The One Year Bible TLB (216 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
O Shepherd of Israel who leads Israel like a flock; O God enthroned above the Guardian Angels, bend down your ear and listen as I plead. Display your power and radiant glory.
2
Let Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh see you rouse yourself and use your mighty power to rescue us.
3
Turn us again to yourself, O God. Look down on us in joy and love;
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only then shall we be saved.
4
O Jehovah, God of heaven’s armies, how long will you be angry and reject our prayers?
5
You have fed us with sorrow and tears
6
and have made us the scorn of the neighboring nations. They laugh among themselves.
7
Turn us again to yourself, O God of Hosts. Look down on us in joy and love;
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only then shall we be saved.
8
You brought us from Egypt as though we were a tender vine and drove away the heathen from your land and planted us.
9
You cleared the ground and tilled the soil, and we took root and filled the land.
10
The mountains were covered with our shadow; we were like the mighty cedar trees,
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11
covering the entire land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River.
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But now you have broken down our walls, leaving us without protection.
13
The boar from the forest roots around us, and the wild animals feed on us.
14
Come back, we beg of you, O God of the armies of heaven, and bless us. Look down from heaven and see our plight and care for this your vine!
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Protect what you yourself have planted, this son you have raised for yourself.
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For we are chopped and burned by our enemies. May they perish at your frown.
17
Strengthen the man you love,
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the son of your choice,
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and we will never forsake you again. Revive us to trust in you.
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Turn us again to yourself, O God of the armies of heaven. Look down on us, your face aglow with joy and love—only then shall we be saved.
These proverbs of Solomon
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were discovered and copied by the aides of King Hezekiah of Judah:
2-3
It is God’s privilege to conceal things, and the king’s privilege to discover and invent. You cannot understand the height of heaven, the size of the earth, or all that goes on in the king’s mind!
4-5
When you remove dross from silver, you have sterling ready for the silversmith. When you remove corrupt men from the king’s court, his reign will be just and fair.
October 11Now I am sending for many fishermen to fish you from the deeps where you are hiding from my wrath. I am sending for hunters to chase you down like deer in the forests or mountain goats on inaccessible crags. Wherever you run to escape my judgment, I will find you and punish you.
17
For I am closely watching you, and I see every sin. You cannot hope to hide from me.
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And I will punish you doubly for all your sins because you have defiled my land with your detestable idols and filled it up with all your evil deeds.
19
O Lord, my Strength and Fortress, my Refuge in the day of trouble, nations from around the world will come to you saying, “Our fathers have been foolish, for they have worshiped worthless idols!
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Can men make God? The gods they made are not real gods at all.”
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And when they come in that spirit, I will show them
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my power and might and make them understand at last that I alone am God.
17:
1
My people sin as though commanded to, as though their evil were laws chiseled with an iron pen or diamond point upon their stony hearts or on the corners of their altars.
2-3
Their youths do not forget to sin, worshiping idols beneath each tree, high in the mountains or in the open country down below. And so I will give all your treasures to your enemies as the price that you must pay for all your sins.
4
And the wonderful heritage I reserved for you will slip out of your hand, and I will send you away as slaves to your enemies in distant lands. For you have kindled a fire of my anger that shall burn forever.
5
The Lord says: Cursed is the man who puts his trust in mortal man and turns his heart away from God.
6
He is like a stunted shrub in the desert, with no hope for the future; he lives on the salt-encrusted plains in the barren wilderness; good times pass him by forever.
7
But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and has made the Lord his hope and confidence.
8
He is like a tree planted along a riverbank, with its roots reaching deep into the water—a tree not bothered by the heat nor worried by long months of drought. Its leaves stay green, and it goes right on producing all its luscious fruit.
9
The heart is the most deceitful thing there is and desperately wicked. No one can really know how bad it is!
10
Only the Lord knows! He searches all hearts and examines deepest motives so he can give to each person his right reward, according to his deeds—how he has lived.
11
Like a bird that fills her nest with young she has not hatched and which will soon desert her and fly away, so is the man who gets his wealth by unjust means. Sooner or later he will lose his riches and at the end of his life become a poor old fool.
