The One Year Bible TLB (232 page)

Ezekiel 1:1–3:15

Hebrews 3:1-19

Psalm 104:1-23

Proverbs 26:24-26

Ezekiel 1:1–3:15

Ezekiel was a priest (the son of Buzi) who lived with the Jewish exiles beside the Chebar Canal in Babylon.

One day late in June, when I was thirty years old,
*
the heavens were suddenly opened to me and I saw visions from God.
4
 I saw, in this vision, a great storm coming toward me from the north, driving before it a huge cloud glowing with fire, with a mass of fire inside that flashed continually; and in the fire there was something that shone like polished brass.

5
 Then from the center of the cloud, four strange forms appeared that looked like men,
6
 except that each had four faces and two pairs of wings!
7
 Their legs were like those of men, but their feet were cloven like calves’ feet, and shone like burnished brass.
8
 And beneath each of their wings I could see human hands.

9
 The four living beings were joined wing to wing, and they flew straight forward without turning.
10
 Each had the face of a man in front,
*
with a lion’s face on the right side of his head, and the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle at the back!
11
 Each had two pairs of wings spreading out from the middle of his back. One pair stretched out to attach to the wings of the living beings on each side, and the other pair covered his body.
12
 Wherever their spirit
*
went they went, going straight forward without turning.

13
 Going up and down among them were other forms that glowed like bright coals of fire or brilliant torches, and it was from these the lightning flashed.
14
 The living beings darted to and fro, swift as lightning.

15
 As I stared at all of this, I saw four wheels on the ground beneath them, one wheel belonging to each.
16
 The wheels looked as if they were made of polished amber, and each wheel was constructed with a second wheel crosswise inside.
*
17
 They could go in any of the four directions without having to face around.
18
 The four wheels had rims and spokes, and the rims were filled with eyes around their edges.

19-21
 When the four living beings flew forward, the wheels moved forward with them. When they flew upwards, the wheels went up too. When the living beings stopped, the wheels stopped. For the spirit of the four living beings was in the wheels; so wherever their spirit went, the wheels and the living beings went there too.

22
 The sky spreading out above them looked as though it were made of crystal; it was inexpressibly beautiful.

23
 The wings of each stretched straight out to touch the others’ wings, and each had two wings covering his body.
24
 And as they flew, their wings roared like waves against the shore, or like the voice of God, or like the shouting of a mighty army. When they stopped, they let down their wings.
25
 And every time they stopped, there came a voice from the crystal sky above them.
*

26
 For high in the sky above them was what looked like a throne made of beautiful blue sapphire stones, and upon it sat someone who appeared to be a Man.

27-28
 From his waist up, he seemed to be all glowing bronze, dazzling like fire; and from his waist down he seemed to be entirely flame, and there was a glowing halo like a rainbow all around him. That was the way the glory of the Lord appeared to me. And when I saw it, I fell face downward on the ground and heard the voice of someone speaking to me:

2:
1
 And he said to me: “Stand up, son of dust,
*
and I will talk to you.”

2
 And the Spirit entered into me as he spoke, and set me on my feet.

3
 “Son of dust,” he said, “I am sending you to the nation of Israel, to a nation rebelling against me. They and their fathers have kept on sinning against me until this very hour.
4
 For they are a hard-hearted, stiff-necked people. But I am sending you to give them my messages—the messages of the Lord God.
5
 And whether they listen or not (for remember, they are rebels), they will at least know they have had a prophet among them.

6
 “Son of dust, don’t be afraid of them; don’t be frightened even though their threats are sharp and barbed and sting like scorpions. Don’t be dismayed by their dark scowls. For remember, they are rebels!
7
 You must give them my messages whether they listen or not (but they won’t,
*
for they are utter rebels).
8
 Listen, son of dust, to what I say to you. Don’t you be a rebel too! Open your mouth and eat what I give you.”

9-10
 Then I looked and saw a hand holding out to me a scroll, with writing on both sides. He unrolled it, and I saw that it was full of warnings and sorrows and pronouncements of doom.

3:
1
 And he said to me: “Son of dust, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.”

2
 So I took the scroll.

3
 “Eat it all,” he said. And when I ate it, it tasted sweet as honey.

4
 Then he said: “Son of dust, I am sending you to the people of Israel with my messages.
5
 I am not sending you to some far-off foreign land where you can’t understand the language—
6
 no, not to tribes with strange, difficult tongues. (If I did, they would listen!)
7
 I am sending you to the people of Israel, and they won’t listen to you any more than they listen to me! For the whole lot of them are hard, impudent, and stubborn.
8
 But see, I have made you hard and stubborn too—as tough as they are.
9
 I have made your forehead as hard as rock. So don’t be afraid of them, or fear their sullen, angry looks, even though they are such rebels.”

