Daily Lectionary

March 12, 2025

March 11, 2025 March 13, 2025

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.

Genesis 8:13-9:17

¹³And so in the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked out. He saw that the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

¹⁵God spoke to Noah. He said, ¹⁶“Go out of the ark—you, your wife, your sons, and your sons' wives with you. ¹⁷Bring out with you every living thing of every sort that is with you, all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may swarm over the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

¹⁸Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives along with him. ¹⁹Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever swarms on the earth went out of the ship, species by species.^[]

²⁰Noah built an altar to the Lord and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma. The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. ²²While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

God's Covenant With the Earth

9¹God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. ²Every animal on the earth and every bird in the sky will fear you and dread you. Everything that swarms on the ground and all the fish in the sea are handed over to you. ³Every living, moving thing will be food for you. I have given everything to you, just as I gave you the green plants. ⁴But flesh that has the blood (which is its life) still in it, you shall not eat. ⁵In fact, I will hold each animal and each person responsible for your lifeblood. I will hold each man responsible for the life of his brother. ⁶Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for God made man in his own image.

⁷“But you, be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly on the earth, and multiply on it.”

⁸God said to Noah and to his sons, who were with him, ⁹“Listen, I will now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰and with everything with you that has the breath of life: with the birds, with the livestock, and with every wild animal that is on the earth with you, with everything that went out of the ark, even with every wild animal on the earth. ¹¹I will establish my covenant with you: Never again will all living creatures^[] be cut off by the waters of a flood. Neither will there ever again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹²God also said, “This is the sign of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you that I am giving for all generations to come. ¹³I have set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be the sign of a covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴Whenever I bring a cloud over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the cloud, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of every sort,^[] and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it so that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of every kind that is on the earth.” ¹⁷God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Mark 4:1-20

The Parable of the Sower

(Matthew 13:1-23; Luke 8:4-15)

4¹Another time Jesus began to teach by the sea. Such a large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the sea. The whole crowd was on the seashore. ²Then he taught them many things in parables. As he taught them, he said, ³“Listen! There was a sower who went out to sow. ⁴As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up right away because it did not have deep soil. ⁶When the sun rose, it was scorched, and because it did not have much root, it withered. ⁷Some seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, so it did not produce fruit. ⁸Still other seed fell on good ground and yielded fruit, sprouting and growing and producing a crop: some thirty, some sixty, and some one hundred times as much as was sown.” ⁹Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”

¹⁰When Jesus was alone, those who were around him with the Twelve asked him about the parables. ¹¹He said to them, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but everything comes in parables to those who are outside, ¹²so that

“they will certainly see but not perceive,

and they will certainly hear but not understand.

Otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven.”^[]

¹³Then he asked them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand any of the parables? ¹⁴The sower sows the word. ¹⁵These are the ones along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and immediately takes away the word that was sown in them. ¹⁶Some are like the ones sown on rocky ground: as soon as they hear the word, they immediately welcome it with joy. ¹⁷Yet since they have no root in themselves, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away. ¹⁸Still others are sown among the thorns. These are the ones who hear the word, ¹⁹but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth and desires for other things enter in and choke the word, so it becomes unfruitful. ²⁰But the ones sown on the good ground are those who hear the word, accept it, and produce fruit: some thirty, some sixty, and some one hundred times as much as was sown.”