The Daily Audio Bible
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10 The Lord says, ‘Now I will stand up to do something.
I will show that I am great and powerful.
11 My enemies, everything that you want to do will be useless.
Your thoughts are like dry grass and straw.
Your own breath will destroy you,
like a fire that burns dry grass.
12 Your people will be like wood for the fire,
and only ashes will remain.
They will burn as easily as thorn bushes
that people cut down and throw on the fire.
13 You people who live far away,
listen to what I have done!
You people who are near,
understand that I am very strong.’
14 The sinners who live in Zion are afraid.
The people who do not respect God shake with fear.
They ask, ‘Who among us can stay alive?
This is a fire that burns everything.
Nobody can stop it from burning!’
15 But some people can still live!
Those who are honest in what they do
and fair in what they say.
Those who refuse to cheat other people
so that they can become rich.
Those who refuse to accept bribes.
Those who will not listen to murderers,
and who will not think about evil things.
16 People who are like that will live in a safe place.
Danger will not reach them among the high rocks.
They will always have food to eat,
and plenty of water to drink.
17 With your own eyes, you will see the king.
He will be great and beautiful.
You will see the land that he rules.
It will reach far and wide.
18 Then you will think about the time when you were afraid.
You will say, ‘Where is the enemy's important officer?
Where is the officer that we paid taxes to?
Where is the officer who counted our strong buildings?
They are no longer here to give us trouble!’
19 You will never see those cruel people again.
You could not understand their language.
They laughed at you with strange words.
20 Now, look at Zion, the city where we have our festivals.
Yes, you will see Jerusalem.
It will be a place that is quiet and safe.
It will be like a tent that people will never move.
They will never pull up its pegs.
They will never break its ropes.
21 The Lord will rule there as our powerful God.
Rivers and wide streams will run through it.
Our enemies will not be able to bring their ships there to attack us.
22 The Lord will keep us safe.
He is our judge, our ruler and our king.
23 At this time, your ship is not ready to go anywhere.
You have not tied the ropes.
There is nowhere to hang the sails.
But then, you will take many valuable things from your enemies.
You will share them after the battle.
Even people who cannot walk well
will carry away what they want!
24 Nobody who lives in Zion will say, ‘I am ill.’
And God will forgive their sins.
God will punish his enemies
34 Come near to me, people of all nations.
Listen carefully, everyone!
All the earth, and everything that is in it,
listen to me!
Yes, the whole world, and all who live in it,
listen carefully!
2 The Lord is angry against all the nations
and all their armies.
He has decided to destroy them,
and that is what he will do.
3 Nobody will bury the dead bodies
of those who have died in battle.
The smell of their dead bodies will be everywhere.
Their blood will pour down the mountains.
4 The stars in the sky will slowly disappear.
The sky will close up like a book.
All the stars will fall,
like dry leaves that fall from a vine.
They will drop like figs from a fig tree,
when they become dry.
5 The Lord says,
‘My sword has finished its work in the skies.
Now it will come to punish Edom.
Those are the people that I have decided to destroy.’
6 The Lord's sword has blood all over it!
It is the blood of young sheep and goats.
It has the fat of meat on it.
It is the fat from sheep's kidneys.
Yes! The Lord is killing animals for a sacrifice in Bozrah.[a]
He will kill many people in Edom.
7 He will kill their wild oxen
and their young bulls.[b]
Blood will pour over Edom's land.
Fat will feed their soil.
8 The Lord has chosen a day for punishment.
It will be a time when he punishes Zion's enemies,
because they have attacked his people.
9 The water in Edom's streams will become tar.
Its soil will become sulphur.
Its whole land will become tar that is burning.
10 That fire will burn through the days and the nights.
Its smoke will always continue to rise up.
The land will be empty from one century to the next.
Nobody will ever travel through it again.
11 Owls, hawks and hedgehogs will live there,[c]
as well as all kinds of wild animals and wild birds.
The Lord will carefully measure the whole land,
so that he can destroy it.
It will become like an empty desert.
12 There will be no kingdom left for anyone to rule.
Edom's leaders and officers will all disappear.
13 Thorn bushes will grow over its palaces.
Bushes and weeds will grow over its strong cities.
Jackals and ostriches will make their homes in the land.
14 Wild animals and hyenas will meet there.
Wild goats will call out to each other.
The night monster will come there,
and she will find a place to stay.
15 Owls will build their nests there.
They will take care of their eggs
until the baby birds come out.
They will keep their babies safe under their wings.
