Good morning! Today I read Hosea 5-7, Proverbs 11, Psalm 38, and Luke 3-4.
In Luke I read about John and his baptisms. It says crowds came to be baptized and he chastised them saying in 4:8, “Do the things that show you really have changed your hearts and lives. Don’t begin to say to yourselves, ‘Abraham is our father.’ I tell you that God could make children for Abraham from these rocks.” So this tells me these people were coming to be baptized and figured since they were Israelites they could be baptized. But John was telling them they need to change their lives and only then could they come and be baptized as a symbol of how they have changed. Baptism now, the baptism of Jesus, is a symbol of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And we do it to show we have made that decision to follow Jesus with a changed life. So baptism has always been a symbol, not a way of salvation, even when John was doing it.
In Hosea, I read yesterday how Israel is like an adulterous wife of God. Today I am reading about how the people of Israel will be punished. I know this is not funny, but I wanted to mention a verse that makes me laugh out loud. It is 7:8, it says, ““Israel mixes with other nations; he is like a pancake cooked only on one side.” Did you chuckle? I have a page full of verses that tickle my funny bone. God is loving, he is just, he holds us accountable, and I’m sure he enjoys a good laugh too.
Good Morning God 