The Daily Audio Bible

Offerings and holy days

¹³ This is the offering that you must give. Take from your harvest one homer from every 60 homers of wheat or barley. ¹⁴ Take one litre of olive oil from every 100 litres. ¹⁵ Take one sheep from every 200 sheep that feed on the grass in Israel. These gifts will be for grain offerings, for burnt offerings and for friendship offerings. These offerings will cause me to forgive you for your sins. I, the Almighty Lord, tell you to do this.

¹⁶ All Israel's people must bring these offerings to the ruler of Israel. ¹⁷ The ruler must provide the animals for the burnt offerings. He must provide the grain for the grain offerings and the wine for the wine offerings. He must provide these things for the holy festivals that I have chosen for Israel's people. Those include feasts for the new moon and for the Sabbath days. He must provide these things for the sin offerings, the grain offerings, the burnt offerings and the friendship offerings. They will cause me to forgive the sins of Israel's people.

¹⁸ This is what the Almighty Lord says: Each year, on the first day of the first month, you must offer a young bull as a sacrifice. It must not have anything wrong with it. This sacrifice will cause the temple to be clean. ¹⁹ The priest will take some of the blood of this sin offering and he will put it on the posts of the temple doors. He must also put some of the blood on the four corners on the top of the altar. He must also put some blood on the gate posts at the entrance to the inside yard of the temple. ²⁰ You must also do this on the seventh day of the first month. That will cause me to forgive anyone who has done a wrong thing by mistake. Perhaps they did not know that it was a sin. In this way you will make the temple a clean place for me.

²¹ Each year, on the 14th day of the first month, you must start the Passover festival. The festival will continue for seven days.^[a] During that time you must not eat any bread that hasyeast in it.

²² On the first day of the festival, the ruler must provide a bull as a sin offering. It is an offering for himself and for all the people of Israel. ²³ Every day of the feast he must provide seven young bulls and seven male sheep for burnt offerings to the Lord. The animals must have nothing wrong with them. Each day of the festival, he must also give a male goat as a sin offering. ²⁴ With each bull and each sheep, the ruler must also provide an ephah of grain. He must provide a hin of olive oil with each ephah of grain.^[b]

²⁵ You will have another festival that starts on the 15th day of the 7th month. It will continue for seven days. Each day, the ruler must provide the same things for sin offerings, burnt offerings and grain offerings, as well as the olive oil.’

46 ‘This is what the Almighty Lord says: The gate of the temple's inside yard that opens to the east must stay shut for the six days that you work. You must only open it on each Sabbath day and on the day of each new moon. ² On those days, the ruler will go through the entrance room for this gate. It is his way in from the outside yard. He must stand beside the posts of the gate. The priests will then offer the ruler's burnt offering and his friendship offerings. The ruler will bend down low to worship me while he stands at the gate. Then he will go out. But they must not shut the gate until the evening. ³ On Sabbath days and on new moon days, the people must stand in front of the east gate. They will bend down low to worship me, the Lord.

⁴ Every Sabbath day, the ruler will bring six lambs and a male sheep as a burnt offering to the Lord. These animals must have nothing wrong with them. ⁵ The ruler will also bring grain offerings. He will offer an ephah of grain with the male sheep. For each of the lambs, he may give as much grain as he chooses. For each ephah of grain, he will offer a hin of olive oil.^[c]

⁶ On the day of the new moon the ruler must offer a young bull, six lambs and a male sheep. These animals must have nothing wrong with them. ⁷ He will also bring grain offerings. He will offer an ephah of grain with the bull and an ephah with the sheep. For each of the lambs, he may give as much grain as he chooses. For each ephah of grain, he will offer a hin of olive oil. ⁸ When the ruler goes in, he must go through the gate's entrance room. And he must go out the same way.

⁹ The people will come to the temple to worship the Lord at the times of the festivals. If they come in through the north gate they must go out through the south gate. And if they come in through the south gate they must go out through the north gate. Nobody may go out of the gate through which he came in. He must go out by the opposite gate. ¹⁰ When the people go in, the ruler will go in with them. When the people go out, the ruler will also go out. ¹¹ At the times of festivals and on other special days, the grain offering with each bull and each sheep will be an ephah. For each of the lambs, a person may give as much grain as they choose. They will give a hin of olive oil with each ephah of grain.

¹² The ruler may choose to make a special gift to the Lord. It may be a burnt offering or a friendship offering. They must open the east gate of the inside yard for the ruler. He will make his offering at the gate, as he does on Sabbath days. Then he must go out. After he has left, they will shut the gate.

¹³ Every day, you must provide a lamb that is one year old and that has nothing wrong with it. Offer it to the Lord as a burnt offering. You must do that every morning, day after day. ¹⁴ With the lamb, you must give a grain offering. It will be one sixth of an ephah of grain. Mix a third of a hin of olive oil with the flour. This rule about the grain offering to the Lord will never change. ¹⁵ You must offer the lamb, with the grain offering and the olive oil, for a burnt offering every morning.

