The One Year Bible TLB (68 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
O God, in mercy bless us; let your face beam with joy as you look down at us.
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Send us around the world with the news of your saving power and your eternal plan for all mankind.
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How everyone throughout the earth will praise the Lord!
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How glad the nations will be, singing for joy because you are their King
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and will give true justice to their people!
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Praise God, O world! May all the peoples of the earth give thanks to you.
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For the earth has yielded abundant harvests. God, even our own God, will bless us. And peoples from remotest lands will worship him.
If you search for good, you will find God’s favor; if you search for evil, you will find his curse.
March 25“And now, O Israel, listen carefully to these laws I teach you, and obey them if you want to live and enter into and possess the land given you by the Lord God of your ancestors.
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Do not add other laws or subtract from these; just obey them, for they are from the Lord your God.
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You have seen what the Lord did to you at Baalpeor, where he destroyed many people for worshiping idols.
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But all of you who were faithful to the Lord your God are still alive today.
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“These are the laws for you to obey when you arrive in the land where you will live. They are from the Lord our God. He has given them to me to pass on to you.
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If you obey them, they will give you a reputation for wisdom and intelligence. When the surrounding nations hear these laws, they will exclaim, ‘What other nation is as wise and prudent as Israel!’
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For what other nation, great or small, has God among them, as the Lord our God is here among us whenever we call upon him?
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And what nation, no matter how great, has laws as fair as these I am giving you today?
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“But watch out! Be very careful never to forget what you have seen God doing for you. May his miracles have a deep and permanent effect upon your lives! Tell your children and your grandchildren about the glorious miracles he did.
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Tell them especially about the day you stood before the Lord at Mount Horeb, and he told me, ‘Summon the people before me and I will instruct them, so that they will learn always to reverence me, and so that they can teach my laws to their children.’
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You stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire; flames shot far into the sky, surrounded by black clouds and deep darkness.
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And the Lord spoke to you from the fire; you heard his words but didn’t see him.
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He proclaimed the laws you must obey—the Ten Commandments—and wrote them on two stone tablets.
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Yes, it was at that time that the Lord commanded me to issue the laws you must obey when you arrive in the Promised Land.
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“But beware! You didn’t see the form of God that day as he spoke to you from the fire at Mount Horeb,
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so do not defile yourselves by trying to make a statue of God—an idol in any form, whether of a man, woman, animal, bird,
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a small animal that runs along the ground, or a fish.
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And do not look up into the sky to worship the sun, moon, or stars. The Lord may permit other nations to get away with this, but not you.
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The Lord has rescued you from prison—Egypt—to be his special people, his own inheritance; this is what you are today.
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But he was angry with me because of you; he vowed that I could not go over the Jordan River into the good land he has given you as your inheritance. I must die here on this side of the river.
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Beware lest you break the contract the Lord your God has made with you! You will break it if you make any idols, for the Lord your God has utterly forbidden this.
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He is a devouring fire, a jealous God.
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“In the future, when your children and grandchildren are born and you have been in the land a long time, and you have defiled yourselves by making idols, and the Lord your God is very angry because of your sin,
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heaven and earth are witnesses that you shall be quickly destroyed from the land. Soon now you will cross the Jordan River and conquer that land. But your days there will be brief; you will then be utterly destroyed.
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For the Lord will scatter you among the nations, and you will be but few in number.
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There, far away, you will worship idols made from wood and stone, idols that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.
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“But you will also begin to search again for Jehovah your God, and you will find him when you search for him with all your heart and soul.
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When those bitter days have come upon you in the latter times, you will finally return to the Lord your God and listen to what he tells you.
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For the Lord your God is merciful—he will not abandon you nor destroy you nor forget the promises he has made to your ancestors.
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“In all history, going back to the time when God created man upon the earth, search from one end of the heavens to the other to see if you can find anything like this:
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An entire nation heard the voice of God speaking to it from fire, as you did, and lived!
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Where else will you ever find another example of God’s removing a nation from its slavery by sending terrible plagues, mighty miracles, war, and terror? Yet that is what the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, right before your very eyes.
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He did these things so you would realize that Jehovah is God, and that there is no one else like him.
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He let you hear his voice instructing you from heaven, and he let you see his great pillar of fire upon the earth; you even heard his words from the center of the fire.
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“It was because he loved your ancestors and chose to bless their descendants that he personally brought you out from Egypt with a great display of power.
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He drove away other nations greater by far than you and gave you their land as an inheritance, as it is today.
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This is your wonderful thought for the day: Jehovah is God both in heaven and down here upon the earth; and there is no God other than him!
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You must obey these laws that I will tell you today, so that all will be well with you and your children, and so that you will live forever in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
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Then Moses instructed the people of Israel to set apart three cities east of the Jordan River,
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where anyone who accidentally killed someone could flee for safety.
