Other comments on this day's readings can be found here.
Reading 1 - Exo 13:18,19
"The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle. Moses
took the bones of Joseph with him" (Exo 13:18,19).
"We do not follow a coffin: we know of an empty tomb, which
speaks eloquently of resurrection. We follow not a dead man's bones: we follow
the living Lord Jesus Christ, who, by his death, has brought us out. One day he
will return, and by his grace, he will bring us into the rest that remains for
the people of God. Until that day we must endeavour to follow the example of
Paul in Phi 3:13,14; 'Forgetting those things which are behind (Egypt), and
reaching forth unto those things that are before (the Kingdom), I press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling of god in Christ Jesus.' Can we
possibly do less?" (A Harvey, Christadelphian 138:256).
Reading 2 - Psa 68:10
"From your bounty, O God, you provided for the poor" (Psa
68:10).
"All God's gifts are prepared gifts laid up in store for wants
foreseen. He anticipates our needs; and out of the fulness which He has
treasured up in Christ Jesus, He provides of His goodness for the poor. You may
trust Him for all the necessities that can occur, for He has infallibly
foreknown every one of them. He can say of us in all conditions, 'I knew that
thou wouldst be this and that.' A man goes a journey across the desert, and when
he has made a day's advance, and pitched his tent, he discovers that he wants
many comforts and necessaries which he has not brought in his baggage. 'Ah!'
says he, 'I did not foresee this: if I had this journey to go again, I should
bring these things with me, so necessary to my comfort.' But God has marked with
prescient eye all the requirements of His poor wandering children, and when
those needs occur, supplies are ready. It is goodness which He has prepared for
the poor in heart, goodness and goodness only. 'My grace is sufficient for
thee.' [2Co 12:9] 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be' [Deu 33:25]"
(CHS).
Reading 3 - Mark 2:17
"On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy
who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but
sinners' " (Mar 2:17).
"God's love in Christ, in its full measure, is offered not to
those merely who are believing enough, penitent enough, reformed enough; it is
offered to all those who will cast themselves on God, be it only with faith 'as
a grain of mustard seed.' And to anticipate a common objection -- far from
inducing laxity or presumption, provided that we have some understanding of the
meaning of the cross, the effect of this kind of thinking is exactly opposite.
Surely there is less presumption in receiving our forgiveness whole and entire
at the hand of God at the outset and ever after as a purely loving gift, than in
coming to Him afterwards at intervals with the sense that I am now a better man
and therefore fitter to be forgiven. Paradoxical it may be, but it is undeniable
Scripture truth that it is not the worthy, but the unworthy, whom a pardoning
God receives" (Derek Brook, "The Christadelphian" 112:436).