The Daily Audio Bible

Israel Will Not Go God’s Way

¹⁶ The Lord says, “Stand by where the roads cross, and look. Ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it. And you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ ¹⁷ I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the horn!’ But they said, ‘We will not listen.’ ¹⁸ So hear, O nations, and know, O people, what will happen to them. ¹⁹ Hear, O earth. See, I am bringing much trouble upon these people. It is the fruit of their plans, because they have not listened to My words. And they have turned away from My law. ²⁰ Why does special perfume come to Me from Sheba, or sweet spices from a far away land? I will not receive your burnt gifts on the altar in worship. The gifts you give on the altar are not pleasing to Me.” ²¹ So the Lord says, “See, I am laying things in front of these people, and they will fall over them. Fathers and sons will fall together, and neighbor and friend will die.”

Armies from the North

²² The Lord says, “See, a people is coming from the north country. A great nation is being raised up from the farthest parts of the earth. ²³ They take hold of bow and spear. They are hard on people and have no pity. Their voice sounds like the sea. They ride on horses, dressed as a man for battle against you, O people of Zion!” ²⁴ We have heard about it. Our hands fall weak. Suffering has taken hold of us, like the pain of a woman giving birth. ²⁵ Do not go out into the field, and do not walk on the road. For the one who hates us has a sword. Fear is all around us. ²⁶ O daughter of my people, dress in cloth made from hair and roll in ashes. Have sorrow as if you lost your only son. Cry with a bitter cry. For all at once the destroyer will come upon us.

²⁷ “I have asked you to test My people, that you may know and test their ways.” ²⁸ All of them are strongwilled in turning to their own way, going about telling stories to hurt people. They are brass and iron. All of them are sinful. ²⁹ Air is blown hard on the fire to burn up the lead. It is of no use because the sinful ones are not taken away. ³⁰ They are called waste silver, because the Lord has turned away from them.

Israel Must Not Trust in Lying Words

7 This word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, ² “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house and make this word known: ‘Hear the Word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who go through these gates to worship the Lord!’” ³ The Lord of All, the God of Israel, says, “Change your ways and your works for the better, and I will let you live in this place. ⁴ Do not trust the lies that say, ‘This is the house of the Lord, the house of the Lord, the house of the Lord.’ ⁵ For if you for sure change your ways and what you do for the better, if you are fair as you judge between a man and his neighbor, ⁶ if you do not make it hard for the stranger from another land, or the child whose parents have died, or the woman whose husband has died, and do not kill those who are not guilty in this place, and stop going after other gods, for that will destroy you, ⁷ then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.

⁸ “See, you are trusting in lies which cannot help you. ⁹ Will you steal, kill, do sex sins, make false promises, give gifts to the false god Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, ¹⁰ and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are safe and free!’ and still do all these hated sins? ¹¹ Has this house which is called by My name become a place of robbers in your eyes? See, I Myself have seen it,” says the Lord.

¹² “But go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a place for My name. And see what I did to it because of the sin of My people Israel. ¹³ Now you have done all these things,” says the Lord. “I spoke to you again and again, but you did not hear. I called you but you did not answer. ¹⁴ So as I did to Shiloh, I will do to the house that is called by My name and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave you and your fathers. ¹⁵ I will send you away from My eyes, as I have sent away all your brothers, all the children of Ephraim.

Israel Does Not Obey

¹⁶ “As for you, do not pray for these people. Do not lift up a cry or prayer for them. Do not speak with Me about them, for I do not hear you. ¹⁷ Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸ The children gather wood. The fathers make the fire. And the women make bread and cakes for the queen of heaven. They pour out drink gifts to other gods to make Me angry. ¹⁹ Do they make Me angry?” says the Lord. “Is it not themselves they hurt, to their own shame?” ²⁰ So the Lord God says, “See, My anger will be poured out on this place, on man and animal, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. It will burn and not be stopped.”

²¹ The Lord of All, the God of Israel, says, “Add your burnt gifts to the animals you kill on the altar, and eat the flesh. ²² For when I brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or tell them what to do about burnt gifts and animals killed on the altar. ²³ But I did tell them, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people. Walk in all the way that I tell you, that it may be well with you.’ ²⁴ Yet they did not obey or listen, but walked in the way they wanted to and in the strong-will of their sinful heart. They only stepped back and did not go on. ²⁵ Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants who speak for Me. I have risen up early and sent them day after day. ²⁶ Yet they did not listen to Me or turn their ear to Me, but made their neck hard. They sinned more than their fathers.

Israel’s Sinful Actions

²⁷ “You will speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You will call to them, but they will not answer you. ²⁸ And you will say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God or receive His strong teaching. They have lost the truth. It has been cut off from their mouth. ²⁹ Cut off your hair and throw it away. And cry in sorrow on the open hill-tops. For the Lord has turned away and left the people who made Him angry.’ ³⁰ For the sons of Judah have done what is sinful in My eyes,” says the Lord. “They have put their hated things in the house that is called by My name, to make it unclean. ³¹ And they have built the high places of Topheth, in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and daughters in the fire. I did not tell them to do this. It did not come into My mind. ³² So the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when it will not be called Topheth any more, or the valley of the son of Hinnom. But it will be called the valley of Killing. For they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place. ³³ The dead bodies of these people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals of the earth. And no one will send them away in fear. ³⁴ Then in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, I will put an end to the voice of joy and the voice of happiness, the voice of the man to be married and the voice of the bride. For the land will become a waste.

