Personal Devotions
Notes from Mark's personal Bible reading and meditation
With a goal to apply one truth from each day's reading to my life that day
Dec 31, 2025, 8:53 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 27-30
Meditation Verses: 30:12-16
Thought
Apparently, this is the command that David ran afoul of when he numbered the people. David was given a choice of three consequences, when he took responsibility for the error in the census, and the consequence selected was a plague, which was in line with this instruction. There was nothing wrong with counting the people, but when counted, they were supposed to give a ransom, a half shekel, rich and poor the same.
Dec 30, 2025, 9:28 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 23-26
Meditation Verse: 25:40
Thought
Moses wasn't just given specifications for each element of the Tabernacle, he was shown a pattern for each item, and he was expected to follow the pattern with the specifications given. He didn't have a lot of freedom of interpretation, but was supposed to make things exactly like the things he saw on the mountain.
Dec 29, 2025, 9:38 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 19-22
Meditation Verses: 22:22-24
Thought
Almost all of God's laws have a specific consequence that should be carried out by the judges and the community. But oppressing a widow or orphan does not. There is no codification of what counts as afflicting an orphan or widow, but if you do it and if they cry to God against you, then God will kill the man who does it and make his wife a widow and his children orphans.
Dec 28, 2025, 9:37 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 15-18
Meditation Verses: 18:25-26
Thought
This principle continues even into the New Testament. It is the basis for Paul rebuking the Corinthians for going before unbelievers to sue each other. They should have within their congregation men who are capable of making judgments between believers, and they should be appointed to solve disputes within the congregation.
Dec 27, 2025, 9:35 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 11-14
Meditation Verse: 14:31
Thought
This was God's goal in doing all these miraculous signs, that His own people, those whom God fought for, would see His mighty power and fear Him and believe in Him. He was also exalting Moses as His servant, whom all the people should honor and trust and follow. Not just Israel, but all the world, that when they hear these things and see how Egypt was cut down, that they to would fear the Lord and believe in Him.
Dec 26, 2025, 9:34 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 7-10
Meditation Verses: 10:1-3
Thought
After all these plagues so far, there is no fear of God yet in the eyes of Pharaoh and His servants. It is as if they have only been inconvenienced, rather than all of Egypt destroyed. Some of Pharaoh's servants are beginning to realize, but Pharaoh himself has been so hardened as to think he can resist God and survive.
Dec 25, 2025, 9:33 AM
Passage Read: Exodus 3-6
Meditation Verses: 5:21-23
Thought
Moses is just following God's orders, but Pharaoh responds by making life harder for the Israelites. Now they're being beaten for failing to meet their daily quota of bricks. Life was hard before Moses came, now it's even harder. How often is obedience to the Lord like that? If we could do things our own way, we could achieve our goals with a minimum of grief, but if we do things God's way, we might never obtain our goals.
Dec 24, 2025, 9:31 AM
Passage Read: Genesis 49 - Exodus 2
Meditation Verses: Exodus 2:23-25
Thought
According to the book of Hebrews, Moses earlier recognized that he was appointed to lead the people out of Egypt, but the people at that time didn't recognize it. So Moses fled and spent as much as forty years in Midian as a shepherd. From a king's palace to a shepherd's tent. Moses had wanted to help his people, but they refused.
Dec 23, 2025, 9:30 AM
Passage Read: Genesis 45-48
Meditation Verses: 45:4-8
Thought
There is never a proper resolution to Joseph's treatment at the hand of his brothers. He has forgiven them, but he keeps preempting their chance to make things right. There's never a confession on their part, never a seeking of forgiveness. On their part, there is only a plea not to punish them for their sin, and even that is in the words of their father.
Dec 22, 2025, 9:29 AM
Passage Read: Genesis 41-44
Meditation Verses: 44:32-34
Thought
Many years before, their jealousy and hated of Joseph led them to sell him into slavery into Egypt then to lie to their father, implying that Joseph was dead. Now they were desperate to keep from returning to their father without their youngest brother, for fear of what it would do to him.