The Daily Audio Bible

A message about Jerusalem

¹⁴ So listen to the Lord's message, you leaders in Jerusalem who rule these people. Do not laugh at what the Lord is doing.

¹⁵ You boast, ‘We have made a covenant with death. Yes, we have made an agreement with Sheol. When trouble comes to our city like a deep flood of water, we will be safe. We trust in our lies to keep us safe.’

¹⁶ So the Almighty Lord says this:

¹⁷ Justice and righteousness will make that foundation strong and true. But if you trust in lies, a storm of ice will destroy your safe place. A flood of water will destroy the place where you are hiding. ¹⁸ I will stop your covenant with death. Your agreement with Sheol will not continue. When trouble comes like a deep flood of water, it will drown you. ¹⁹ A flood of punishment will come again and again, and it will carry you away. It will come every morning, and all through the day and the night.’

When you understand this message from the Lord, you will be very afraid. ²⁰ You will not be able to rest, like a tall person who tries to sleep on a short bed. Your blanket will not cover your whole body.

²¹ But the Lord will do a great thing, like he did at Mount Perazim. He will be very angry, as he was in the Gibeon Valley. He will do something that is very wonderful and strange.

²² So do not laugh at me when I warn you. If you do not listen, your punishment will become even worse. The Lord Almighty has told me what he has decided. He has decided to destroy the whole land.

²³ So listen carefully to my message. Hear what I am saying!

²⁴ A farmer ploughs the ground because he wants to plant seeds in it. He does not continue to plough for ever. ²⁵ When he has prepared the ground, he plants many different seeds. He plants dill and cummin. He plants wheat, barley and different grains in their proper places.

²⁶ God teaches the farmer and he tells him the right thing to do. ²⁷ After the harvest, the farmer knows how to remove seeds from dill or from cummin. He will not pull a heavy iron weight over dill. He will not run the wheels of a cart over cummin. Instead, he will hit them with a light stick.

²⁸ When he crushes grain to make flour for bread, he does not do it for a long time. He drives the wheels of his cart over the grain, but he does not let his horses crush it.

²⁹ The Lord Almighty causes farmers to know all that. His ideas are very wise, and he shows us how to live in a wise way.

A sad song about Ariel

29 It will be very bad for Ariel, the city where David lived.^[a] Continue to have your usual feasts every year, but trouble will come!

² I will bring trouble to Ariel. The people there will be very sad and they will weep. Ariel will become like my altar for burnt offerings.^[b]

³ I will bring an army to attack you. There will be soldiers all round the city so that nobody can leave. I will build strong towers against the city's walls. ⁴ Then you will fall down to the ground. While you lie there, you will speak. Your words will come quietly from deep down in the dirt. It will seem like the voice of a dead person's spirit. You will sound like a magician who is speaking magic words.

⁵ Your enemies will be like an army of dust. The wind will blow away that crowd of cruel men as if they are chaff. That will all happen very suddenly! ⁶ The Lord Almighty will come with great power. He will come with thunder, earthquake and a loud noise. There will be a great storm with strong winds and a fire that burns up everything.

⁷ The great crowd of armies from all the nations that attack Ariel will quickly disappear. They will soon come to an end, like a dream that someone sees in the night. All the weapons that they bring to attack the city's walls will disappear!

⁸ A hungry man may dream that he is eating a big meal. But as soon as he wakes up, he knows that he is still hungry! A thirsty man may dream that he is drinking. But as soon as he wakes up, he knows that he is still weak and thirsty. That is what it will be like for the great armies from all the nations that have come to attack Mount Zion.

⁹ You are so surprised that you do not believe what I say. You have become completely blind. You are stupid, like people who are drunk, but not from wine! You fall over, but not because you have drunk too much beer!

¹⁰ It is the Lord who has caused you to be like that. He has caused you to be completely asleep. He has shut the eyes of your prophets and he has covered the heads of your seers.

¹¹ You do not understand this vision that the Lord has given to me. It is like the words in a closed book. Give the book to someone who can read. Say to him, ‘Read this, please.’ But he will answer, ‘I cannot read it, because someone has closed it.’ ¹² Give the book to someone who cannot read and tell them, ‘Read it, please.’ But he will answer, ‘I do not know how to read.’

