Wichita, Kansas, United
States - Great Plains Conference of the United Methodist Church Daily
Devotional for Saturday, 29 March 2014
Today please be in
prayer for:
1. Dee Heptas
GBGM
Kansas City District
2. Galen Crippen
Alton
Osborne
Hays District
3. Lawrence Moffet
Lincoln First UMC
Blue River District
-------
This Week's Lectionary:
3rd Sunday in Lent -
Purple
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1 All the
congregation of the children of Israel traveled from the wilderness of Sin, by
their journeys, according to Yahweh’s commandment, and encamped in Rephidim;
but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people
quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.”
Moses said to them,
“Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test Yahweh?”
3 The people were
thirsty for water there; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why
have you brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us, our children, and our
livestock with thirst?”
4 Moses cried to
Yahweh, saying, “What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to
stone me.”
5 Yahweh said to Moses,
“Walk on before the people, and take the elders of Israel with you, and take
the rod in your hand with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will
stand before you there on the rock in Horeb. You shall strike the rock, and
water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” Moses did so in the
sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He called the name of the place Massah,[a] and
Meribah,[b] because the children of Israel quarreled, and because they tested
Yahweh, saying, “Is Yahweh among us, or not?”
Footnotes:
a. Exodus 17:7 Massah
means testing.
b. Exodus 17:7 Meribah
means quarreling.
Psalm 95:1 Oh come,
let’s sing to Yahweh.
Let’s shout aloud to the rock of our
salvation!
2 Let’s come before his
presence with thanksgiving.
Let’s extol him with songs!
3 For Yahweh is a great
God,
a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the
deep places of the earth.
The heights of the mountains are also his.
5 The sea is his, and
he made it.
His hands formed the dry land.
6 Oh come, let’s
worship and bow down.
Let’s kneel before Yahweh, our Maker,
7 for he is our God.
We are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep in his care.
Today, oh that you
would hear his voice!
8 Don’t harden your heart, as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers
tempted me,
tested me, and saw my work.
10 Forty long years I
was grieved with that generation,
and said, “It is a people that errs in
their heart.
They have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in
my wrath,
“They
won’t enter into my rest.”
Romans 5:1 Being
therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ; 2 through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in
which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only this, but we
also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; 4
and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope: 5 and hope
doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For while we were yet weak, at
the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a
righteous man. Yet perhaps for a righteous person someone would even dare to
die. 8 But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, being
now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. 10
For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of
his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life.
11 Not only so, but we
also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now
received the reconciliation.
John 4:5 So he came to
a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to
his son, Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from
his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.[a] 7 A woman of
Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 For his
disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 The Samaritan woman
therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from
me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her,
“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’
you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to
him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you
get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us
the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered her,
“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of
the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I
will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to
him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all
the way here to draw.”
16 Jesus said to her,
“Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered,
“I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You
said well, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands; and he whom
you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19 The woman said to
him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped in this
mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to
worship.”
21 Jesus said to her,
“Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in
Jerusalem, will you worship the Father. 22 You worship that which you don’t
know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the
hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers. 24 God is
spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to
him, “I know that Messiah comes, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he
will declare to us all things.”
26 Jesus said to her,
“I am he, the one who speaks to you.” 27 At this, his disciples came. They
marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you
looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her water
pot, and went away into the city, and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man
who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Christ?”
30 They went out of the
city, and were coming to him. 31 In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him,
saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But he said to them,
“I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
33 The disciples
therefore said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
34 Jesus said to them,
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. 35
Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest?’ Behold, I tell
you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest
already. 36 He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life;
that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the
saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for
which you haven’t labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their
labor.”
39 From that city many
of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who
testified, “He told me everything that I did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came
to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days. 41 Many
more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “Now we believe,
not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that
this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
Footnotes:
a. John 4:6 noon
-------
John Wesley’s
Notes/Commentary:
Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7
XVII In this chapter
are recorded,
I. The watering of the
host of Israel. (1.) In the wilderness they wanted water, ver. 1. (2.) In their
want they chide with Moses, ver. 2, 3. (3.) Moses cried to God, ver. 4. (4.)
God ordered him to smite the rock, and fetch water out of it; and he did so,
ver. 5, 6. (5.) The place named from it, ver. 7.
II. The defeating of
the host of Amalek. (1.) The victory obtained by the prayer of Moses, ver.
8-12. (2.) By the sword of Joshua, ver. 13 (3.) A record kept of it, ver.14-16.
