The One Year Bible TLB (228 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord! Give a joyous shout in honor of the Rock of our salvation!
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Come before him with thankful hearts. Let us sing him psalms of praise.
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For the Lord is a great God, the great King of
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all gods.
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He controls the formation of the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains; all are his.
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He made the sea and formed the land; they too are his.
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Come, kneel before the Lord our Maker,
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for he is our God. We are his sheep, and he is our Shepherd. Oh, that you would hear him calling you today and come to him!
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Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did in the wilderness
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at Meribah and Massah.
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For there your fathers doubted me, though they had seen so many of my miracles before. My patience was severely tried by their complaints.
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“For forty years I watched them in disgust,” the Lord God says. “They were a nation whose thoughts and heart were far away from me. They refused to accept my laws.
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Therefore, in mighty wrath I swore that they would never enter the Promised Land, the place of rest I planned for them.”
96:
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Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing it everywhere around the world!
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Sing out his praises! Bless his name. Each day tell someone that he saves.
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Publish his glorious acts throughout the earth. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.
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For the Lord is great beyond description and greatly to be praised. Worship only him among the gods!
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For the gods of other nations are merely idols, but our God made the heavens!
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Honor and majesty surround him; strength and beauty are in his Temple.
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O nations of the world, confess that God alone is glorious and strong.
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Give him the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him.
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Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives.
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Let the earth tremble before him.
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Tell the nations that Jehovah reigns! He rules the world. His power can never be overthrown. He will judge all nations fairly.
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Let the heavens be glad, the earth rejoice; let the vastness of the roaring seas demonstrate his glory.
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Praise him for the growing fields, for they display his greatness. Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise.
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For the Lord is coming to judge the earth; he will judge the nations fairly and with truth!
A rebel will misapply an illustration so that its point will no more be felt than a thorn in the hand of a drunkard.
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The master may get better work from an untrained apprentice than from a skilled rebel!
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As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
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There is one thing worse than a fool, and that is a man who is conceited.
October 26The cities of Hamath and Arpad are stricken with fear, for they have heard the news of their doom. Their hearts are troubled like a wild sea in a raging storm.
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Damascus has become feeble, and all her people turn to flee. Fear, anguish, and sorrow have gripped her as they do women in labor.
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O famous city, city of joy, how you are forsaken now!
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Your young men lie dead in the streets; your entire army shall be destroyed in one day, says the Lord Almighty.
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And I will start a fire at the edge of Damascus that shall burn up the palaces of Ben-hadad.
Kedar and Hazor
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This prophecy is about Kedar
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and the kingdoms of Hazor that are going to be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, for the Lord will send him to destroy them:
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Their flocks and their tents will be captured, says the Lord, with all their household goods. Their camels will be taken away, and all around will be the shouts of panic, “We are surrounded and doomed!”
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Flee for your lives, says the Lord. Go deep into the deserts, O people of Hazor, for Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has plotted against you and is preparing to destroy you.
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“Go,” said the Lord to King Nebuchadnezzar. “Attack those wealthy Bedouin tribes living alone in the desert without a care in the world, boasting that they are self-sufficient—that they need neither walls nor gates.
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Their camels and cattle shall all be yours, and I will scatter these heathen
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to the winds. From all directions I will bring calamity upon them.
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“Hazor shall be a home for wild animals of the desert. No one shall ever live there again. It shall be desolate forever.”
Elam
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God’s message against Elam came to Jeremiah in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah:
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The Lord says: I will destroy the army of Elam,
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and I will scatter the people of Elam to the four winds; they shall be exiled to countries throughout the world.
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My fierce anger will bring great evil upon Elam, says the Lord, and I will cause her enemies to wipe her out.
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And I will set my throne in Elam, says the Lord. I will destroy her king and princes.
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But in the latter days I will bring the people back, says the Lord.
50:
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Babylon
This is the message from the Lord against Babylon and the Chaldeans, spoken by Jeremiah the prophet:
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Tell all the world that Babylon will be destroyed; her god Marduk will be utterly disgraced!
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For a nation shall come down upon her from the north with such destruction that no one shall live in her again; all shall be gone—both men and animals shall flee.
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Then the people of Israel and Judah shall join together, weeping and seeking the Lord their God.
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They shall ask the way to Zion and start back home again. “Come,” they will say, “let us be united to the Lord with an eternal pledge that will never be broken again.”
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My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds led them astray and then turned them loose in the mountains. They lost their way and didn’t remember how to get back to the fold.
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All who found them devoured them and said, “We are permitted to attack them freely, for they have sinned against the Lord, the God of justice, the hope of their fathers.”
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But now, flee from Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans; lead my people home again.
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For see, I am raising up an army of great nations from the north, and I will bring them against Babylon to attack her, and she shall be destroyed. The enemies’ arrows go straight to the mark; they do not miss!
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And Babylon shall be sacked until everyone is sated with loot,” says the Lord.
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Though you were glad, O Chaldeans, plunderers of my people, and are fat as cows that feed in lush pastures, and neigh like stallions,
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yet your mother shall be overwhelmed with shame, for you shall become the least of the nations—a wilderness, a dry and desert land.
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Because of the anger of the Lord, Babylon shall become deserted wasteland, and all who pass by shall be appalled and shall mock at her for all her wounds.
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Yes, prepare to fight with Babylon, all you nations round about; let the archers shoot at her; spare no arrows, for she has sinned against the Lord.
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Shout against her from every side. Look! She surrenders! Her walls have fallen. The Lord has taken vengeance. Do to her as she has done!
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Let the farmhands all depart. Let them rush back to their own lands as the enemies advance.