¹³ The Lord God says, ‘These people open their mouths to worship me. They use their lips to say that I am great. But they are not really thinking about me. When they worship me, they use rules that people have taught them. ¹⁴ So now I will surprise these people again. I will surprise them with great miracles! Wise people will not seem wise any more. Clever people will no longer seem to be clever.’

¹⁵ It will be very bad for people who try to deceive the Lord. They try to hide their thoughts from him. They secretly decide to do evil things. They boast and they say, ‘Nobody can see us. Nobody knows what we are doing.’

¹⁶ Your minds are really confused! You think that the clay is more important than the person who uses it to make pots! A bowl cannot say to its maker, ‘You did not make me!’ A pot cannot say to the potter, ‘You do not know what you are doing!’

¹⁷ Very soon, Lebanon's forest will become a field of fruit trees. And the field of fruit trees will seem like a forest. ¹⁸ At that time, deaf people will be able to hear when someone is reading words from a book. Blind people who have been living in a dark place will be able see what is happening. ¹⁹ And the Lord will make weak people happy again. Poor people will sing with joy, because of what the Holy God of Israel has done.

²⁰ Cruel people will disappear. Proud people who insult others will no longer be there. There will be no more people who love to do evil things.

²¹ It will be the same for people who tell lies in court. They deceive the judge at the city gate. They say false things against good people to make them guilty. People who are like that will have gone!

²² So this is what the Lord says to Jacob's descendants. He is the one who rescued Abraham. He says, ‘Jacob's descendants will no longer be ashamed. Their faces will show their shame no more. ²³ They will see that I have blessed them so that they have many children. Then they will agree that I am great. They will praise me, the Holy God of Jacob. They will respect me, Israel's God.

²⁴ At that time, people with minds that are confused will understand what is right. And people who like to complain will accept my teaching.’

Do not trust in Egypt's power

30 The Lord says, ‘It will be very bad for you, my children who have turned against me. You have decided what to do, but you did not ask me about it. You have made an agreement with Egypt, but without my Spirit's help. In that way, you continue to do more and more sins.

² Your leaders travel to Egypt to ask for Pharaoh's help to keep them safe. But they did not ask me what I think about it. They think that Egypt has the power to protect them. ³ But Pharaoh's help will only make you ashamed. If you trust in Egypt's power, that will bring you down low.

⁴ Judah's officers have arrived in Zoan, and some of them have gone to Hanes.^{[c] 5} But the people of Egypt will not be able to help you. So everyone in Judah will become ashamed. If you trust in Egypt, they will give you shame instead of help.’

⁶ Here is a message about the animals that travel in the Negev desert: It is a place where there is trouble and danger. There are dangerous lions there, both male and female. There are different kinds of dangerous snakes. People are carrying their valuable things on the backs of donkeys and camels. They are taking their riches as gifts to a nation that cannot help them! ⁷ Help from Egypt is useless! So I call Egypt ‘Rahab who does nothing.’^[d]

⁸ Go and write this message down for them to see. Yes, write it in a book so that it will always be there to read. In the future, it will always show what is true.

⁹ These people have turned against the Lord. They are his children but they love to tell lies. They do not want to obey his law. ¹⁰ They say to the seers, ‘Do not see any more visions!’ They say to the prophets, ‘Do not tell us messages about what is right! Tell us nice things, even if they are not true. ¹¹ Leave this path. Get out of our way! Stop telling us about the Holy God of Israel.’

²³ But before God showed us the way of faith, the Law had authority over us. God's Law kept us safe, until God showed us that we must believe in Christ. ²⁴ In that way, God's Law was like our guide. It kept us safe until Christ came. Then God could accept us as right because we trusted Christ. ²⁵ But now that the way of faith in Christ has come, we do not need God's Law to keep us safe any longer.

²⁶ All of you are God's children because you believe in Christ Jesus. ²⁷ They baptized you as believers in Christ. That means that you have put on Christ, like someone who puts on new clothes. ²⁸ It does not matter whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. It does not matter whether you are a slave or a free person. It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman. You all belong together because you all belong to Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are descendants of Abraham. Because of that, you will receive all the good things that God promised to Abraham.

