Daily Lectionary

September 11, 2024

September 10, 2024 September 12, 2024

These daily readings from the EHV follow the one-year daily lectionary provided in Christian Worship: Hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book, and the Treasury of Daily Prayer. In this lectionary, two readings of 15-25 verses each are provided for each day. Under this plan, nearly all of the New Testament and approximately one-third of the Old Testament are read each year. These readings fit well within the daily offices of Matins, Vespers, or Compline as daily family devotions.

2 Chronicles 29:1-24

Hezekiah King of Judah

(2 Kings 18:1-3)

29¹Hezekiah became king when he was twenty-five years old, and he ruled as king in Jerusalem for twenty-nine years. His mother's name was Abijah daughter of Zechariah.

²He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, like everything that his father David had done.

Restoration of the Temple

³In the first month of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah opened the doors of the House of the Lord and repaired them. ⁴He brought the priests and the Levites and assembled them in the eastern square. ⁵He said to them:

Listen to me, you Levites! Consecrate yourselves now, and consecrate the House of the Lord, the God of your fathers. Remove the filth from the holy place, ⁶for our fathers have been unfaithful. They have done evil in the eyes of the Lord our God. They have forsaken him. They have turned their faces away from the dwelling of the Lord. They have turned their backs. ⁷They also have shut the doors of the porch of the temple and have extinguished the lamps. They have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.

⁸So the wrath of the Lord is on Judah and Jerusalem. He has made them into an object of terror, horror, and hissing, as you see with your own eyes. ⁹Look! Our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons, our daughters, and our wives are in captivity because of this. ¹⁰Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. ¹¹Now, you my sons, do not be negligent, for you are the ones the Lord has chosen to stand in his presence, to minister to him, to serve him, and to burn incense to him.

¹²These are the Levites who responded:

from the descendants of the Kohathites: Mahath son of Amasai and Joel son of Azariah,

from the descendants of Merari: Kish son of Abdi and Azariah son of Jahallelel,

from the Gershonites: Joah son of Zimmah and Eden son of Joah,

¹³from the descendants of Elizaphan: Shimri and Jeiel,

from the descendants of Asaph: Zechariah and Mattaniah,

¹⁴from the descendants of Heman: Jehiel and Shimei,

and from the descendants of Jeduthun: Shemaiah and Uzziel.

¹⁵They gathered their brother Levites, consecrated themselves, and went to cleanse the House of the Lord, as the king commanded by the words of the Lord.

¹⁶The priests entered the inner part of the Lord's house to cleanse it. They brought every unclean thing that they found in the Lord's temple out into the courtyard of the House of the Lord. The Levites took it and carried it out to the Kidron Valley.

¹⁷On the first day of the first month, they began to consecrate the temple. By the eighth day of the month they had gotten as far as the porch of the Lord. They continued to purify the House of the Lord for eight more days. On the sixteenth day of the first month, they completed the work.

¹⁸They went in to King Hezekiah and said, “We have cleansed the entire House of the Lord, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the table for the presentation of bread and all its utensils. ¹⁹We have prepared and consecrated all the utensils which King Ahaz discarded during his reign, when he was unfaithful. Look! They are right there in front of the altar of the Lord.”

²⁰King Hezekiah got up early. He gathered the officials of the city and went up to the House of the Lord.

²¹They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven male goats as a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary, and for Judah. He commanded the sons of Aaron, the priests, to offer them on the altar of the Lord. ²²So they slaughtered the cattle. The priests collected the blood and splashed it against the altar. They killed the rams and splashed the blood against the altar. They killed the lambs and splashed the blood against the altar. ²³Then they brought the male goats for the sin offering to the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them. ²⁴The priests slaughtered them and made a sin offering with their blood on the altar to make atonement for all Israel, because the king had commanded a burnt offering and a sin offering for all Israel.

Philippians 3:1-21

True Righteousness

3¹Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things again to you, and it is a safeguard for you. ²Beware of the dogs. Beware of the evildoers. Beware of the mutilation.^[]^[] ³For we are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God,^[] who are confident in Christ Jesus, and who place no confidence in the flesh, ⁴even though I have grounds for confidence also in the flesh. If anyone else thinks that he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶in regard to zeal, persecuting the church; in regard to the righteousness that is in the law, blameless.

⁷But, whatever things were a profit for me, these things I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. ⁸But even more than that, I consider everything to be a loss because of what is worth far more: knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have lost all things and consider them rubbish, so that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God by faith. ¹⁰I do this so that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, ¹¹in the hope that in some way I may arrive at the resurrection from the dead.

Press On

¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus also took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it yet, but there is one thing I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and straining toward the things that are ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵Therefore, let all of us who are mature continue to think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this to you too. ¹⁶Only let us think the same thing and^[] walk in line with what we already have attained.

¹⁷Brothers, join together in imitating me and in paying attention to those who are walking according to the pattern we gave you. ¹⁸To be sure, many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. I told you about them often, and now I am saying it while weeping. ¹⁹Their end is destruction, their god is their appetite,^[] and their glory is in their shame. They are thinking only about earthly things. ²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven. We are eagerly waiting for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. ²¹By the power that enables him to subject all things to himself, he will transform our humble bodies to be like his glorious body.