Verse 1. They journeyed
according to the commandment of the Lord, led by the pillar of cloud and fire,
and yet they came to a place where there was no water for them to drink - We
may be in the way of our duty, and yet meet with troubles, which Providence
brings us into for the trial of our faith.
Verse 5. Go on before
the people - Though they spake of stoning him. He must take his rod with him,
not to summon some plague to chastise them, but to fetch water for their
supply. O the wonderful patience and forbearance of God towards provoking
sinners! He maintains those that are at war with him, and reaches out the hand
of his bounty to those that lift up the heel against him. If God had only
shewed Moses a fountain of water in the wilderness, as he did to Hagar, not far
from hence, Gen. xxi, 19, that had been a great favour; but that he might shew
his power as well as his pity, and make it a miracle of mercy, he gave them
water out of a rock. He directed Moses whither to go, appointed him to take of
the elders of Israel with him, to be witnesses of what was done, ordered him to
smite the rock, which he did, and immediately water came out of it in great
abundance, which ran throughout the camp in streams and rivers, Psalm lxxviii,
15, 16, and followed them wherever they went in that wilderness: God shewed his
care of his people in giving them water when they wanted it; his own power in
fetching it out of a rock, and put an honour upon Moses in appointing the water
to flow out upon his smiting of the rock. This fair water that came out of the
rock is called honey and oil, Deut. xxxii, 13, because the people's thirst made
it doubly pleasant; coming when they were in extreme want. It is probable that
the people digged canals for the conveyance of it, and pools for the reception
of it. Let this direct us to live in a dependance,
1. Upon God's
providence even in the greatest straits and difficulties;
2. And upon Christ's
grace; that rock was Christ, 1 Cor. x, 4. The graces and comforts of the Spirit
are compared to rivers of living waters, John vii, 38, 39; iv, 14. These flow
from Christ. And nothing will supply the needs and satisfy the desires of a
soul but water out of this rock. A new name was upon this occasion given to the
place, preserving the remembrance of their murmuring, Massah - Temptation,
because they tempted God, Meribah - Strife, because they chide with Moses.
Psalm 95
PS 95 The author of
this psalm was David, as is affirmed, Heb. iv, 7. It has a special reference to
the days of the Messiah; as it is understood by the apostle, Heb. iii, 7,
&c. and Heb. iv, 3-9. Herein we are called upon, to praise God, as a great
and gracious God, ver. 1-7. To hear God's voice, and not harden our hearts,
lest we fall as the Israelites did, ver. 8-11.
Verse 3. God's - Above
all that are called God's angels, earthly potentates, and especially the false
gods of the Heathen.
Verse 4. Hand - Under
his government. Strength - The strongest or highest mountains.
Verse 7. Pasture - Whom
he feeds and keeps in his own pasture, or in the land which he hath
appropriated to himself. The sheep - Which are under his special care. Today -
Forthwith or presently.
Verse 8. Harden not -
By obstinate unbelief. Provocation - In that bold and wicked contest with God
in the wilderness. Temptation - In the day in which you tempted me.
Verse 9. Works - Both
of mercy, and of justice.
Verse 10. Do err -
Their hearts are insincere and bent to backsliding. Not known - After all my
teaching and discoveries of myself to them; they did not know, nor consider,
those great things which I had wrought for them.
Verse 11. My rest -
Into the promised land, which is called the rest, Deut. xii, 9.
Romans 5:1-11
Verse 1. Being
justified by faith - This is the sum of the preceding chapters. We have peace
with God - Being enemies to God no longer, ver. 10; neither fearing his wrath,
ver. 9. We have peace, hope, love, and power over sin, the sum of the fifth,
sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters. These are the fruits of justifying faith:
where these are not, that faith is not.
Verse 2. Into this
grace - This state of favour.
Verse 3. We glory in
tribulations also - Which we are so far from esteeming a mark of God's
displeasure, that we receive them as tokens of his fatherly love, whereby we
are prepared for a more exalted happiness. The Jews objected to the persecuted
state of the Christians as inconsistent with the people of the Messiah. It is
therefore with great propriety that the apostle so often mentions the blessings
arising from this very thing.
Verse 4. And patience
works more experience of the sincerity of our grace, and of God's power and
faithfulness.
Verse 5. Hope shameth
us not - That is, gives us the highest glorying. We glory in this our hope,
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts - The divine conviction of
God's love to us, and that love to God which is both the earnest and the
beginning of heaven. By the Holy Ghost - The efficient cause of all these
present blessings, and the earnest of those to come.
