Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
The One Year Bible TLB (202 page)
O my son, trust my advice—stay away from prostitutes. For a prostitute is a deep and narrow grave. Like a robber, she waits for her victims as one after another become unfaithful to their wives.
September 23When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongues are parched from thirst, then I will answer when they cry to me. I, Israel’s God, will never forsake them.
18
I will open up rivers for them on high plateaus! I will give them fountains of water in the valleys! In the deserts will be pools of water, and rivers fed by springs shall flow across the dry, parched ground.
19
I will plant trees—cedars, myrtle, olive trees, cypress, fir, and pine—on barren land.
20
Everyone will see this miracle and understand that it is God who did it, Israel’s Holy One.
21
Can your idols make such claims as these? Let them come and show what they can do, says God, the King of Israel.
22
Let them try to tell us what occurred in years gone by or what the future holds.
23
Yes, that’s it! If you are gods, tell what will happen in the days ahead! Or do some mighty miracle that makes us stare, amazed.
24
But no! You are less than nothing and can do nothing at all. Anyone who chooses you needs to have his head examined!
25
But I have stirred up Cyrus from the north and east; he will come against the nations and call on my name, and I will give him victory over kings and princes. He will tread them as a potter tramples clay.
26
Who but I have told you this would happen? Who else predicted this, making you admit that he was right? No one else! None other said one word!
27
I was the first to tell Jerusalem, “Look! Look! Help is on the way!”
28
Not one of your idols told you this. Not one gave any answer when I asked.
29
See, they are all foolish, worthless things; your idols are all as empty as the wind.
42:
1
See my servant,
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whom I uphold; my Chosen One in whom I delight. I have put my Spirit upon him; he will reveal justice to the nations of the world.
2
He will be gentle—he will not shout nor quarrel in the streets.
3
He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the dimly burning flame. He will encourage the fainthearted, those tempted to despair. He will see full justice given to all who have been wronged.
4
He won’t be satisfied
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until truth and righteousness prevail throughout the earth, nor until even distant lands beyond the seas have put their trust in him.
5
The Lord God who created the heavens and stretched them out, who created the earth and everything in it, who gives life and breath and spirit to everyone in all the world, he is the one who says to his Servant, the Messiah
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:
6
“I the Lord have called you to demonstrate my righteousness. I will guard and support you, for I have given you to my people as the personal confirmation of my covenant with them.
*
You shall also be a light to guide the nations unto me.
7
You will open the eyes of the blind and release those who sit in prison darkness and despair.
8
I am the Lord! That is my name, and I will not give my glory to anyone else; I will not share my praise with carved idols.
9
Everything I prophesied came true, and now I will prophesy again. I will tell you the future before it happens.”
10
Sing a new song to the Lord; sing his praises, all you who live in earth’s remotest corners! Sing, O sea! Sing, all you who live in distant lands beyond the sea!
11
Join in the chorus, you desert cities—Kedar and Sela! And you, too, dwellers in the mountaintops.
12
Let the western coastlands glorify the Lord and sing his mighty power.
13
The Lord will be a mighty warrior, full of fury toward his foes. He will give a great shout and prevail.
14
Long has he been silent; he has restrained himself. But now he will give full vent to his wrath; he will groan and cry like a woman delivering her child.
15
He will level the mountains and hills and blight their greenery. He will dry up the rivers and pools.
16
He will bring blind Israel along a path they have not seen before. He will make the darkness bright before them and smooth and straighten out the road ahead. He will not forsake them.
17
But those who trust in idols and call them gods will be greatly disappointed; they will be turned away.
18
Oh, how blind and deaf you are toward God! Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you see?
19
Who in all the world is as blind as my own people,
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who are designed to be my messengers of truth? Who is so blind as my “dedicated one,” the “servant of the Lord”?
20
You see and understand what is right but won’t heed nor do it; you hear, but you won’t listen.
21
The Lord has magnified his law and made it truly glorious. Through it he had planned to show the world that he is righteous.
22
But what a sight his people are—these who were to demonstrate to all the world the glory of his law;
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for they are robbed, enslaved, imprisoned, trapped, fair game for all, with no one to protect them.
23
Won’t even one of you apply these lessons from the past and see the ruin that awaits you up ahead?
24
Who let Israel be robbed and hurt? Did not the Lord? It is the Lord they sinned against, for they would not go where he sent them nor listen to his laws.
25
That is why God poured out such fury and wrath on his people and destroyed them in battle. Yet, though set on fire and burned, they will not understand the reason why—that it is God, wanting them to repent.
*
43:
1
But now the Lord who created you, O Israel, says: Don’t be afraid, for I have ransomed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.
2
When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up—the flames will not consume you.
3
For I am the Lord your God, your Savior, the Holy One of Israel. I gave Egypt and Ethiopia and Seba to Cyrus
*
in exchange for your freedom, as your ransom.