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These cities were Bezer, on the plateau in the wilderness, for the tribe of Reuben; Ramoth, in Gilead, for the tribe of Gad; and Golan, in Bashan, for the tribe of Manasseh.
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Listed below are the laws Moses issued to the people of Israel when they left Egypt, and as they were camped east of the Jordan River near the city of Beth-peor. (This was the land formerly occupied by the Amorites under King Sihon, whose capital was Heshbon; he and his people were destroyed by Moses and the Israelis.
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Israel conquered his land and that of King Og of Bashan—they were two Amorite kings east of the Jordan.
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Israel also conquered all the area from Aroer at the edge of the Arnon River Valley to Mount Sirion, or Mount Hermon, as it is sometimes called;
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and all the Arabah east of the Jordan River over to the Dead Sea, below the slopes of Mount Pisgah.)
Here are some of the story-illustrations Jesus used in his sermons:
“What good is it for one blind man to lead another? He will fall into a ditch and pull the other down with him.
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How can a student know more than his teacher? But if he works hard, he may learn as much.
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“And why quibble about the speck in someone else’s eye—his little fault
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—when a board is in your own?
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How can you think of saying to him, ‘Brother, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the board in yours? Hypocrite! First get rid of the board, and then perhaps you can see well enough to deal with his speck!
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“A tree from good stock doesn’t produce scrub fruit nor do trees from poor stock produce choice fruit.
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A tree is identified by the kind of fruit it produces. Figs never grow on thorns, or grapes on bramble bushes.
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A good man produces good deeds from a good heart. And an evil man produces evil deeds from his hidden wickedness. Whatever is in the heart overflows into speech.
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“So why do you call me ‘Lord’ when you won’t obey me?
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But all those who come and listen and obey me are like a man who builds a house on a strong foundation laid upon the underlying rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against the house, it stands firm, for it is strongly built.
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“But those who listen and don’t obey are like a man who builds a house without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it crumbles into a heap of ruins.”
7:
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When Jesus had finished his sermon he went back into the city of Capernaum.
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Just at that time the highly prized slave of a Roman
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army captain was sick and near death.
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When the captain heard about Jesus, he sent some respected Jewish elders to ask him to come and heal his slave.
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So they began pleading earnestly with Jesus to come with them and help the man. They told him what a wonderful person the captain was.
“If anyone deserves your help, it is he,” they said,
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“for he loves the Jews and even paid personally to build us a synagogue!”
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Jesus went with them; but just before arriving at the house, the captain sent some friends to say, “Sir, don’t inconvenience yourself by coming to my home, for I am not worthy of any such honor or even to come and meet you. Just speak a word from where you are, and my servant boy will be healed! I know, because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my men. I only need to say ‘Go!’ and they go; or ‘Come!’ and they come; and to my slave, ‘Do this or that,’ and he does it. So just say, ‘Be healed!’ and my servant will be well again!”
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Jesus was amazed. Turning to the crowd he said,
“Never among all the Jews in Israel have I met a man with faith like this.”
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And when the captain’s friends returned to his house, they found the slave completely healed.
Arise, O God, and scatter all your enemies! Chase them away!
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Drive them off like smoke before the wind; melt them like wax in fire! So let the wicked perish at the presence of God.
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But may the godly man exult. May he rejoice and be merry.
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Sing praises to the Lord! Raise your voice in song to him who rides upon the clouds!
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Jehovah is his name—oh, rejoice in his presence.
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He is a father to the fatherless; he gives justice to the widows, for he is holy.
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He gives families to the lonely, and releases prisoners from jail, singing with joy! But for rebels there is famine and distress.
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O God, when you led your people through the wilderness,
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the earth trembled and the heavens shook. Mount Sinai quailed before you—the God of Israel.
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You sent abundant rain upon your land, O God, to refresh it in its weariness! There your people lived, for you gave them this home when they were destitute.
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The Lord speaks. The enemy flees. The women at home
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cry out the happy news: “The armies that came to destroy us have fled!” Now all the women of Israel are dividing the booty. See them sparkle with jewels of silver and gold, covered all over as wings cover doves!
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God scattered their enemies like snowflakes melting in the forests of Zalmon.
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O mighty mountains in Bashan! O splendid many-peaked ranges! Well may you look with envy at Mount Zion, the mount where God has chosen to live forever.
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Surrounded by unnumbered chariots, the Lord moves on from Mount Sinai and comes to his holy Temple high upon Mount Zion.
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He ascends the heights, leading many captives in his train. He receives gifts for men,
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even those who once were rebels. God will live among us here.
Trust in your money and down you go! Trust in God and flourish as a tree!