Thursday in Week 7 of Pentecost
Ahem, well, better late than never I suppose.
Daily Readings
Numbers 23:11-26 Romans 8:1-11 Matthew 22:1-14In Numbers 23:19 we find this comforting passage about the nature of our God:
19God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? A reminder that God is faithful and just, always and forever. Amen.
Romans 8 is an encouraging word for us sinners. Following closely behind the "wretched man" of Romans 7 it gives us a glimpse of the glory that is to come:
9You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.Even though in the flesh we remain sinners until the end of our lives and are never able to perfectly obey the law of God, yet even so we are righteous before God through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been baptized into His death and we will rise with Him at the last day.
The Parable of the Wedding Feast. What do we make of this story? I know I've heard a number of sermons on it but for the life of me this morning my mind is blank. The man without the wedding garment being cast out. Who is he? Why is he cast out? I think he is the man who comes before God in his own right, wearing his own righteousness. The idea being that the king provided wedding garments to the guests and this man decided his own clothes were better than that provided by the king. So, here we have the man in his own clothes, wearing he own righteousness, probably thinking he is is a "good man" being cast out because he was not wearing the clothes provided by the king, meaning that he was not clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
Oh, I guess my mind wasn't quite blank after all :-)