THEINC-HIM DAILY BIBLE MEDITATION: April 2018

Monday, April 30, 2018

THEINC-HIM Daily Bible Meditation - April 30 - Full Text!

Genesis 1:1 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

THEINC-HIM Daily Bible Meditation

APRIL 30

PSALMS: 30, 60, 90, 120, 150

PROVERBS: 30

OLD TESTAMENT: 2 CORINTHIANS 1:1 - 3:18

NEW TESTAMENT: ROMANS 6:1 - 23

PSALMS: 30

A psalm. A song. For the dedication of the temple. ^A Of David.

¹I will exalt you, O LORD,

for you lifted me out of the depths

and did not let my enemies gloat over me.

²O LORD my God, I called to you for help

and you healed me.

³O LORD, you brought me up from the grave ^B;

you spared me from going down into the pit.

⁴Sing to the LORD, you saints of his;

praise his holy name.

⁵For his anger lasts only a moment,

but his favor lasts a lifetime;

weeping may remain for a night,

but rejoicing comes in the morning.

⁶When I felt secure, I said,

"I will never be shaken."

⁷O LORD, when you favored me,

you made my mountain ^C stand firm;

but when you hid your face,

I was dismayed.

⁸To you, O LORD, I called;

to the Lord I cried for mercy:

⁹"What gain is there in my destruction, ^D

in my going down into the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it proclaim your faithfulness? ^¹

¹⁰Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me;

O LORD, be my help."

¹¹You turned my wailing into dancing;

you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

¹²that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.

O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever. ^²

PSALMS: 60

For the director of music. To the tune of "The Lily of the Covenant." A miktam ^A of David. For teaching. When he fought Aram Naharaim ^B and Aram Zobah, ^C and when Joab returned and struck down twelve thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt.

¹You have rejected us, O God, and burst forth upon us;

you have been angry--now restore us!

²You have shaken the land and torn it open;

mend its fractures, for it is quaking.

³You have shown your people desperate times;

you have given us wine that makes us stagger.

⁴But for those who fear you, you have raised a banner

to be unfurled against the bow.

Selah

⁵Save us and help us with your right hand,

that those you love may be delivered.

⁶God has spoken from his sanctuary:

"In triumph I will parcel out Shechem

and measure off the Valley of Succoth.

⁷Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine;

Ephraim is my helmet,

Judah my scepter.

⁸Moab is my washbasin,

upon Edom I toss my sandal;

over Philistia I shout in triumph."

⁹Who will bring me to the fortified city?

Who will lead me to Edom?

¹⁰Is it not you, O God, you who have rejected us

and no longer go out with our armies?

¹¹Give us aid against the enemy, ^³

for the help of man is worthless.

¹²With God we will gain the victory,

and he will trample down our enemies. ^⁴

PSALMS: 90

A prayer of Moses the man of God.

¹Lord, you have been our dwelling place

throughout all generations.

²Before the mountains were born

or you brought forth the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

³You turn men back to dust,

saying, "Return to dust, O sons of men."

⁴For a thousand years in your sight

are like a day that has just gone by,

or like a watch in the night.

⁵You sweep men away in the sleep of death;

they are like the new grass of the morning--

⁶though in the morning it springs up new,

by evening it is dry and withered.

⁷We are consumed by your anger

and terrified by your indignation.

⁸You have set our iniquities before you,

our secret sins in the light of your presence.

⁹All our days pass away under your wrath;

we finish our years with a moan.

¹⁰The length of our days is seventy years--

or eighty, if we have the strength;

yet their span ^A is but trouble and sorrow,

for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

¹¹Who knows the power of your anger?

For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

¹²Teach us to number our days aright, ^⁵

PSALMS: 120

A song of ascents.

¹I call on the LORD in my distress,

and he answers me.

²Save me, O LORD, from lying lips

and from deceitful tongues.

³What will he do to you,

and what more besides, O deceitful tongue?

⁴He will punish you with a warrior's sharp arrows,

with burning coals of the broom tree.

⁵Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech,

that I live among the tents of Kedar!

⁶Too long have I lived

among those who hate peace.

⁷I am a man of peace;

but when I speak, they are for war. ^⁶

PSALMS: 150

¹Praise the LORD. ^A

Praise God in his sanctuary;

praise him in his mighty heavens.

²Praise him for his acts of power;

praise him for his surpassing greatness.

³Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,

praise him with the harp and lyre,

⁴praise him with tambourine and dancing,

praise him with the strings and flute,

⁵praise him with the clash of cymbals,

praise him with resounding cymbals.

⁶Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD. ^⁷

PROVERBS: 30

30 ¹The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh--an oracle ^A:

This man declared to Ithiel,

to Ithiel and to Ucal: ^B

²"I am the most ignorant of men;

I do not have a man's understanding.

³I have not learned wisdom,

nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.

