Reading 1 - Exo 13:18,19
"The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle. Moses took the bones of Joseph with him" (Exo 13:18,19).
"We do not follow a coffin: we know of an empty tomb, which speaks eloquently of resurrection. We follow not a dead man's bones: we follow the living Lord Jesus Christ, who, by his death, has brought us out. One day he will return, and by his grace, he will bring us into the rest that remains for the people of God. Until that day we must endeavour to follow the example of Paul in Phi 3:13,14; 'Forgetting those things which are behind (Egypt), and reaching forth unto those things that are before (the Kingdom), I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of god in Christ Jesus.' Can we possibly do less?" (A Harvey, Christadelphian 138:256).
Reading 2 - Psa 68:10
"From your bounty, O God, you provided for the poor" (Psa 68:10).
"All God's gifts are prepared gifts laid up in store for wants foreseen. He anticipates our needs; and out of the fulness which He has treasured up in Christ Jesus, He provides of His goodness for the poor. You may trust Him for all the necessities that can occur, for He has infallibly foreknown every one of them. He can say of us in all conditions, 'I knew that thou wouldst be this and that.' A man goes a journey across the desert, and when he has made a day's advance, and pitched his tent, he discovers that he wants many comforts and necessaries which he has not brought in his baggage. 'Ah!' says he, 'I did not foresee this: if I had this journey to go again, I should bring these things with me, so necessary to my comfort.' But God has marked with prescient eye all the requirements of His poor wandering children, and when those needs occur, supplies are ready. It is goodness which He has prepared for the poor in heart, goodness and goodness only. 'My grace is sufficient for thee.' [2Co 12:9] 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be' [Deu 33:25]" (CHS).
Reading 3 - Mark 2:17
"On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners' " (Mar 2:17).
"God's love in Christ, in its full measure, is offered not to those merely who are believing enough, penitent enough, reformed enough; it is offered to all those who will cast themselves on God, be it only with faith 'as a grain of mustard seed.' And to anticipate a common objection -- far from inducing laxity or presumption, provided that we have some understanding of the meaning of the cross, the effect of this kind of thinking is exactly opposite. Surely there is less presumption in receiving our forgiveness whole and entire at the hand of God at the outset and ever after as a purely loving gift, than in coming to Him afterwards at intervals with the sense that I am now a better man and therefore fitter to be forgiven. Paradoxical it may be, but it is undeniable Scripture truth that it is not the worthy, but the unworthy, whom a pardoning God receives" (Derek Brook, "The Christadelphian" 112:436).
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