Daily Lectionary

Joel 1:1-20

¹ The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:
² Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
³ Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.
⁴ What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.
⁶ For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness.
⁷ It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.
⁸ Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.
⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD.
¹⁰ The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes.
¹¹ Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
¹² The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.
¹³ Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
¹⁴ Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.
¹⁵ Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
¹⁶ Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?
¹⁷ The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up.
¹⁸ How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.
¹⁹ To you, O LORD, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.
²⁰ Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness. (ESV)

Romans 10:1-21

¹ Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.
² For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
³ For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.
⁴ For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
⁵ For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
⁶ But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down)
⁷ “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).
⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
⁹ because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
¹⁰ For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.
¹³ For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
¹⁴ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
¹⁵ And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
¹⁶ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?”
¹⁷ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
¹⁸ But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”
¹⁹ But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”
²⁰ Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”
²¹ But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” (ESV)