Read To Me DAILYনমুনা

EXODUS 7-8:
In yesterday’s reading in Exodus, we heard of Moses and Aaron's first disastrous meeting with Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's retaliation against the Israelite people. God spoke with Moses again, reaffirming his promises and his covenant with the people of Israel.

JOB 34:
Today in chapter 34 of Job, we hear the third chapter of Elihu's six-chapter monologue.

JAMES 3:
Yesterday James warned that showing favoritism breaks the Law of Love that our King Jesus taught. And he talked about dead religion, which consists of easy believism with no acting out of what we believe. There is no contradiction between what Paul and James wrote. Here is a famous statement that sums up the complementary nature of Paul and James on this topic: “We are saved by faith alone (= fully believing), but saving faith will never be ‘alone’.” In other words, saving faith will always produce some proof.

I have mentioned before that the Greek words for ‘faith’ and ‘believe’ share the same root. Faith is simply the noun form of the verb believe. I mentioned how cohesion in the discourse is damaged for us English speakers when in close proximity the two dissimilar looking words are used for the same concept. This happens in James 2, verses 19-24. To show you what I mean, I will list the two words in the order of their occurrence in the NLT: have faith, believe, believe, faith, faith, faith, believed, faith. The reader may be tempted to look for some deep shade-of-meaning reason for this variation, but no such reason exists. Now listen to that passage when I read it using various forms of the verb ‘believe’ in a consistent manner:

2:19 NLT [Or perhaps] You say you [believe//have faith], [because/for] you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe [that/this], and they tremble in terror.
20 How foolish! Can’t you see that [believing/faith] without good deeds is useless?
21 Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see, [his believing/faith] and his actions worked together. His actions made his [believing/faith] complete [in God's sight].
23 And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his [fully believing//faith].” He was even called the friend of God.
24 So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by [believing/faith] alone.

And let me finish with verse 26:
26 Just as the body is dead without breath, so also [merely believing is just dead religion//faith is dead] without good works.