God’s Gracious Dealings
1“All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. 2You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. 4Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. 5Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. 6Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. 7For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; 8a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.
9You visit the earth and cause it to overflow;
You greatly enrich it;
The stream of God is full of water;
You prepare their grain, for thus You prepare the earth.
10You water its furrows abundantly,
You settle its ridges,
You soften it with showers,
You bless its growth.
11You have crowned the year with Your bounty,
And Your paths drip with fatness.
12The pastures of the wilderness drip,
And the hills gird themselves with rejoicing.
13The meadows are clothed with flocks
And the valleys are covered with grain;
They shout for joy, yes, they sing.
11Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. 12I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. 13I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. 14Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction.
15You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you alone; 16for even in Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs. 17Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit which increases to your account.
1) How does gratitude for daily provision reflect trust in יהוה’s care?
2) What spiritual lessons grow out of seasons of lack or wilderness?
3) How can contentment testify to faith in יהוה’s goodness?
PSALM 48
The Beauty and Glory of Zion.
A Song; a Psalm of the sons of Korah.
1Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
In the city of our God, His holy mountain.
2Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion in the far north,
The city of the great King.
3God, in her palaces,
Has made Himself known as a stronghold.
4For, lo, the kings assembled themselves,
They passed by together.
5They saw it, then they were amazed;
They were terrified, they fled in alarm.
6Panic seized them there,
Anguish, as of a woman in childbirth.
7With the east wind
You break the ships of Tarshish.
8As we have heard, so have we seen
In the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God;
God will establish her forever. Selah.
9We have thought on Your lovingkindness, O God,
In the midst of Your temple.
10As is Your name, O God,
So is Your praise to the ends of the earth;
Your right hand is full of righteousness.
11Let Mount Zion be glad,
Let the daughters of Judah rejoice
Because of Your judgments.
12Walk about Zion and go around her;
Count her towers;
13Consider her ramparts;
Go through her palaces,
That you may tell it to the next generation.
14For such is God,
Our God forever and ever;
He will guide us until death.
Jonah’s Displeasure Rebuked
1But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord and said, “Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” 4The Lord said, “Do you have good reason to be angry?”
5Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. 6So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. 7But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. 8When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.”
9Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” 10Then the Lord said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”