8 “At that time,” says the Lord, “they will bring out the bones of the kings and leaders of Judah, the bones of the religious leaders, the bones of the men of God, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem from their graves. ² And they will spread them out to the sun, the moon, and to all the stars of heaven. For these they have loved, and served, and followed, and looked for, and worshiped. The bones will not be gathered or buried. They will be as animal waste on top of the ground. ³ And death will be chosen instead of life by all those who are left of this sinful family in all the places where I have driven them,” says the Lord of All.

Sin and Its Punishment

⁴ “You will say to them, ‘This is what the Lord says: “Do men fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not return? ⁵ Why then have the people of Jerusalem always turned away from Me? They hold on to what is false, and will not return. ⁶ I have listened and heard, but they have not said what is right. No man turned from his sinful way, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Every one turns to his own way like a horse running into battle. ⁷ Even the stork in the sky knows her times. And the turtle-dove, crane, and swallow keep the time of their coming. But My people do not know the Law of the Lord.

Wisdom of the World Is Empty

⁸ Be careful that no one changes your mind and faith by much learning and big sounding ideas. Those things are what men dream up. They are always trying to make new religions. These leave out Christ. ⁹ For Christ is not only God-like, He is God in human flesh. ¹⁰ When you have Christ, you are complete. He is the head over all leaders and powers. ¹¹ When you became a Christian, you were set free from the sinful things of the world. This was not done by human hands. You were set free from the sins of your old self by what was done in Christ’s body. ¹² When you were baptized, you were buried as Christ was buried. When you were raised up in baptism, you were raised as Christ was raised. You were raised to a new life by putting your trust in God. It was God Who raised Jesus from the dead. ¹³ When you were dead in your sins, you were not set free from the sinful things of the world. But God forgave your sins and gave you new life through Christ. ¹⁴ We had broken the Law many ways. Those sins were held against us by the Law. That Law had writings which said we were sinners. But now He has destroyed that writing by nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ God took away the power of the leaders of this world and the powers of darkness. He showed them to the world. The battle was won over them through Christ.

Watch for Those Who Want to Keep the Law

¹⁶ Do not let anyone tell you what you should or should not eat or drink. They have no right to say if it is right or wrong to eat certain foods or if you are to go to religious suppers. They have no right to say what you are to do at the time of the new moon or on the Day of Rest. ¹⁷ These things are a picture of what is coming. The important thing is Christ Himself. ¹⁸ Do not let anyone rob you of your crown. They will try to get you to bow down in worship of angels. They think this shows you are not proud. They say they were told to do this in a dream. These people are proud because of their sinful minds. ¹⁹ Such people are not a part of Christ. Christ is the Head. We Christians make up His body. We are joined together as a body is held together. Our strength to grow comes from Christ.

²⁰ You have died with Christ and become dead to those old ways. Then why do you follow the old ways of worship? Why do you obey man-made rules? ²¹ These rules say, “You must not put your hand on this.” “Do not put this into your mouth.” “You must not put your finger on that.” ²² All these things come to an end when they are used. You are following only man-made rules. ²³ It looks as if it is wise to follow these rules in an act of worship, because they are hard on the body. It looks as if they are done without pride, but they are worth nothing. They do not take away a man’s desire to sin.

God Is Good to His People

78 O my people, hear my teaching. Listen to the words of my mouth. ² I will open my mouth in picture-stories. I will tell things which have been kept secret from long ago, ³ which we have heard and known because our fathers have told us. ⁴ We will not hide them from their children. But we will tell the children-to-come the praises of the Lord, and of His power and the great things He has done.

⁵ For He has made His will known to Jacob. He made the Law in Israel, which He told our fathers to teach their children. ⁶ So the children-to-come might know, even the children yet to be born. So they may rise up and tell it to their children. ⁷ Then they would put their trust in God and not forget the works of God. And they would keep His Law. ⁸ They would not be like their fathers, who were not right with God and would not obey Him or be faithful to Him.

⁹ The sons of Ephraim were ready with their bows. But they turned away in the day of fighting. ¹⁰ They did not keep the agreement of God. And they would not walk in His Law. ¹¹ They forgot what He had done and His great works that He had shown them. ¹² He did powerful works in front of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. ¹³ He divided the sea and made them pass through it. He made the water stand up like a wall. ¹⁴ He led them with the cloud during the day, and with a light of fire during the night. ¹⁵ He broke the rocks in the desert, and gave them water as if it flowed from the sea. ¹⁶ He made water come out of the rock. He made the water flow down like rivers.

¹⁷ But they still kept on sinning against Him. They did not obey the Most High in the desert. ¹⁸ They tested God in their hearts by asking for the food they wanted. ¹⁹ Then they spoke against God, saying, “Can God set a table in the desert? ²⁰ See, He hit the rock and water poured out and rivers flowed over. Can He give bread also? Will He give meat to His people?”

²¹ The Lord was full of anger when He heard them. And a fire was set against Jacob. His anger went up against Israel, ²² because they did not believe in God. They did not trust in Him to save them. ²³ Yet He spoke to the clouds above, and opened the doors of heaven. ²⁴ He sent down bread from heaven for them to eat. He gave them food from heaven. ²⁵ Men ate the bread of angels. He sent them all the food they could eat. ²⁶ He made the east wind blow in the heavens. And He brought in the south wind by His power. ²⁷ He sent meat down on them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the sea. ²⁸ He let them fall in the place where they were staying, all around their tents. ²⁹ So they ate until they were full. He gave them what they wanted. ³⁰ But before they had eaten all they wanted, even while it was still in their mouths, ³¹ the anger of God came upon them. And He killed the strongest of them. He cut down the young men of Israel.

²⁶ To give the right answer is like a kiss on the lips.