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The Israelites are like sheep the lions chase. First the king of Assyria ate them up; then Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, crunched their bones.
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Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Now I will punish the king of Babylon and his land as I punished the king of Assyria.
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And I will bring Israel home again to her own land, to feed in the fields of Carmel and Bashan and to be happy once more on Mount Ephraim and Mount Gilead.
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In those days, says the Lord, no sin shall be found in Israel or in Judah, for I will pardon the remnant I preserve.
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Go up, O my warriors, against the land of Merathaim
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and against the people of Pekod. Yes, march against Babylon, the land of rebels, a land that I will judge! Annihilate them, as I have commanded you.
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Let there be the shout of battle in the land, a shout of great destruction.
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Babylon, the mightiest hammer in all the earth, lies broken and shattered. Babylon is desolate among the nations!
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O Babylon, I have set a trap for you and you are caught, for you have fought against the Lord.
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The Lord has opened his armory and brought out weapons to explode his wrath upon his enemies. The terror that befalls Babylon will be the work of the Lord God.
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Yes, come against her from distant lands; break open her granaries; knock down her walls and houses into heaps of ruins and utterly destroy her; let nothing be left.
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Not even her cattle—woe to them too! Kill them all! For the time has come for Babylon to be devastated.
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But my people will flee; they will escape back to their own country to tell how the Lord their God has broken forth in fury upon those who destroyed his Temple.
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Send out a call for archers to come to Babylon; surround the city so that none can escape. Do to her as she has done to others, for she has haughtily defied the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.
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Her young men will fall in the streets and die; her warriors will all be killed.
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For see, I am against you, O people so proud; and now your day of reckoning has come.
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Land of pride, you will stumble and fall, and no one will raise you up; for the Lord will light a fire in the cities of Babylon that will burn everything around them.
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The Lord says: The people of Israel and Judah have been wronged. Their captors hold them and refuse to let them go.
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But their Redeemer is strong. His name is the Lord Almighty. He will plead for them and see that they are freed to live again in quietness in Israel.
As for the people of Babylon—there is no rest for them!
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The sword of destruction shall smite the Chaldeans, says the Lord. It shall smite the people of Babylon—her princes and wise men too.
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All her wise counselors shall become fools! Panic shall seize her mightiest warriors!
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War shall devour her horses and chariots, and her allies from other lands shall become as weak as women. Her treasures shall all be robbed;
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even her water supply will fail. And why? Because the whole land is full of images, and the people are madly in love with their idols.
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Therefore this city of Babylon shall become inhabited by ostriches and jackals; it shall be a home for the wild animals of the desert. Never again shall it be lived in by human beings; it shall lie desolate forever.
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The Lord declares that he will destroy Babylon just as he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns. No one has lived in them since, and no one will live again in Babylon.
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See them coming! A great army from the north! It is accompanied by many kings called by God from many lands.
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They are fully armed for slaughter; they are cruel and show no mercy; their battle cry roars like the surf against the shoreline. O Babylon, they ride against you fully ready for the battle.
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When the king of Babylon received the dispatch, his hands fell helpless at his sides; pangs of terror gripped him like the pangs of a woman in labor.
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I will send against them an invader who will come upon them suddenly, like a lion from the jungles of Jordan that leaps upon the grazing sheep. I will put her defenders to flight and appoint over them whomsoever I please. For who is like me? What ruler can oppose my will? Who can call me to account?
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Listen to the plan of the Lord against Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans. For even little children shall be dragged away as slaves; oh, the horror; oh, the terror.
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The whole earth shall shake at Babylon’s fall, and her cry of despair shall be heard around the world.
From:
Paul, the slave of God and the messenger of Jesus Christ.
I have been sent to bring faith to those God has chosen and to teach them to know God’s truth—the kind of truth that changes lives—so that they can have eternal life, which God promised them before the world began—and he cannot lie.
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And now in his own good time he has revealed this Good News and permits me to tell it to everyone. By command of God our Savior, I have been trusted to do this work for him.
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To:
Titus, who is truly my son in the affairs of the Lord.
May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior give you his blessings and his peace.
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I left you there on the island of Crete so that you could do whatever was needed to help strengthen each of its churches, and I asked you to appoint pastors
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in every city who would follow the instructions I gave you.
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The men you choose must be well thought of for their good lives; they must have only one wife and their children must love the Lord and not have a reputation for being wild or disobedient to their parents.
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These pastors must be men of blameless lives because they are God’s ministers. They must not be proud or impatient; they must not be drunkards or fighters or greedy for money.
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They must enjoy having guests in their homes and must love all that is good. They must be sensible men, and fair. They must be clean minded and level headed.
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Their belief in the truth that they have been taught must be strong and steadfast so that they will be able to teach it to others and show those who disagree with them where they are wrong.
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For there are many who refuse to obey; this is especially true among those who say that all Christians must obey the Jewish laws. But this is foolish talk; it blinds people to the truth,
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and it must be stopped. Already whole families have been turned away from the grace of God. Such teachers are only after your money.
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One of their own men, a prophet from Crete, has said about them, “These men of Crete are all liars; they are like lazy animals, living only to satisfy their stomachs.”
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And this is true. So speak to the Christians there as sternly as necessary to make them strong in the faith
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and to stop them from listening to Jewish folk tales and the demands of men who have turned their backs on the truth.
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A person who is pure of heart sees goodness and purity in everything; but a person whose own heart is evil and untrusting finds evil in everything, for his dirty mind and rebellious heart color all he sees and hears.
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Such persons claim they know God, but from seeing the way they act, one knows they don’t. They are rotten and disobedient, worthless so far as doing anything good is concerned.