Hawks will meet there too.
They will be together in pairs, male and female.
16 Read the Lord's book very carefully:
‘All these animals and birds will be there.
They will all be together in pairs.
The Lord himself has commanded what must happen.
His Spirit brings them all together.’
17 The Lord has decided where each one will live.
He measures a place for every kind of animal and bird.
The land will always belong to them to live in.
It will be their home from one century to the next.
A message of hope
35 The desert and the dry land will be happy!
The wilderness will be happy too,
and beautiful flowers will grow there.
2 Yes, there will be lots of flowers!
The land will sing and shout with joy!
The desert will be as beautiful as Lebanon.
It will seem like lovely places in Carmel and in Sharon.
In those places, people will see the Lord's glory.
They will see that our God is very great.
3 If your hands feel weak,
now be strong!
If your knees are shaking,
now be brave!
4 Say this to people who are afraid:
‘Be strong! Do not be afraid!
Your God is coming now.
He is coming to punish his enemies
for the bad things that they have done.
He is coming to rescue you!’
5 At that time, he will open the eyes of blind people.
Deaf people will hear again.
6 People with weak legs will jump like deer.
People who cannot speak now will shout with joy.
Water will pour from springs in the desert.
Streams of water will run in the wilderness.
7 The hot earth will become a pool of water.
The dry ground will have springs of water.
In the places where jackals made their homes,
there will now be grasses and reeds.
8 There will be a great road there.
It will be called ‘The Holy Way’.
People who are unclean will not travel on it.
It will be for those people who know God's way.
Evil fools will not walk on it.
9 No lions will be there.
No dangerous wild animals will come onto it.
They will not come near to it.
It is the people that the Lord has rescued
who will travel on that road.
10 He has paid the price to rescue them,
and they will return home along it.
They will be happy and they will sing,
as they go into Zion city.
They will be very happy for ever.
They will never again be sad or upset.
All the time they will be completely happy.
Assyria's army attacks Judah
36 When King Hezekiah had ruled Judah for 14 years, King Sennacherib of Assyria attacked Judah with his army. He took all the strong cities in Judah for himself.[d] 2 Then the king of Assyria sent his army officer from Lachish to Jerusalem, to speak to King Hezekiah. The officer took a large army with him. He stopped at the stream of water that came from the higher pool. It was on the road to the field where people washed clothes.
3 These people came out to meet him:
Hilkiah's son Eliakim, who was the most important officer in the king's palace.
Shebna, a government officer.
Asaph's son, Joah, the king's secretary.
4 The Assyrian army officer said to them, ‘Tell Hezekiah that the great king, the king of Assyria, says this to him:
“Why are you so sure that someone will rescue you from our power? 5 You say that you have good plans. You say that your army is strong. But those are only useless words! You have turned against me, so who are you trusting to save you? 6 Yes, you think that Egypt is strong enough to help you. But you should not trust Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. He is like a weak stick. If you use it to walk with, it will break! A broken piece of stick will make a hole through your hand and give you much pain! That is the trouble that the king of Egypt brings to everyone who trusts him to help them. 7 Maybe you will say to me, ‘We are trusting the Lord our God to help us.’ But it was your king, Hezekiah, who removed the altars and the special places where you worship your God. He told the people of Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship God only at the altar here in Jerusalem.’ ”
8 So you should make an agreement with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses, if you have enough riders to put on them. 9 You cannot refuse what I offer to you! And I am only an unimportant officer who serves my master. You are hoping that Egypt will give you chariots and men to ride on horses. But you will never be strong enough to win a battle against us. 10 You should also understand this: It was the Lord himself who commanded me to bring my army here and attack Jerusalem. He said to me, “Attack this country and destroy it!” ’
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to the leader of the Assyrian army, ‘Please sir, speak to us in the Aramaic language. We can understand it. Do not speak to us in the Hebrew language, because all the people who are on the wall of the city will understand it.’
12 But the Assyrian army leader replied, ‘My master did not send me here to give this message only to your king and to you. The men who are sitting on the city wall also need to hear my master's message. Like you, they will soon have to eat their own dung and drink their own urine.’
13 Then the Assyrian army leader stood there and he shouted in the Hebrew language, ‘Listen to this message from the great king, the king of Assyria! 14 This is what the king says to you:
“Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot save you from my power. 15 Do not believe Hezekiah when he tells you that you can trust the Lord to help you. He says, ‘The Lord will surely rescue us. He will not let the king of Assyria take this city for himself.’ 16 Do not believe what Hezekiah says!”