Verse 6. How can we now
doubt of God's love? For when we were without strength - Either to think, will,
or do anything good. In due time - Neither too soon nor too late; but in that
very point of time which the wisdom of God knew to be more proper than any
other. Christ died for the ungodly - Not only to set them a pattern, or to
procure them power to follow it. It does not appear that this expression, of
dying for any one, has any other signification than that of rescuing the life
of another by laying down our own.
Verse 7. A just man -
One who gives to all what is strictly their due The good man - One who is
eminently holy; full of love, of compassion, kindness, mildness, of every
heavenly and amiable temper. Perhaps-one-would-even-dare to die - Every word
increases the strangeness of the thing, and declares even this to be something
great and unusual.
Verse 8. But God
recommendeth - A most elegant expression. Those are wont to be recommended to
us, who were before either unknown to, or alienated from, us. While we were
sinners - So far from being good, that we were not even just.
Verse 9. By his blood -
By his bloodshedding. We shall be saved from wrath through him - That is, from
all the effects of the wrath of God. But is there then wrath in God? Is not
wrath a human passion? And how can this human passion be in God? We may answer
this by another question: Is not love a human passion? And how can this human
passion be in God? But to answer directly: wrath in man, and so love in man, is
a human passion. But wrath in God is not a human passion; nor is love, as it is
in God. Therefore the inspired writers ascribe both the one and the other to God
only in an analogical sense.
Verse 10. If - As sure
as; so the word frequently signifies; particularly in this and the eighth
chapter. We shalt be saved - Sanctified and glorified. Through his life - Who
"ever liveth to make intercession for us."
Verse 11. And not only
so, but we also glory - The whole sentence, from the third to the eleventh
verse, may be taken together thus: We not only "rejoice in hope of the
glory of God," but also in the midst of tribulations we glory in God
himself through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the
reconciliation.
John 4:5-42
Verse 5. Sychar -
Formerly called Sichem or Shechem. Jacob gave - On his death bed, Gen. xlviii,
22.
Verse 6. Jesus sat down
- Weary as he was. It was the sixth hour - Noon; the heat of the day.
Verse 7. Give me to
drink - In this one conversation he brought her to that knowledge which the
apostles were so long in attaining.
Verse 8. For his
disciples were gone - Else he needed not have asked her.
Verse 9. How dost thou
- Her open simplicity appears from her very first words. The Jews have no
dealings - None by way of friendship. They would receive no kind of favour from
them.
Verse 10. If thou hadst
known the gift - The living water; and who it is - He who alone is able to give
it: thou wouldst have asked of him - On those words the stress lies. Water - In
like manner he draws the allegory from bread, chap. vi, 27, and from light,
viii, 12; the first, the most simple, necessary, common, and salutary things in
nature. Living water - The Spirit and its fruits. But she might the more easily
mistake his meaning, because living water was a common phrase among the Jews
for spring water.
Verse 12. Our father
Jacob - So they fancied he was; whereas they were, in truth, a mixture of many
nations, placed there by the king of Assyria, in the room of the Israelites
whom he had carried away captive, 2 Kings xvii, 24. Who gave us the well - In
Joseph their supposed forefather: and drank thereof - So even he had no better
water than this.
Verse 14. Will never
thirst - Will never (provided he continue to drink thereof) be miserable,
dissatisfied, without refreshment. If ever that thirst returns, it will be the
fault of the man, not the water. But the water that I shall give him - The
spirit of faith working by love, shall become in him - An inward living
principle, a fountain - Not barely a well, which is soon exhausted, springing
up into everlasting life - Which is a confluence, or rather an ocean of streams
arising from this fountain.
Verse 15. That I thirst
not - She takes him still in a gross sense.
Verse 16. Jesus saith
to her - He now clears the way that he might give her a better kind of water
than she asked for. Go, call thy husband - He strikes directly at her bosom
sin.
Verse 17. Thou hast
well said - We may observe in all our Lord's discourses the utmost weightiness,
and yet the utmost courtesy.
Verse 18. Thou hast had
five husbands - Whether they were all dead or not, her own conscience now
awakened would tell her.
Verse 19. Sir, I
perceive - So soon was her heart touched.
