The One Year Bible TLB (71 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
March 28“O Israel, listen! Today you are to cross the Jordan River and begin to dispossess the nations on the other side. Those nations are much greater and more powerful than you are! They live in high walled cities. Among them are the famed Anak giants, against whom none can stand!
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But the Lord your God will go before you as a devouring fire to destroy them, so that you will quickly conquer them and drive them out.
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“Then, when the Lord has done this for you, don’t say to yourselves, ‘The Lord has helped us because we are so good!’ No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he is doing it.
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It is not at all because you are such fine, upright people that the Lord will drive them out from before you! I say it again, it is only because of the wickedness of the other nations, and because of his promises to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he will do it.
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I say it yet again:
Jehovah your God is not giving you this good land because you are good, for you are not—
you are a wicked, stubborn people.
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“Don’t you remember (oh, never forget it!) how continually angry you made the Lord your God out in the wilderness, from the day you left Egypt until now? For all this time you have constantly rebelled against him.
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“Don’t you remember how angry you made him at Mount Horeb? He was ready to destroy you.
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I was on the mountain at the time, receiving the contract which Jehovah had made with you—the stone tablets with the laws inscribed upon them. I was there for forty days and forty nights, and all that time I ate nothing. I didn’t even take a drink of water.
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At the end of those forty days and nights the Lord gave me the contract, the tablets on which he had written the commandments he had spoken from the fire-covered mountain while the people had watched below.
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He told me to go down quickly because the people I had led out of Egypt had defiled themselves, quickly turning away from the laws of God, and had made an idol from molten metal.
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“‘Let me alone that I may destroy this evil, stubborn people!’ the Lord told me, ‘and I will blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make a mighty nation of you, mightier and greater than they are.’
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“I came down from the burning mountain, holding in my hands the two tablets inscribed with the laws of God.
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There below me I could see the calf you had made in your terrible sin against the Lord your God. How quickly you turned away from him!
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I lifted the tablets high above my head and dashed them to the ground! I smashed them before your eyes!
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Then, for another forty days and nights I lay before the Lord, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for you had done what the Lord hated most, thus provoking him to great anger.
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How I feared for you—for the Lord was ready to destroy you. But that time, too, he listened to me.
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Aaron was in great danger because the Lord was so angry with him; but I prayed, and the Lord spared him.
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I took your sin—the calf you had made—and burned it and ground it into fine dust, and threw it into the stream that cascaded out of the mountain.
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“Again at Taberah and once again at Massah you angered the Lord, and yet again at Kibroth-hattaavah.
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At Kadesh-barnea, when the Lord told you to enter the land he had given you, you rebelled and wouldn’t believe that he would help you; you refused to obey him.
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Yes, you have been rebellious against the Lord from the first day I knew you.
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That is why I fell down before him for forty days and nights when the Lord was ready to destroy you.
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“I prayed to him, ‘O Lord God, don’t destroy your own people. They are your inheritance saved from Egypt by your mighty power and glorious strength.
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Don’t notice the rebellion and stubbornness of these people, but remember instead your promises to your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Oh, please overlook the awful wickedness and sin of these people.
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For if you destroy them, the Egyptians will say, “It is because the Lord wasn’t able to bring them to the land he promised them,” or “He destroyed them because he hated them: he brought them into the wilderness to slay them.”
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They are your people and your inheritance that you brought from Egypt by your great power and your mighty arm.’
10:
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“At that time the Lord told me to cut two more stone tablets like the first ones, and to make a wooden Ark to keep them in, and to return to God on the mountain.
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He said he would rewrite on the tablets the same commandments that were on the tablets I had smashed, and that I should place them in the Ark.
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So I made an Ark of acacia wood and hewed out two stone tablets like the first two, and took the tablets up on the mountain to God.
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He again wrote the Ten Commandments on them and gave them to me. (They were the same commandments he had given you from the heart of the fire on the mountain as you all watched below.)
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Then I came down and placed the tablets in the Ark I had made, where they are to this day, just as the Lord commanded me.
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“The people of Israel then journeyed from Beeroth of Bene-jaakan to Moserah, where Aaron died and was buried. His son Eleazar became the next priest.
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“Then they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from there to Jotbathah, a land of brooks and water.
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It was there that Jehovah set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark containing the Ten Commandments of Jehovah, and to stand before the Lord and to do his work and to bless his name, just as is done today.
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(That is why the tribe of Levi does not have a portion of land reserved for it in the Promised Land, as their brother tribes do; for as the Lord told them, he himself is their inheritance.)