This is what the king of Assyria says to you: “Show me that you accept my offer of peace and come out of your city. Then you will all live safely in your homes. You will eat the fruit from your own vines and fig trees. You will drink the water from your own wells. 17 Later, I will come to Jerusalem. I will take you away to a country that is like your own land here. There will be plenty of grain and new wine for you in that country. There will be bread and there will be vineyards. 18 Do not let Hezekiah deceive you when he says, ‘The Lord will rescue us.’ No god of any nation has ever saved his country from the king of Assyria's power.
19 The gods of Hamath and Arpad could not help their people. The gods of Sepharvaim could not help their people either. No god was able to rescue Samaria from my power. 20 No god among all the gods of those countries could save their people from my power. So do not think that the Lord can save Jerusalem from my power.” ’
21 When the people who were sitting on the wall heard this, they were quiet. They did not reply, because King Hezekiah had said, ‘Do not answer him.’
22 Then King Hezekiah's three officers, Eliakim, Shebna and Joah, went back to Hezekiah. They had torn their clothes because they were very upset. They told the king what the Assyrian officer had said.
Live by God's Spirit
13 My Christian friends, God has chosen you to serve him as free people. But you are still weak and human. So you are not free to do anything that you might want to do. Instead, you must serve one another, because you love each other. 14 One rule brings together all the rules in God's Law. That one rule says: ‘Love other people as much as you love yourself.’[a] 15 So you must not live like wild animals. Wild animals fight and they eat each other. If you live like that, be very careful! You may destroy one another completely.
16 So this is what I say: Let God's Spirit show you how to live in a good way. Then you will not do the wrong things that you may want to do, as people who are weak and human. 17 The things that you want to do as a weak person are opposite to the things that God's Spirit wants. The things that God's Spirit wants are the opposite of what we want as weak people. Our own thoughts fight against what God's Spirit wants us to do. As a result, you are not free to do the things that you really want to do. 18 But if God's Spirit leads you, then the rules of God's Law have no authority over you.
19 Everyone knows the kinds of bad things that weak people want to do. They have sex with people that they are not married to. They do things that are bad and disgusting. 20 They worship idols. They do magic to hurt people. They become enemies and they fight one another. They are jealous of other people. They become very angry. They want to please themselves and to be important. They cause trouble. They make people belong to different groups. 21 They want things that belong to other people. They are drunks. They have wild parties. And they like to do many other bad things like those. So I warn you again, as I have already warned you before. People who continue to do any of those bad things will not receive good things from God. God has prepared those good things for the people who belong to his kingdom.
22 But God's Spirit causes us to live in a different way. We love other people. We are happy and we have peace in our minds. We are patient, kind and good. People can trust us to do what is right. 23 We respect other people and we rule ourselves properly. God's Spirit helps us to live in that way. There is no law that says these things are wrong.
24 We belong to Christ. As a result, we no longer obey our wrong human thoughts. We stop doing the bad things that our thoughts want us to do. It is like we have killed those thoughts on the cross. 25 Now it is God's Spirit that gives us life. So we must let God's Spirit lead us in how we live. 26 We must not become proud. We must not be jealous of each other, so that we cause trouble to one another.
David wrote this song for the music leader.
God will keep us safe[a]
64 God, please listen to me
as I tell you about my troubles.
Keep me safe from my enemies
when they attack me.
2 When evil men think of ways to hurt me,
hide me in a safe place.
Those people work together as a group
to do wicked things.
3 Their tongues are like
sharp swords that hurt people.
Their cruel words are like
arrows that they shoot at people.
4 They hide in secret places,
and they quickly shoot lies at good people.
They are not afraid that anyone will punish them.
5 They help each other to do evil things.
They decide where they will hide their traps,
and they say, ‘Nobody will see them!’
6 They think of wicked ideas to hurt people.
They say, ‘That is a great idea!’[b]
Nobody really understands what people think
deep inside themselves.
7 But God will punish them!
He will suddenly shoot an arrow at them
and it will hurt them a lot.[c]
8 Their own evil words will turn against them
and make them fall.
Everyone who sees them will shake their heads.
9 People will be afraid.
They will say, ‘Look at what God has done!’
They will think carefully about it all.
10 But people who serve the Lord should be happy
because of what he has done.
They should trust him to keep them safe.
Good, honest people should praise God,
because he is great!
23 Truth, wisdom, good teaching and knowledge are valuable things. Buy them for yourself. Do not sell them.
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