10
 Then he added: “Son of dust, let all my words sink deep into your own heart first; listen to them carefully for yourself.
11
 Then, afterward, go to your people in exile, and whether or not they will listen, tell them: ‘This is what the Lord God says!’”

12
 Then the Spirit lifted me up, and the glory of the Lord began to move away, accompanied by the sound of a great earthquake.
*
13
 It was the noise of the wings of the living beings as they touched against each other, and the sound of their wheels beside them.

14-15
 The Spirit lifted me up, and took me away to Tel Abib, another colony of Jewish exiles beside the Chebar River. I went in bitterness and anger,
*
but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me. And I sat among them, overwhelmed, for seven days.

Hebrews 3:1-19

Therefore, dear brothers whom God has set apart for himself—you who are chosen for heaven—I want you to think now about this Jesus who is God’s Messenger and the High Priest of our faith.

2
 For Jesus was faithful to God who appointed him High Priest, just as Moses also faithfully served in God’s house.
3
 But Jesus has far more glory than Moses, just as a man who builds a fine house gets more praise than his house does.
4
 And many people can build houses, but only God made everything.

5
 Well, Moses did a fine job working in God’s house, but he was only a servant; and his work was mostly to illustrate and suggest those things that would happen later on.
6
 But Christ, God’s faithful Son, is in complete charge of God’s house. And we Christians are God’s house—he lives in us!—if we keep up our courage firm to the end, and our joy and our trust in the Lord.

7-8
 And since Christ is so much superior, the Holy Spirit warns us to listen to him, to be careful to hear his voice today and not let our hearts become set against him, as the people of Israel did. They steeled themselves against his love and complained against him in the desert while he was testing them.
9
 But God was patient with them forty years, though they tried his patience sorely; he kept right on doing his mighty miracles for them to see.
10
 “But,” God says, “I was very angry with them, for their hearts were always looking somewhere else instead of up to me, and they never found the paths I wanted them to follow.”

11
 Then God, full of this anger against them, bound himself with an oath that he would never let them come to his place of rest.

12
 Beware then of your own hearts, dear brothers, lest you find that they, too, are evil and unbelieving and are leading you away from the living God.
13
 Speak to each other about these things every day while there is still time so that none of you will become hardened against God, being blinded by the glamor
*
of sin.
14
 For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as we did when we first became Christians, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.

15
 But
now
is the time. Never forget the warning, “
Today
if you hear God’s voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts against him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled against him in the desert.”

16
 And who were those people I speak of, who heard God’s voice speaking to them but then rebelled against him? They were the ones who came out of Egypt with Moses their leader.
17
 And who was it who made God angry for all those forty years? These same people who sinned and as a result died in the wilderness.
18
 And to whom was God speaking when he swore with an oath that they could never go into the land he had promised his people? He was speaking to all those who disobeyed him.
19
 And why couldn’t they go in? Because they didn’t trust him.

Psalm 104:1-23

I bless the Lord: O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and with majesty and light! You stretched out the starry curtain of the heavens,
3
 and hollowed out the surface of the earth to form the seas. The clouds are his chariots. He rides upon the wings of the wind.
4
 The angels
*
are his messengers—his servants of fire!

5
 You bound the world together so that it would never fall apart.
6
 You clothed the earth with floods of waters covering up the mountains.
7-8
 You spoke, and at the sound of your shout the water collected into its vast ocean beds, and mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed.
9
 And then you set a boundary for the seas so that they would never again cover the earth.

10
 He placed springs in the valleys and streams that gush from the mountains.
11
 They give water for all the animals to drink. There the wild donkeys quench their thirst,
12
 and the birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees.
13
 He sends rain upon the mountains and fills the earth with fruit.
14
 The tender grass grows up at his command to feed the cattle, and there are fruit trees, vegetables, and grain for man to cultivate,
15
 and wine to make him glad, and olive oil as lotion for his skin, and bread to give him strength.
16
 The Lord planted the cedars of Lebanon. They are tall and flourishing.
17
 There the birds make their nests, the storks in the firs.
18
 High in the mountains are pastures for the wild goats, and rock badgers burrow in among the rocks and find protection there.

19
 He assigned the moon to mark the months and the sun to mark the days.
20
 He sends the night and darkness, when all the forest folk come out.
21
 Then the young lions roar for their food, but they are dependent on the Lord.
22
 At dawn they slink back into their dens to rest,
23
 and men go off to work until the evening shadows fall again.

Proverbs 26:24-26

A man with hate in his heart may sound pleasant enough, but don’t believe him; for he is cursing you in his heart. Though he pretends to be so kind, his hatred will finally come to light for all to see.