12
But our refuge is your throne, eternal, high, and glorious.
13
O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all who turn away from you shall be disgraced and shamed; they are registered for earth and not for glory, for they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living waters.
14
Lord, you alone can heal me, you alone can save, and my praises are for you alone.
15
Men scoff at me and say, “What is this word of the Lord you keep talking about? If these threats of yours are really from God, why don’t they come true?”
16
Lord, I don’t want the people crushed by terrible calamity. The plan is yours, not mine. It is
your
message I’ve given them, not my own.
I
don’t want them doomed!
17
Lord, don’t desert me now! You alone are my hope.
18
Bring confusion and trouble on all who persecute me, but give me peace. Yes, bring double destruction upon them!
19
Then the Lord said to me, Go and stand in the gates of Jerusalem, first at the gate where the king goes out, and then at each of the other gates,
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and say to all the people: Hear the word of the Lord, kings of Judah and all the people of this nation, and all you citizens of Jerusalem.
21-22
The Lord says: Take warning and live; do no unnecessary
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work on the Sabbath day, but make it a holy day. I gave this commandment to your fathers,
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but they didn’t listen or obey. They stubbornly refused to pay attention and be taught.
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But if you obey me, says the Lord, and refuse to work on the Sabbath day and keep it separate, special and holy,
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then this nation shall continue forever. There shall always be descendants of David sitting on the throne here in Jerusalem; there shall always be kings and princes riding in pomp and splendor among the people, and this city shall remain forever.
26
And from all around Jerusalem and from the cities of Judah and Benjamin, from the Negeb and from the lowlands west of Judah, the people shall come with their burnt offerings and grain offerings and incense, bringing their sacrifices to praise the Lord in his Temple.
27
But if you will not listen to me, if you refuse to keep the Sabbath holy, if on the Sabbath you bring in loads of merchandise through these gates of Jerusalem, just as on other days, then I will set fire to these gates. The fire shall spread to the palaces and utterly destroy them, and no one shall be able to put out the raging flames.
18:
1
Here is another message to Jeremiah from the Lord:
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Go down to the shop where clay pots and jars are made, and I will talk to you there.
3
I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel.
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But the jar that he was forming didn’t turn out as he wished, so he kneaded it into a lump and started again.
5
Then the Lord said:
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O Israel, can’t I do to you as this potter has done to his clay? As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.
7
Whenever I announce that a certain nation or kingdom is to be taken up and destroyed,
8
then if that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I had planned.
9
And if I announce that I will make a certain nation strong and great,
10
but then that nation changes its mind, turns to evil, and refuses to obey me, then I, too, will change my mind and not bless that nation as I had said I would.
11
Therefore, go and warn all Judah and Jerusalem, saying: Hear the word of the Lord. I am planning evil against you now instead of good; turn back from your evil paths and do what is right.
12
But they replied, “Don’t waste your breath. We have no intention whatever of doing what God says. We will continue to live as we want to, free from any restraint, full of stubbornness and wickedness!”
13
Then the Lord said: Even among the heathen, no one has ever heard of such a thing! My people have done something too horrible to understand.
14
The snow never melts high up in the Lebanon mountains. The cold, flowing streams from the crags of Mount Hermon never run dry.
15
These can be counted on. But not my people! For they have deserted me and turned to foolish idols. They have turned away from the ancient highways of good and walk the muddy paths of sin.
16
Therefore, their land shall become desolate, so that all who pass by will gasp and shake their heads in amazement at its utter desolation.
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I will scatter my people before their enemies as the east wind scatters dust; and in all their trouble I will turn my back on them and refuse to notice their distress.
18
Then the people said, “Come, let’s get rid of Jeremiah. We have our own priests and wise men and prophets—we don’t need his advice. Let’s silence him that he may speak no more against us, nor bother us again.”
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O Lord, help me! See what they are planning to do to me!
20
Should they repay evil for good? They have set a trap to kill me, yet I spoke well of them to you and tried to defend them from your anger.
