Tagged: daily bread

“The Lord will give them up, until the time when she who is to give birth has borne.” –Micah 5:2 Micah prophesied that the Lord would give His people up until the mother of the Messiah had given birth to Him. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be called ” ‘Emmanuel,’ a name which means ‘God is with us’ ” (Mt 1:23; Is 7:14). After Mary had given birth to her Son, Who was both the Messiah and the Son of God, we would never have to feel that the Lord had given us up. Now we can know that...

“The scribes and Pharisees were on the watch to see if He would perform a cure on the Sabbath so that they could find a charge against Him.” –Luke 6:7 Jesus could have healed the man with a withered hand on a day other than the Sabbath or in private. Yet Jesus refused to be intimidated and manipulated by His enemies. In fact, Jesus publicly displayed this healing on the Sabbath (Lk 6:8ff). As expected, Jesus’ opponents “went crazy” (see Lk 6:11) and eventually had Him crucified. Jesus is courageous, fearless, and confrontational. He did not compromise His principles, even...

Jesus “put His fingers into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.” –Mark 7:33 Jesus’ gestures of inserting his fingers into a deaf-mute man’s ears and touching the man’s tongue seem foreign to our modern, antiseptic culture. Yet if you’re baptized, you experienced the touch of Jesus in a similar way. At baptism, the priest or deacon touched your ears and lips, praying that God would open your ears to hear His Word and your lips to proclaim it. Before Jesus touched the deaf-mute, “He looked up to heaven and emitted a groan. He said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ (that...

“Why are You doing what is prohibited on the sabbath?” –Luke 6:2 Keeping the sabbath is a sign to show that we want to be holy and that the Lord makes us holy (Ex 31:13). Keeping the sabbath is to be considered a perpetual covenant between us and the Lord (Ex 31:16). Therefore, the Mosaic law commanded that anyone who does not keep the sabbath “shall be put to death” and thereby “rooted out” of God’s people (Ex 31:14). Aware of this teaching in Exodus on keeping the sabbath, we can see why some Pharisees criticized Jesus’ disciples for “picking...