Daily Lectionary

Deuteronomy 7:1-19

¹ “When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you,
² and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.
³ You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,
⁴ for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
⁵ But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
⁶ “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
⁷ It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,
⁸ but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
⁹ Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,
¹⁰ and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
¹¹ You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
¹² “And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers.
¹³ He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you.
¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock.
¹⁵ And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you.
¹⁶ And you shall consume all the peoples that the LORD your God will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
¹⁷ “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them?’
¹⁸ you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt,
¹⁹ the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So will the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. (ESV)

Matthew 6:16-34

¹⁶ “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
¹⁷ But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,
¹⁸ that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,
²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,
²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
²⁴ “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,
²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
³⁴ “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (ESV)