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Now, Lord, let their children starve to death and let the sword pour out their blood! Let their wives be widows and be bereft of all their children! Let their men die in epidemics and their youths die in battle!
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Let screaming be heard from their homes as troops of soldiers come suddenly upon them, for they have dug a pit for me to fall in, and they have hidden traps along my path.
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Lord, you know all their murderous plots against me. Don’t forgive them, don’t blot out their sin, but let them perish before you; deal with them in your anger.
Let me add this, dear brothers: You already know how to please God in your daily living, for you know the commands we gave you from the Lord Jesus himself. Now we beg you—yes, we demand of you in the name of the Lord Jesus—that you live more and more closely to that ideal.
3-4
For God wants you to be holy and pure and to keep clear of all sexual sin so that each of you will marry in holiness and honor—
5
not in lustful passion as the heathen do, in their ignorance of God and his ways.
6
And this also is God’s will: that you never cheat in this matter by taking another man’s wife because the Lord will punish you terribly for this, as we have solemnly told you before.
7
For God has not called us to be dirty-minded and full of lust but to be holy and clean.
8
If anyone refuses to live by these rules, he is not disobeying the rules of men but of God who gives his
Holy
Spirit to you.
9
But concerning the pure brotherly love that there should be among God’s people, I don’t need to say very much, I’m sure! For God himself is teaching you to love one another.
10
Indeed, your love is already strong toward all the Christian brothers throughout your whole nation. Even so, dear friends, we beg you to love them more and more.
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This should be your ambition: to live a quiet life, minding your own business and doing your own work, just as we told you before.
12
As a result, people who are not Christians will trust and respect you, and you will not need to depend on others for enough money to pay your bills.
13
And now, dear brothers, I want you to know what happens to a Christian when he dies so that when it happens, you will not be full of sorrow, as those are who have no hope.
14
For since we believe that Jesus died and then came back to life again, we can also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him all the Christians who have died.
15
I can tell you this directly from the Lord: that we who are still living when the Lord returns will not rise to meet him ahead of those who are in their graves.
16
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a mighty shout and with the soul-stirring cry of the archangel and the great trumpet-call of God. And the believers who are dead will be the first to rise to meet the Lord.
17
Then we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and remain with him forever.
18
So comfort and encourage each other with this news.
5:
1
When is all this going to happen? I really don’t need to say anything about that, dear brothers,
2
for you know perfectly well that no one knows. That day of the Lord will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night.
3
When people are saying, “All is well; everything is quiet and peaceful”—then, all of a sudden, disaster will fall upon them as suddenly as a woman’s birth pains begin when her child is born. And these people will not be able to get away anywhere—there will be no place to hide.
The Lord makes us strong! Sing praises! Sing to Israel’s God!
2
Sing, accompanied by drums; pluck the sweet lyre and harp.
3
Sound the trumpet! Come to the joyous celebrations at full moon, new moon, and all the other holidays.
4
For God has given us these times of joy; they are scheduled in the laws of Israel.
5
He gave them as reminders of his war against Egypt where we were slaves on foreign soil.
I heard an unknown voice that said,
6
“Now I will relieve your shoulder of its burden; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks.”
7
He said, “You cried to me in trouble, and I saved you; I answered from Mount Sinai
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where the thunder hides. I tested your faith at Meribah, when you complained there was no water.
8
Listen to me, O my people, while I give you stern warnings. O Israel, if you will only listen!
9
You must never worship any other god, nor ever have an idol in your home.
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10
For it was I, Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Only test me!
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Open your mouth wide and see if I won’t fill it. You will receive every blessing you can use!
11
“But no, my people won’t listen. Israel doesn’t want me around.
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So I am letting them go their blind and stubborn way, living according to their own desires.
13
“But oh, that my people would listen to me! Oh, that Israel would follow me, walking in my paths!
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How quickly then I would subdue her enemies! How soon my hands would be upon her foes!
15
Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him; their desolation would last forever.
16
But he would feed you with the choicest foods. He would satisfy you with honey for the taking.”
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