¹⁶ This is what the Almighty Lord says: The ruler may choose to give some of his land as a gift to one of his sons. If he does that, the land will belong to his son and to his descendants. It will always belong to their family. ¹⁷ The king may also choose to give some of his land to one of his servants. If he does that, the servant can keep the land until the year of Jubilee.^[d] After that, the land will belong to the ruler again. The ruler's land will always belong to the ruler and to his descendants. ¹⁸ The king must not take for himself any land that belongs to the people. He must not take them away from their own land. He can only give his own land to his sons. Nobody may take any of my people away from the land that belongs to them.’

¹⁹ The man took me through the entrance beside the gate. We came to the holy rooms that belong to the priests. These rooms opened to the north. He showed me a place at the west end of these rooms. ²⁰ He said to me, ‘This is the place where the priests will cook the meat for the sin offerings and for the guilt offerings. They will bake the grain offerings here, too. In this way, they will not have to take these holy things into the outside yard. If they did that, someone might touch them and become holy.’

²¹ Then the man took me to the outside yard. He took me around the yard to see its four corners. In each corner I saw that there was a small yard ²² These four small yards were 20 metres long and 15 metres wide. They were all the same size. ²³ They had stone walls around them. At the bottom of the walls they had made places for fires to burn.

²⁴ The man said to me, ‘The temple servants will use these kitchens to cook meat that the people bring for sacrifices.’

Christians should do what is good

¹³ So now, prepare your minds, so that you are ready to live in a good way. Think clearly about how God helps you. Always remember that God will be very kind to you when Jesus Christ comes again. ¹⁴ Obey God, like good children who obey their father. Before you knew the true message about Christ, you very much wanted to do bad things. But now you should not agree to live in that bad way. ¹⁵ God has chosen you to be his own people. He is completely good. So you must be completely good too, in the way that you live. ¹⁶ In the Bible God says this: ‘You must be completely good, because I am completely good.’^[a]

¹⁷ God knows what each person has done, and he judges each one for those things. He is always fair when he decides about people. He is never kinder to one person than he is to another person. When you pray to God, you call him ‘Father’. So then, always respect him, while you live as strangers here in the world. ¹⁸ Your ancestors lived in a way that did not make them really happy. That is the way that you learned to live as well. But now God has saved you from that way of life. You know that he has bought you for himself. He did not buy you with things that do not continue for ever, like silver or gold. ¹⁹ Instead, he bought you with the very valuable blood of Christ, who died as a sacrifice for our sins.^[b] He died like a lamb that is completely good and has nothing wrong with it.^[c]

²⁰ Before the world began, God had already chosen Christ. But now, during these last days of the world, God has shown Christ to people. God did that so that he could help you. ²¹ Yes, it is because of Christ that you now believe in God. God raised Christ, so that he became alive again after his death. He did that to show everyone that Christ is great. That is why you believe in God. You trust him that he will do good things for you.

²² You have obeyed God's true message. As a result, you have become clean inside, and now you can really love other believers. So continue to love each other very well, with honest thoughts. ²³ You now have a new life! It is not like a human life that quickly comes to an end. It is a new life that will never spoil. You received it because you believed God's message. That message continues for ever and it does not change. ²⁴ The Bible says:

²⁵ But the Lord God's message will continue for ever.’

That message is the good news about Jesus Christ, which people have taught you.

2 So you must refuse to do any evil things. Do not tell lies to deceive people. Do not be hypocrites. Do not be jealous of other people. Do not say bad things against other people. ² Instead, you should want to learn about God more and more. New babies always want their mothers' milk, which makes them grow strong. God's true message is like good food that will make you strong in your spirits. Then you will continue to grow as believers so that God saves you. ³ Do this, because you have already begun to know how kind the Lord is to you.

Jesus is like the most important stone in God's house

⁴ So come to the Lord Jesus. He is like a big stone that a builder uses to build a house. But he is alive. People decided that he was not important. So they refused him. But God had chosen him. To God, Jesus is very valuable. ⁵ You yourselves are also like stones that are alive. God is using you, like stones, to build a house where his Spirit lives. You will serve him like his special priests who offer sacrifices to him. God will be happy with the spiritual offerings that you give to him, because you belong to Jesus Christ.^[d]

⁶ In the Bible, God says this:

⁷ This stone is very valuable to you who believe in Jesus. But the Bible says this about people who do not believe in him:

⁸ The Bible also says this:

They fall down like that because they refuse to obey God's message. God already decided that this would happen to them.

⁹ But you are not like that. You are a special group of people that God has chosen. You serve God like priests who serve a King. You are his own holy people who belong to him. He has taken you out of the dark place of sin, and he has brought you into his great light. He has done all this so that you can tell people how great he is. ¹⁰ In past times, you were not people who knew God. But now you are God's people. In past times, God did not forgive you. But now he has been very kind to you and he has forgiven you.^[i]

HE

WAW