Eshta’ol, in the tomb of his father Manoach. He had judged Isra’el twenty years.
2 Corinthians 2:1 So I made up my mind that I would not pay you another painful visit. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is left to make me happy except the people I have pained? 3 Indeed, this is why I wrote as I did — so that when I came, I would not have to be pained by those who ought to be making me happy; for I had enough confidence in all of you to believe that unless I could be happy, none of you could be happy either. 4 I wrote to you with a greatly distressed and anguished heart, and with many tears, not in order to cause you pain, but to get you to realize how very much I love you.
5 Now if someone has been a cause of pain, it is not I whom he has pained, but, in some measure — I don’t want to overstate it — all of you. 6 For such a person the punishment already imposed on him by the majority is sufficient, 7 so that now you should do the opposite — forgive him, encourage him, comfort him. Otherwise such a person might be swallowed up in overwhelming depression. 8 So I urge you to show that you really do love him. 9 The reason I wrote you was to see if you would pass the test, to see if you would fully obey me. 10 Anyone you forgive, I forgive too. For indeed, whatever I have forgiven, if there has been anything to forgive, has been for your sake in the presence of the Messiah 11 so that we will not be taken advantage of by the Adversary — for we are quite aware of his schemes!
12 Now when I went to Troas to proclaim the Good News of the Messiah, since a door had been opened for me by the Lord, 13 I could not rest, because I failed to find my brother Titus. So I left the people there and went on to Macedonia.
14 But thanks be to God, who in the Messiah constantly leads us in a triumphal procession and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of what it means to know him! 15 For to God we are the aroma of the Messiah, both among those being saved and among those being lost; 16 to the latter, we are the smell of death leading only to more death; but to the former, we are the sweet smell of life leading to more life. Who is equal to such a task? 17 For we are not like a lot of folks who go about huckstering God’s message for a fee; on the contrary, we speak out of a sincere heart, as people sent by God, standing in God’s presence, living in union with the Messiah.
Harvest Ministries with Greg LaurieP.O. Box 4000
Riverside, California 92514-4000 United States
Phone: 1-800-821-3300
___________________________________
___________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment