Readings for Sunday, June 28

This Sunday we are going to be focusing on current events. As believers we find nourishment in the past, hope in the future, and a considerable challenge in the present.
In the Old Testament reading from Isaiah 22 God, speaking through the prophet, ridicules those behind the crumbling walls of the besieged city who "eat and drink for tomorrow they die."
In the New Testament reading from the Gospel of Matthew Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about tomorrow.
There is an apparent contradiction here and it is a contradiction that is heightened by the passage in Matthew 24 in which Jesus wraps up a catalog of terribly alarming events with the instruction to not be alarmed when they occur.
That's so like Jesus, too, isn't it? "Something terrifying is going to happen and when it does, don't be scared."
But that's the wonderful thing about being a Christian. God scorned the inhabitants of a doomed Jerusalem because they said "let's eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." But God is pleased when the believer says "let's eat, drink (grape juice) and be merry, for tomorrow we might die, but we are alive today and will be alive two thousand years from now." The liberty in being able to say that is a liberty beyond the repression of regimes or the confiscation of tyrrants. Praise the Lord!


Call to Repentance
Matthew 7:13-14 (page 1506)

Call to Worship
Psalm 65 (page 900)

OT Reading
Isaiah 22:1-14 (page 1090)

NT Reading
Matthew 6:25-34 (page 1505)

Message
Good News for People Who Like Bad News
Matthew 24:3-14 (page 1538)