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“As I said before, I stayed on the mountain before the Lord for forty days and nights the second time, just as I had the first, and the Lord again yielded to my pleas and didn’t destroy you.
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“But he said to me, ‘Arise and lead the people to the land I promised their fathers. It is time to go in and possess it.’
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“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to listen carefully to all he says to you, and to obey for your own good the commandments I am giving you today, and to love him, and to worship him with all your hearts and souls?
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Earth and highest heaven belong to the Lord your God.
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And yet he rejoiced in your fathers and loved them so much that he chose you, their children, to be above every other nation, as is evident today.
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Therefore, cleanse your sinful hearts and stop your stubbornness.
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“Jehovah your God is God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the great and mighty God, the God of terror who shows no partiality and takes no bribes.
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He gives justice to the fatherless and widows. He loves foreigners and gives them food and clothing.
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(You too must love foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.)
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You must fear the Lord your God and worship him and cling to him, and take oaths by his name alone.
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He is your praise and he is your God, the one who has done mighty miracles you yourselves have seen.
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When your ancestors went down into Egypt there were only seventy of them, but now the Lord your God has made you as many as the stars in the sky!”
One day he [Jesus] gave this illustration to a large crowd that was gathering to hear him—while many others were still on the way, coming from other towns.
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“A farmer went out to his field to sow grain. As he scattered the seed on the ground, some of it fell on a footpath and was trampled on; and the birds came and ate it as it lay exposed.
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Other seed fell on shallow soil with rock beneath. This seed began to grow, but soon withered and died for lack of moisture.
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Other seed landed in thistle patches, and the young grain stalks were soon choked out.
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Still other fell on fertile soil; this seed grew and produced a crop one hundred times as large as he had planted.”
(As he was giving this illustration he said,
“If anyone has listening ears, use them now!”
)
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His apostles asked him what the story meant.
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He replied,
“God has granted you to know the meaning of these parables, for they tell a great deal about the Kingdom of God. But these crowds hear the words and do not understand, just as the ancient prophets predicted.
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“This is its meaning: The seed is God’s message to men.
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The hard path where some seed fell represents the hard hearts of those who hear the words of God, but then the devil comes and steals the words away and prevents people from believing and being saved.
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The stony ground represents those who enjoy listening to sermons, but somehow the message never really gets through to them and doesn’t take root and grow. They know the message is true, and sort of believe for a while; but when the hot winds of persecution blow, they lose interest.
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The seed among the thorns represents those who listen and believe God’s words but whose faith afterwards is choked out by worry and riches and the responsibilities and pleasures of life. And so they are never able to help anyone else to believe the Good News.
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“But the good soil represents honest, good-hearted people. They listen to God’s words and cling to them and steadily spread them to others who also soon believe.”
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Another time he asked,
*
“Who ever heard of someone lighting a lamp and then covering it up to keep it from shining? No, lamps are mounted in the open where they can be seen.
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This illustrates the fact that someday everything in men’s hearts
*
shall be brought to light and made plain to all.
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So be careful how you listen; for whoever has, to him shall be given more; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.”
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Once when his mother and brothers came to see him, they couldn’t get into the house where he was teaching because of the crowds.
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When Jesus heard they were standing outside and wanted to see him,
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he remarked,
“My mother and my brothers are all those who hear the message of God and obey it.”
You know how they talk about me, and how they so shamefully dishonor me. You see them all and know what each has said.
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Their contempt has broken my heart; my spirit is heavy within me. If even one would show some pity, if even one would comfort me!
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For food they gave me gall; for my awful thirst they offered vinegar.
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Let their joys
*
turn to ashes and their peace disappear;
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let darkness, blindness, and great feebleness be theirs.
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Pour out your fury upon them; consume them with the fierceness of your anger.
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Let their homes be desolate and abandoned.
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For they persecute the one you have smitten and scoff at the pain of the one you have pierced.
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Pile their sins high and do not overlook them.
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Let these men be blotted from the list of the living;
*
do not give them the joys of life with the righteous.
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But rescue me, O God, from my poverty and pain.
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Then I will praise God with my singing! My thanks will be his praise—
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that will please him more than sacrificing a bullock or an ox.
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The humble shall see their God at work for them. No wonder they will be so glad! All who seek for God shall live in joy.
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For Jehovah hears the cries of his needy ones and does not look the other way.
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Praise him, all heaven and earth! Praise him, all the seas and everything in them!
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For God will save Jerusalem;
*
he rebuilds the cities of Judah. His people shall live in them and not be dispossessed.
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Their children shall inherit the land; all who love his name shall live there safely.