Paul explains about sons

4 I will say it like this. Think about a son who will one day receive what belongs to his father. While he is still a child, he is like a slave in the family. That is true, even though all his father's things really belong to him. ² He has to wait until the time that his father has decided. Until then, the son has to obey his teachers and the guides who take care of him. ³ In the same way, we were children like that in God's family. We were slaves to the bad spirits that rule this world. ⁴ But when the time that God had decided arrived, he sent his Son into the world. A human mother gave birth to him. He was born a Jew, under the authority of God's Law. ⁵ In that way, he made us free from the authority of the Law. Before that, we were like slaves under the Law. But God's Son paid our debt, so that God would accept us as his true children. ⁶ Because we are his children, God has sent his Son's Spirit to live inside us. His Spirit causes us to call God, ‘Father, my Father’. ⁷ So you are not slaves any more, but you are God's children. And because of that, you will receive all the good things that God has promised.

Continue to trust Christ

⁸ Before, when you did not know God, you served false gods. They were not gods at all, but you were their slaves. ⁹ But now you do know God. Or really, I should say that God knows you. So you must not turn back to serve those weak spirits that rule this world. Why do you want to obey their useless rules and become their slaves again? ¹⁰ You say that certain days, or months, or seasons, or years are special. That is how you want to please God. ¹¹ I am afraid about you. I worked very much to help you. I do not want my work to have no results.

¹² My Christian friends, please become like me! I ask you to do this, because when I was with you, I became like you. You did not then do anything wrong to me. ¹³ You must remember that I first came to you because I was ill. That was when I first told God's good news to you. ¹⁴ I caused trouble for you because I was ill. But you did not insult me. You did not tell me to go away. But you were kind to me. You took care of me as if I were an angel from God, or even Christ Jesus himself. ¹⁵ But now you do not seem to be happy with me any more. I can say that you would have pulled out your own eyes to help me. You would have given them to me, if that had been possible. ¹⁶ But now I seem to have become your enemy! Is that because I am telling you God's true message?

¹⁷ Those false teachers try very much to please you. But they do not really want what is good for you. They want to make you turn away from me. Then you will only want to listen to them. ¹⁸ It is good for someone to try to please other people if they really want to help them. That is true all the time, not only when I am there with you. ¹⁹ My children, I feel like a mother who is giving birth to you again. I will continue to feel that kind of pain until you become more completely like Christ. ²⁰ I want very much to be there with you now. Then I would know better how to speak to you. As it is, I do not know what to think about you.

A picture of Hagar and Sarah

²¹ I say this to you people who want God's Law to have authority over you. Think carefully about what that Law really says. ²² The Bible says that Abraham had two sons. The mother of one of them was a slave. The mother of the other son was a free woman. ²³ Hagar was a slave. Her son was born as a result of what Abraham himself decided. But Abraham's wife, Sarah, gave birth to the other son. That son was born as a result of what God had promised to Abraham.^[a]

²⁴ These two women are like pictures of two agreements that God made with his people. Hagar is like the agreement that God made on Sinai mountain.^[b] That agreement causes people to become slaves. ²⁵ Hagar is like a picture of Sinai mountain in Arabia.^[c] Also, she is like the city of Jerusalem here on earth now, because that city and its people are slaves under the authority of God's Law.

²⁶ But Abraham's wife, Sarah, is a picture of the new Jerusalem that is above. Sarah was a free person, not a slave, and she is like our mother. ²⁷ It says in the Bible:

²⁸ You, my Christian friends, are like Sarah's son, Isaac. Like him, you became God's children as a result of God's promise. ²⁹ Isaac was born because of God's Spirit. The son who was born in the human way gave much trouble to Isaac at that time. You who are believers receive the same kind of trouble now. ³⁰ But this is what it says in the Bible: ‘Send away the woman who is a slave and her son. That woman's son will never receive anything from his father. The son of the free woman will receive all those good things.’^{[e] 31} So then, my Christian friends, we are not children of the woman who is a slave. No, we are children of the free woman.

This is a song that David wrote for the music leader, Jeduthun.

Only God can save me!

¹⁹ 15. Listen to me, my child. Learn to be wise and to live in a good way.

²⁰ Do not be a friend of people who become drunk. Do not be a friend of greedy people who eat too much. ²¹ People who are like that soon become poor. They sleep too much, and their clothes have holes in them.