Verse of the day

One passage a day, with a written teaching drawn from the commentators who have sat on pastors' shelves for two centuries — Matthew Henry, John Gill, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes and Charles Spurgeon among them.

How these teachings are made

2 Corinthians 5:7 October 18
Halfway across a desert, a man chasing a fortune has no assurance he will last the journey.
Mark 9:24 October 17
The father wept, and what he said named his own weakness.
Matthew 17:20 October 16
A crowd watched nine of the disciples fail to cure one boy. Their master was up a mountain.
Psalm 141:2 October 15
Banished from the altar, he offered the two things still on him.
Psalm 66:20 October 14
He came through fire and water, and calls a meeting to say that he was listened to.
Matthew 7:7 October 13
By the last word he is on the wrong side of a door somebody barred.
Romans 12:12 October 12
Between the hope and the prayer, the verse puts the trouble.
Ephesians 6:18 October 11
The soldier is told to pray for Christians in countries he will never see.
1 John 5:14 October 10
You may not press a claim on God. What he has willed, you may ask as often as you like.
Psalm 5:3 October 9
A man can pray for a thing, get it, and never know that he did.
Matthew 6:6 October 8
Some men loved to pray at the corner where two streets crossed. It was not the praying they loved.
James 5:16 October 7
The confession goes to the man you wronged, who is to pray for you.
Philippians 4:6-7 October 6
The man told to stop worrying still has a family to feed and a trade to keep.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 October 5
An archbishop died in exile, persecuted and despised, saying glory to God for all things.
Luke 18:1 October 4
A widow with no bribe and no friend at court got justice out of a judge who feared nobody.
Matthew 21:22 October 3
A foreigner could pray in one court of the temple. It was the court they kept the market in.
Mark 11:24 October 2
The curse was only that no one would eat from it again. By morning it was dried up from the roots.
Hebrews 11:6 October 1
Enoch was taken out of the world without dying, and nothing says he had ever seen God.
Jeremiah 33:3 September 30
Jerusalem was falling, and Jeremiah, locked up inside it, was told to ask God to rebuild the city.
Proverbs 24:16 September 29
Somebody was waiting outside for the fall he would not get up from. He kept getting up.
Psalm 19:7 September 28
David, minding his father's sheep, had two books and no others: the world around him, and what God said.
Proverbs 12:15 September 27
A man who has refused no advice may simply never have asked for any.
Romans 12:3 September 26
A high opinion of yourself would have some excuse if you held the monopoly on the Spirit's gifts.
Philippians 4:8 September 25
One thing on this list is being easy to love. A sour Christian spoils how people see the good he does.
Colossians 3:2 September 24
The Colossians were told their life was hidden, the way a tree in winter is alive and not showing it.
Proverbs 21:5 September 23
Two people, both of them busy. Only one ends up poor.
Psalm 90:17 September 22
Men condemned to die in the wilderness made one request of God, and made it twice.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 September 21
The chapter names twenty-eight seasons. Not one of them can be brought forward or put off.
Proverbs 15:22 September 20
Some men will not talk a matter over even with themselves.
Daniel 2:20 September 19
Daniel prayed for his life that night, and what got written down was the thanks he gave afterwards.
1 Kings 3:9 September 18
Offered anything he wanted, Solomon asked for the science of government.
Proverbs 3:7 September 17
He thought himself wiser than his teachers, and wiser than the Scriptures.
Proverbs 16:9 September 16
God sometimes directs a man's steps to the very thing he least intended.
Romans 11:33 September 15
Every other kind of riches has a bottom you can see.
Job 28:28 September 14
Men have been buried alive in the mines. Nobody has ever dug up wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2 September 13
Wisdom belongs to the man who reckons himself the chief of sinners.
Isaiah 33:6 September 12
The envoys sent to negotiate came back weeping like children. The king was promised settled times.
Proverbs 14:12 September 11
The sinner on the broad pleasant road gets off lighter than the man with works he calls good.
James 3:17 September 10
Heavenly wisdom does not start by making a man any cleverer.
Psalm 25:9 September 9
Four times in two verses, the man praying asks to be shown where to go.
Proverbs 13:20 September 8
The elders worth hearing out learned what they know from their own fathers.
1 Corinthians 1:25 September 7
Men looked at the fishermen God had sent and concluded the weakness was his.
Proverbs 4:7 September 6
Solomon had tutors. His father did the teaching anyway.
James 1:19 September 5
A man kept shouting Hear me at Augustine, who made hearers of them both.
Colossians 2:3 September 4
One line later, Paul warns them about being beguiled with enticing words.
2 Timothy 2:15 September 3
Interpreters once had a method they called a sharp knife that cuts and divides the Scriptures.
Proverbs 2:6 September 2
A man is ordered to search hard for wisdom, and warned in advance not to credit the search.
Proverbs 1:7 September 1
The fear at the head of a young man's education is not the fear of hell.
2 Corinthians 9:8 August 31
Paul had boasted to Macedonia about money the Corinthians had not yet collected.
Proverbs 3:9-10 August 30
The promise fills a wine press to bursting and leaves the wardrobe out of it.
Luke 12:24 August 29
A man storing his crop had just been counted a fool. The raven held up next has no barn at all.
Malachi 3:10 August 28
Last time the windows of heaven were opened, the world drowned.
Psalm 37:25 August 27
David begged his bread from a priest, and it was while Saul was hunting him.
Matthew 6:34 August 26
Halfway through the verse, tomorrow becomes a person with worries of its own.
Philippians 4:19 August 25
In those first days no other church had sent Paul anything. This promise is written to the one that did.
Psalm 42:11 August 24
Six verses back he had given himself the same advice, and gone on mourning since.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 August 23
The rescue reaches him on the ground, with the enemy still standing over him.
Romans 8:18 August 22
He added up what following Christ had cost. It came to very little.
Psalm 31:24 August 21
He was as safe in the caves as inside a strong city, and certain Saul would kill him.