⁴Who has gone up to heaven and come down?

Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?

Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?

Who has established all the ends of the earth?

What is his name, and the name of his son?

Tell me if you know!

⁵"Every word of God is flawless;

he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.

⁶Do not add to his words,

or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.

⁷"Two things I ask of you, O LORD;

do not refuse me before I die:

⁸Keep falsehood and lies far from me;

give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread.

⁹Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you

and say, `Who is the LORD?'

Or I may become poor and steal,

and so dishonor the name of my God.

¹⁰"Do not slander a servant to his master,

or he will curse you, and you will pay for it. ^⁸

¹¹"There are those who curse their fathers

and do not bless their mothers;

¹²those who are pure in their own eyes

and yet are not cleansed of their filth;

¹³those whose eyes are ever so haughty,

whose glances are so disdainful;

¹⁴those whose teeth are swords

and whose jaws are set with knives

to devour the poor from the earth,

the needy from among mankind.

¹⁵"The leech has two daughters.

`Give! Give!' they cry.

"There are three things that are never satisfied,

four that never say, `Enough!':

¹⁶the grave, ^C the barren womb,

land, which is never satisfied with water,

and fire, which never says, `Enough!'

¹⁷"The eye that mocks a father,

that scorns obedience to a mother,

will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley,

will be eaten by the vultures.

¹⁸"There are three things that are too amazing for me,

four that I do not understand:

¹⁹the way of an eagle in the sky,

the way of a snake on a rock,

20 the way of a ship on the high seas,

and the way of a man with a maiden. ^⁹

²¹"Under three things the earth trembles,

under four it cannot bear up:

²²a servant who becomes king,

a fool who is full of food,

²³an unloved woman who is married,

and a maidservant who displaces her mistress.

²⁴"Four things on earth are small,

yet they are extremely wise:

²⁵Ants are creatures of little strength,

yet they store up their food in the summer;

²⁶coneys ^D are creatures of little power,

yet they make their home in the crags;

²⁷locusts have no king,

yet they advance together in ranks;

²⁸a lizard can be caught with the hand,

yet it is found in kings' palaces.

²⁹"There are three things that are stately in their stride,

four that move with stately bearing:

³⁰a lion, mighty among beasts,

who retreats before nothing;

³¹a strutting rooster, a he-goat,

and a king with his army around him. ^E

³²"If you have played the fool and exalted yourself,

or if you have planned evil,

clap your hand over your mouth! ^¹⁰

OLD TESTAMENT: 2 CORINTHIANS 1:1 - 3:18

1 ¹Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia:

²Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. ⁵For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. ⁶If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. ⁷And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

⁸We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. ⁹Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

¹⁰He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and ^¹¹ he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, ¹¹as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our ^A behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.

¹²Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God's grace. ¹³For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that, ¹⁴as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus.

¹⁵Because I was confident of this, I planned to visit you first so that you might benefit twice. ¹⁶I planned to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia, and then to have you send me on my way to Judea. ¹⁷When I planned this, did I do it lightly? Or do I make my plans in a worldly manner so that in the same breath I say, "Yes, yes" and "No, no"?

¹⁸But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not "Yes" and "No." ¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas ^B and Timothy, was not "Yes" and "No," but in him it has always been "Yes." ²⁰For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God. ²¹Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, ²²set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in ^¹² our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

²³I call God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth. ²⁴Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm.

2 ¹So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you. ²For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved? ³I wrote as I did so that when I came I should not be distressed by those who ought to make me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. ⁴For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.

⁵If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent--not to put it too severely. ⁶The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. ⁷Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. ⁸I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. ⁹The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. ¹⁰If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven--if there was anything to forgive--I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, ¹¹in order that Satan might not outwit ^¹³ us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

¹²Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me, ¹³I still had no peace of mind, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said good-by to them and went on to Macedonia.

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. ¹⁵For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. ¹⁶To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? ¹⁷Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.

3 ¹Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? ²You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. ³You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

⁴Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. ⁵Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, ^¹⁴ but our competence comes from God. ⁶He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, ⁸will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? ⁹If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! ¹⁰For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. ¹¹And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!

¹²Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. ¹³We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. ¹⁴But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. ¹⁶But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ^¹⁵ we, who with unveiled faces all reflect ^A the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. ^¹⁶

NEW TESTAMENT: ROMANS 6:1 - 23

6 ¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ²By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

⁵If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ⁶For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, ^A that we should no longer be slaves to sin—⁷because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

⁸Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

¹³Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

¹⁵What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Don't you know that when you offer ^¹⁷ yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.

²⁰When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

²¹What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

²³For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life ^in
B Christ Jesus our Lord. ^¹⁸

John 3:16-21 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, F that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.G 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." H

Monday, April 30, 2018

THEINC-HIM Daily Bible Meditation - April 30 - Full Text!

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John 3:16-21