Verse 20. The instant
she perceived this, she proposes what she thought the most important of all
questions. This mountain - Pointing to Mount Gerizim. Sanballat, by the
permission of Alexander the Great, had built a temple upon Mount Gerizim, for
Manasseh, who for marrying Sanballat's daughter had been expelled from the
priesthood and from Jerusalem, Neh. xiii, 28. This was the place where the
Samaritans used to worship in opposition to Jerusalem. And it was so near
Sychar, that a man's voice might be heard from the one to the other. Our
fathers worshipped - This plainly refers to Abraham and Jacob (from whom the
Samaritans pretended to deduce their genealogy) who erected altars in this
place: Gen. xii, 6, 7, and Gen. xxxiii, 18, 20. And possibly to the whole
congregation, who were directed when they came into the land of Canaan to put
the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, Deut. xi, 29. Ye Jews say, In Jerusalem is the
place - Namely, the temple.
Verse 21. Believe me -
Our Lord uses this expression in this manner but once; and that to a Samaritan.
To his own people, the Jews, his usual language is, I say unto you. The hour
cometh when ye - Both Samaritans and Jews, shall worship neither in this
mountain, nor at Jerusalem - As preferable to any other place. True worship
shall be no longer confined to any one place or nation.
Verse 22. Ye worship ye
know not what - Ye Samaritans are ignorant, not only of the place, but of the
very object of worship. Indeed, they feared the Lord after a fashion; but at
the same time served their own gods, 2 Kings xvii, 33. Salvation is from the
Jews - So spake all the prophets, that the saviour should arise out of the
Jewish nation: and that from thence the knowledge of him should spread to all
nations under heaven.
Verse 23. The true
worshippers shall worship the Father - Not here or there only, but at all times
and in all places.
Verse 24. God is a
Spirit - Not only remote from the body, and all the properties of it, but
likewise full of all spiritual perfections, power, wisdom, love, holiness. And
our worship should be suitable to his nature. We should worship him with the
truly spiritual worship of faith, love, and holiness, animating all our
tempers, thoughts, words, and actions.
Verse 25. The woman
saith - With joy for what she had already learned, and desire of fuller
instruction.
Verse 26. Jesus saith -
Hasting to satisfy her desire before his disciples came. l am He - Our Lord did
not speak this so plainly to the Jews who were so full of the Messiah's
temporal kingdom. If he had, many would doubtless have taken up arms in his
favour, and others have accused him to the Roman governor. Yet he did in effect
declare the thing, though he denied the particular title. For in a multitude of
places he represented himself, both as the Son of man, and as the Son of God:
both which expressions were generally understood by the Jews as peculiarly
applicable to the Messiah.
Verse 27. His disciples
marvelled that he talked with a woman - Which the Jewish rabbis reckoned
scandalous for a man of distinction to do. They marvelled likewise at his
talking with a woman of that nation, which was so peculiarly hateful to the
Jews. Yet none said - To the woman, What seekest thou? - Or to Christ, Why
talkest thou with her?
Verse 28. The woman
left her water pot - Forgetting smaller things.
Verse 29. A man who
told me all things that ever I did - Our Lord had told her but a few things.
But his words awakened her conscience, which soon told her all the rest. Is not
this the Christ? - She does not doubt of it herself, but incites them to make
the inquiry.
Verse 31. In the
meantime - Before the people came.
Verse 34. My meat -
That which satisfies the strongest appetite of my soul.
Verse 35. The fields
are white already - As if he had said, The spiritual harvest is ripe already.
The Samaritans, ripe for the Gospel, covered the ground round about them.
Verse 36. He that
reapeth - Whoever saves souls, receiveth wages - A peculiar blessing to
himself, and gathereth fruit - Many souls: that he that soweth - Christ the
great sower of the seed, and he that reapeth may rejoice together - In heaven.
Verse 37. That saying -
A common proverb; One soweth - The prophets and Christ; another reapeth - The
apostles and succeeding ministers.
Verse 38. I - he Lord
of the whole harvest, have sent you - He had employed them already in
baptizing, ver. 2.
Verse 42. We know that
this is the saviour of the world - And not of the Jews only.
-------
Today's Devotional
John 12:23 Jesus
answered them, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Most
certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 He who loves
his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to
eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, let him follow me. Where I am, there will
my servant also be. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
27 “Now my soul is
troubled. What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this time?’ But for this
cause I came to this time. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then there came a voice
out of the sky, saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
29 The multitude
therefore, who stood by and heard it, said that it had thundered. Others said,
“An angel has spoken to him.”
30 Jesus answered,
“This voice hasn’t come for my sake, but for your sakes. 31 Now is the judgment
of this world. Now the prince of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, if I am
lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 But he said this,
signifying by what kind of death he should die.
-------
Contact Information
Great Plains Episcopal
Office
9440 E Boston, Suite
160
Wichita KS 67207
316-686-0600
800-745-2350
info@greatplainsumc
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment