The Daily Audio Bible
Today's audio is from the NRSVUE. Switch to the NRSVUE to read along with the audio.
Blessings
28 Today I am giving you the commands of the Lord your God. You must be careful to obey all of them completely. If you do that, he will make you greater than any other nation of people in the world.
2 If you obey the Lord your God, he will bless you in very many ways.
3 God will bless you in your cities and in your fields.
4 God will bless your children and the crops that you grow. Your cows and your sheep will have many babies.
5 God will bless you with lots of grain to make bread.
6 God will bless you in your homes and when you go outside.
7 When your enemies attack you, the Lord will knock them down. They will come from one direction to attack you, but they will run away from you in seven different directions!
8 The Lord will bless you with lots of food to store. He will bless all the work that you do. He will bless you very much in the land that he is giving to you.
9 The Lord will continue to help you as his special people, as he has promised to do. But you must obey his commands. You must live in a way that pleases him. 10 If you do that, everyone in the world will see that you belong to the Lord. They will respect you with fear. 11 The Lord will give you many children. Your animals will have many babies. Your fields will give you a lot of food. The Lord will do this in the land that he promised your ancestors he would give you.
12 The Lord will send rain from the clouds where he stores it. He will cause the rain to fall at the time when the land needs it. He will bless all the work that you do. You will lend money to the people of many nations. But you will not need anyone to lend money to you. 13 The Lord will make you the leaders of other people. You will not have to follow at the back. You will become more powerful, not weaker. But you must obey the commands of the Lord your God. I am telling you today, you must be very careful to do that. 14 You must continue to obey all the commands that I am giving you today. Do not turn away from them to do anything else. Do not try to worship other gods.
Curses
15 But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God, all these curses will happen to you. So be careful to obey all his commands and rules that I am giving you today. If you do not obey the Lord, these curses will happen to you:
16 God will curse you in your cities and in your fields.
17 God will curse you so that you have no grain to make bread.
18 God will curse your children and the crops that you grow. Your cows and your sheep will not give birth to healthy babies.
19 God will curse you in your homes and when you go outside.
Illness
20 If you do evil things and you turn away from the Lord, he will curse you. He will confuse your thoughts in everything that you do. He will turn against you so that you quickly come to an end. 21 The Lord will make you very ill so that you do not get better again. He will completely remove you from the land that you are now going into. 22 The Lord will give you many kinds of disease. Your bodies will become weak and very hot. They will grow big and have a lot of pain. He will send great heat and there will be no rain. Your crops will all become spoiled. You will have all this pain until you die. 23 There will be no clouds in the sky above to give any rain. The ground under your feet will be as hard as iron. 24 There will be clouds of dust instead of rain. Dirt will come down from the sky until it has destroyed you.
Enemies and other troubles
25 The Lord will let your enemies knock you down. You will attack them from one direction, but you will run away from them in seven directions. When the people of other nations see what has happened to you, they will see it is a terrible thing. 26 Your dead bodies will be food for all the birds and the wild animals. No one will be there to chase them away. 27 The Lord will cause you to have boils on your bodies. That is what he did to the Egyptians. He will also cause you to have tumours and other bad diseases on your skin.[a] You will not be able to get well again. 28 The Lord will make you crazy and blind. He will confuse your thoughts. 29 Even at midday, you will not see your way. You will be in the dark, like a blind person. You will not be able to go anywhere, whatever you do. Every day, people will be cruel to you. People will rob you. No one will be there to save you.
30 A woman will promise to marry you. But another man will take her and have sex with her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a garden, but you will never eat the fruit that grows in it. 31 Someone will kill your bull while you watch. But you will not eat any of the meat. As you watch, someone will take your donkey from you. He will never give it back to you. Your enemies will take your sheep for themselves. There will be no one there to help you.
32 Foreign people will take your children away to be their slaves. Every day, you will look for them to come back to you. But you will have no power to do anything. 33 Strangers will eat the food that you have worked hard to grow in your fields. People will be cruel to you for the rest of your lives. 34 When you see what is happening to you, you will become crazy. 35 The Lord will cause you to have boils on your knees and on your legs. They will give you much pain and they will never get better. They will soon cover your whole body, from your toes to the top of your head.
36 When you choose a king for yourselves, the Lord will send you and him away to a foreign country. It will be a place that neither you nor your ancestors have ever heard about. There you will serve gods that people have made from stone and wood. 37 The Lord will send you away to live among foreign people. When they see what has happened to you, they will all see that it is terrible. They will tell stories about you and they will laugh at you.
38 You will plant many seeds in your fields, but you will not have much food at harvest time. Instead, locusts will eat your crops. 39 You will plant vineyards to grow grapes. You will take care of the plants. But you will not drink any wine or bring in any grapes. Instead, worms will eat them. 40 Olive trees will grow everywhere in your land, but you will never use any oil from them. The olives will drop off the trees before they are ready to pick.
41 You will give birth to sons and daughters, but you will lose them. Enemies will take them away as prisoners. 42 Crowds of locusts will eat all your trees and the food from your fields.
43 Foreign people who live among you will become stronger and stronger. They will have more and more power over you, as you become weaker. 44 They will lend money to you, but you will not lend money to them. They will become your leaders. You will have to follow behind them.
45 All these curses will happen to you. They will be like an enemy that chases after you, catches you, and destroys you. That will happen to you, if you refuse to obey the Lord your God. If you do not obey his commands and his rules that he has given to you, these troubles will happen to you. 46 They will show that God is very angry with you. You and your descendants will know that for ever.
47 The Lord has given you many good things. But you have not agreed to serve the Lord your God with joy. 48 So you will serve your enemies that the Lord will send to attack you. You will be hungry and thirsty. You will be so poor that you do not even have clothes to wear. Your enemies will make you work so hard that they will destroy you.
49 The Lord will bring a nation from far away in the world to attack you. You will not understand their language. They will come quickly to attack you, like an eagle that comes down from the sky. 50 They will have angry faces. They will not be kind to anyone, even old people and young children. 51 They will eat your young animals and the crops from your fields, until they have destroyed you. They will not leave any food for you. You will have no grain, no wine, no olive oil, no young cows, no lambs. They will take everything from you until they destroy you.
52 They will attack all your towns, everywhere in the land that the Lord your God has given to you. They will knock down the strong walls that you thought would keep you safe. They will make their camps around your towns until they can take the towns for themselves. 53 When that happens, you will have no food, because your enemy's soldiers are all around your town. You will be so hungry that you eat your own children. Those are the sons and daughters that the Lord your God has given to you. 54 Even the best and kindest man among you will turn against his brother. He will turn against the wife that he loves and against his children who are still alive. 55 He will be so hungry that he eats meat from his own child, because there is no other food. He will not share it with any of his own family. He will do that because your enemy is so strong. The soldiers will stop any food from coming into your towns. 56 Even the best and kindest woman among you will turn against the husband that she loves. She will turn against her sons and daughters. She has been rich enough to have everything that she needs. 57 But now she will be so hungry that she will eat her new baby and the afterbirth.[b] She will eat them secretly because there is nothing else for her to eat. She will not share anything with her family because your enemy will be too strong. The soldiers will stop any food from coming into your towns.
Moses warns the people again
58 Be careful to obey all the words of this law that I have written in this scroll. Always respect the Lord your God. Give him the honour that his great name deserves. 59 If you refuse to do that, the Lord will punish you and your descendants more and more. You will have lots of pain and many kinds of terrible disease that will not get better. 60 He will cause you to have all the same diseases that hurt the Egyptians and that made you very afraid. Those diseases will never leave you alone. 61 The Lord will also cause you to have many other terrible diseases. This scroll of God's Law does not say anything about those diseases, but they will destroy you completely.
62 At one time, you were as many people as the stars in the sky. But if you do not obey the Lord your God, only a few of you will remain alive. 63 At one time, the Lord was happy to help you with good things. He gave you many children. But if you do not obey him, he will be happy to destroy you. He will remove you from the land that will soon become your new home.
64 If that happens, the Lord will send you away to live among many other nations, all over the world. There you will worship other gods. They are gods that people have made from wood and from stone. Neither you nor your ancestors have ever known those gods before. 65 When you live among those nations, you will not be happy. You will not find a home where you can live safely in peace. The Lord will cause you to have troubles in your mind. Your eyes will not see well. You will be sad and upset. 66 You will be in danger of death all the time. You will be afraid in the day and at night. You will never know if you will live for one more day. 67 Every morning you will say, ‘I want the night to come quickly!’ And every evening you will say, ‘I want the morning to come quickly!’ You will say that because of all the terrible things that you see. 68 The Lord told you that you must never travel on the road back to Egypt. But he will send you back to Egypt in ships. In Egypt, you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies, as slaves. But no one will agree to buy you.
Jesus teaches about the Devil
14 One day, Jesus was telling a bad spirit to go out of a man. Because of the bad spirit, the man could not speak. But after it had gone out of him, the man could speak again. All the people that were watching were surprised at this. 15 But some people in the crowd were not happy with Jesus and they said, ‘This man can send bad spirits out of people because Beelzebul gives him authority.[a] That is Satan, the one who rules all the bad spirits.’
16 Some other people wanted to test Jesus to see what he would do. So they asked him, ‘Do something powerful for us to see. Then we will know that God has really sent you.’[b]
17 But Jesus knew what those people were thinking. He said to them, ‘If armies in a country start to fight each other, they will destroy their own country. If people in one family fight against each other, they will destroy their own family. 18 So Satan would not fight against himself. If he did that, it would be the end of his kingdom. But you say that Beelzebul helps me to destroy bad spirits. 19 If that is true, what do you say about your own disciples? They also send bad spirits out of people. You would not say that it is Satan's power that helps them. So your own people show that you are wrong about this. 20 When I send bad spirits out of people, I use the power of God. This shows that God has come to rule among you.
21 When a strong man has all the weapons he needs to fight with, he can take care of his own house. Nobody will be able to rob him of the things inside his house. 22 But someone may come who is stronger than he is. That man will attack him and beat him. The strong man believed his weapons would keep him safe. But the stronger man will take his weapons away. He will take the strong man's things and give them to other people.[c]
23 If someone does not agree to help me, he is working against me. You should work with me to bring people to me for help. If you do not do that, you are making people run away from me.’[d]
24 Jesus then said, ‘When a bad spirit goes out of a person, it travels through dry places. It looks for a new place to live. But maybe it does not find anywhere. So it says to itself, “I will return to the place where I lived before.” 25 Then it goes back to that person. It finds that the place is empty. Everything there is now good and clean. 26 So the bad spirit goes out and it brings back seven other spirits. They are even worse than itself. They all go into the person and they live there. Now the person's life is even worse than it was before.’[e]
27 While Jesus was saying this, a woman in the crowd shouted out. ‘How happy is the woman that gave birth to you! How happy is the woman that fed you from her breasts!’
28 Jesus replied, ‘It is the people who hear God's message who are happy. They are happy if they obey it.’
Jesus talks about Jonah
29 The crowd around Jesus was growing very large, so he began to speak to them. ‘The people that are alive today are very bad,’ he said. ‘They want God to show them something powerful. But God will not do this for them. They will only see the same powerful thing that God did for Jonah.[f] 30 Jonah showed God's power to the people who lived in Nineveh. They knew that God had sent him. In the same way the Son of Man will show God's power to the people that are living today. Then they will know that God has sent me.
31 Also, the queen of Sheba travelled a long way to see King Solomon. She wanted to hear his wise words. When God judges everyone, she will stand up. She will speak against you who are alive today. She will show that you are bad people. She listened to King Solomon. But look! There is someone here now who is greater than Solomon was.[g]
32 When God judges everyone, the people who lived in Nineveh will be there. They will stand up and they will speak against you. They will show that the people who are alive today are bad. When Jonah spoke to the people in Nineveh long ago, they stopped doing bad things. But look! There is someone here now who is greater than Jonah was.’
Jesus talks about light
33 Then Jesus said, ‘When someone lights a lamp, he does not hide it. Nor does he put it under a pot. Instead, he puts it in a high place. Then other people who come into the room can see the light from the lamp. 34 Your eyes are like lamps and your body is like a room. Be careful that your eyes are like a clean lamp, then your whole body will have light. But if your eyes are dirty, your whole body will be completely in the dark. 35 So you must be careful. Be sure that you really have light in you. Be sure that you are not still in the dark. 36 Your whole body needs to have lots of light. Nothing dark should be there. It will be as if a lamp is shining its bright light on you.’[h]
Asaph wrote this song for the music leader, Jeduthun.
A prayer in times of trouble[a]
77 I will call out to God for help.
I will call aloud to God,
and he will listen to me.
2 When trouble came to me,
I looked for the Lord to help me.
All through the night,
I lifted my hands to him while I prayed.
But I did not feel peace in myself.
3 When I think about God,
I am sad and upset.
I do not know if he will help me.
Selah.
4 God, you do not let me close my eyes to sleep.
I am so upset that I cannot even speak.[b]
5 I think about my life long ago,
in the years that have passed.
6 At night, I remember the songs that I sang before.
I think carefully about what is happening.
7 I ask myself, ‘Will the Lord always turn against me?
Will he never be kind to me again?
8 Does he no longer have a faithful love for his people?
Will he never do what he has promised us?
9 Has God forgotten to be kind and help us?
Is he so angry that he will not be kind to us any more?’[c]
Selah.
10 Then I said, ‘This makes me very upset!
Has the Most High God stopped helping us?
11 I will remember the things that the Lord has done.
Yes, I will remember the miracles that you did long ago.
12 I will think about everything that you have done.
I will think carefully about all those great things.’
13 God, your ways are holy.
There is no god as great as our God.
14 You are the God who does miracles.
You show the nations
that you are very powerful.
15 You used your power to rescue your people.
Yes, you saved the descendants
of Jacob and Joseph.
Selah.
16 The waters of the sea saw you, God.
When they saw you,
they shook with fear!
Even the deepest seas were afraid.
17 Rain poured down from the clouds.
The noise of thunder was in the skies.
Your arrows of lightning
shot everywhere.
18 The sound of your thunder was in the storm.
Your lightning made all the world bright.
The earth shook.
19 You went through the sea.
Your path went through the deep water,
but nobody saw where your feet had gone.
20 You led your people,
as a shepherd leads his sheep.
Moses and Aaron did that for you.
18 If you speak in a careless way, you may hurt other people.
But when wise people speak, it makes people feel well.
EasyEnglish Bible Copyright © MissionAssist 2019 - Charitable Incorporated Organisation 1162807. Used by permission. All rights reserved.