4
Others died that you might live; I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me and honored, and I love you.
5
Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. I will gather you from east and west,
6
from north and south. I will bring my sons and daughters back to Israel from the farthest corners of the earth.
7
All who claim me as their God will come, for I have made them for my glory; I created them.
8
Bring them back to me—blind as they are and deaf when I call (although they see and hear!).
9
Gather the nations together! Which of all their idols ever has foretold such things? Which can predict a single day ahead? Where are the witnesses of anything they said? If there are no witnesses, then they must confess that only God can prophesy.
10
But I have witnesses, O Israel, says the Lord! You are my witnesses and my servants, chosen to know and to believe me and to understand that I alone am God. There is no other God; there never was and never will be.
11
I am the Lord, and there is no other Savior.
12
Whenever you have thrown away your idols, I have shown you my power. With one word I have saved you. You have seen me do it; you are my witnesses that it is true.
13
From eternity to eternity I am God. No one can oppose what I do.
Once you were under God’s curse, doomed forever for your sins.
2
You went along with the crowd and were just like all the others, full of sin, obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air, who is at work right now in the hearts of those who are against the Lord.
3
All of us used to be just as they are, our lives expressing the evil within us, doing every wicked thing that our passions or our evil thoughts might lead us into. We started out bad, being born with evil natures, and were under God’s anger just like everyone else.
4
But God is so rich in mercy; he loved us so much
5
that even though we were spiritually dead and doomed by our sins, he gave us back our lives again
*
when he raised Christ from the dead—only by his undeserved favor have we ever been saved—
6
and lifted us up from the grave into glory along with Christ, where we sit with him in the heavenly realms—all because of what Christ Jesus did.
7
And now God can always point to us as examples of how very, very rich his kindness is, as shown in all he has done for us through Jesus Christ.
8
Because of his kindness, you have been saved through trusting Christ. And even trusting is not of yourselves;
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it too is a gift from God.
9
Salvation is not a reward for the good we have done, so none of us can take any credit for it.
10
It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others.
11
Never forget that once you were heathen and that you were called godless and “unclean” by the Jews. (But their hearts, too, were still unclean, even though they were going through the ceremonies and rituals of the godly, for they circumcised themselves as a sign of godliness.)
12
Remember that in those days you were living utterly apart from Christ; you were enemies of God’s children, and he had promised you no help. You were lost, without God, without hope.
13
But now you belong to Christ Jesus, and though you once were far away from God, now you have been brought very near to him because of what Jesus Christ has done for you with his blood.
14
For Christ himself is our way of peace. He has made peace between us Jews and you Gentiles by making us all one family,
*
breaking down the wall of contempt that used to separate us.
15
By his death he ended the angry resentment between us, caused by the Jewish laws that favored the Jews and excluded the Gentiles, for he died to annul that whole system of Jewish laws. Then he took the two groups that had been opposed to each other and made them parts of himself; thus he fused us together to become one new person, and at last there was peace.
16
As parts of the same body, our anger against each other has disappeared, for both of us have been reconciled to God. And so the feud ended at last at the cross.
17
And he has brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were very far away from him, and to us Jews who were near.
18
Now all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, may come to God the Father with the Holy Spirit’s help because of what Christ has done for us.
19
Now you are no longer strangers to God and foreigners to heaven, but you are members of God’s very own family, citizens of God’s country, and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.
20
What a foundation you stand on now: the apostles and the prophets; and the cornerstone of the building is Jesus Christ himself!
21
We who believe are carefully joined together with Christ as parts of a beautiful, constantly growing temple for God.
22
And you also are joined with him and with each other by the Spirit and are part of this dwelling place of God.
O God, in mercy bless us; let your face beam with joy as you look down at us.
2
Send us around the world with the news of your saving power and your eternal plan for all mankind.
3
How everyone throughout the earth will praise the Lord!
4
How glad the nations will be, singing for joy because you are their King
*
and will give true justice to their people!
5
Praise God, O world! May all the peoples of the earth give thanks to you.
6-7
For the earth has yielded abundant harvests. God, even our own God, will bless us. And peoples from remotest lands will worship him.
Whose heart is filled with anguish and sorrow? Who is always fighting and quarreling? Who is the man with bloodshot eyes and many wounds? It is the one who spends long hours in the taverns, trying out new mixtures.
31
Don’t let the sparkle and the smooth taste of strong wine deceive you.
32
For in the end it bites like a poisonous serpent; it stings like an adder.
33
You will see hallucinations and have delirium tremens, and you will say foolish, silly things that would embarrass you no end when sober.
34
You will stagger like a sailor tossed at sea, clinging to a swaying mast.
35
And afterwards you will say, “I didn’t even know it when they beat me up. . . . Let’s go and have another drink!”