The Daily Audio Bible

The Punishment That Is Coming

¹⁶ “See, I am going to send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they will fish for them. After this I will send for many men who hunt. And they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes in the rocks. ¹⁷ For I see all their ways. They are not hidden from My face, and their sin is not hidden from My eyes. ¹⁸ And I will pay them back twice as much for their wrong-doing and their sin, because they have made My land unclean. They have filled My land with the bodies of their hated false gods and with sinful things offered to them.”

Jeremiah’s Prayer

¹⁹ O Lord, my strength and my strong-place, my safe place in the day of trouble, nations will come to You from the ends of the earth and say, “Our fathers have received nothing but lies, only things that have no worth and do not help them.” ²⁰ Can man make his own gods? What man makes is not gods!

²¹ “So I am going to make them know. This time I will make them know My power and My strength. And they will know that My name is the Lord.”

Judah’s Sin and the Punishment

17 The sin of Judah is written down with pen of iron and with a sharp diamond. It is written on their hearts and on the horns of their altars. ² Even their children remember their altars and their wooden female goddesses of Asherah by green trees and on the high hills. ³ O My mountain in the country, I will give your money and all your riches to those who fight against you. I will give your high places as the price of your sin through all your land. ⁴ And you yourself will let your land go that I gave you. I will make you serve those who hate you in a land which you do not know. For you have made My an-ger start a fire which will burn forever.

⁵ The Lord says, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who trusts in the flesh for his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. ⁶ For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when good comes. He will live in dry wastes in the desert, in a land of salt where no other people live. ⁷ Good will come to the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is in the Lord. ⁸ He will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the river. It will not be afraid when the heat comes but its leaves will be green. It will not be troubled in a dry year, or stop giving fruit.

⁹ “The heart is fooled more than anything else, and is very sinful. Who can know how bad it is? ¹⁰ I the Lord look into the heart, and test the mind. I give to each man what he should have because of his ways and because of the fruit that comes from his works. ¹¹ As a bird that sits on eggs which it has not laid, so is he who gets rich by doing wrong. When his life is half over, they will leave him, and in the end he will be a fool.”

¹² A beautiful throne on high from the beginning is our holy place. ¹³ O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who leave You will be put to shame. Those who turn away from You will be written in the earth, because they have left the Lord, the well of living water.

Jeremiah Prays for Help

¹⁴ Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed. Save me and I will be saved. For You are my praise. ¹⁵ They say to me, “Where is the Word of the Lord? Let it come now!” ¹⁶ But as for me, I have not run away from being a shepherd who follows You. And I have not been hoping for the day of trouble. You know what I said was spoken in front of You. ¹⁷ Do not make me afraid of You. You are my safe place in the day of trouble. ¹⁸ Let those who make it hard for me be put to shame, but do not let me be put to shame. Let them be afraid, but do not let me be afraid. Bring on them a day of trouble, and destroy them with twice as much!

Keeping the Day of Rest Holy

¹⁹ The Lord said to me, “Go and stand in the people’s gate, through which the kings of Judah come in and go out, and also in all the gates of Jerusalem. ²⁰ And say to them, ‘Listen to the Word of the Lord, kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all people of Jerusalem who come in through these gates. ²¹ The Lord says, “Be careful for your lives. Do not carry any load on the Day of Rest or bring anything in through the gates of Jerusalem. ²² Do not bring a load out of your houses on the Day of Rest or do any work. But keep the Day of Rest holy, as I told your fathers before you. ²³ Yet they did not listen or hear, but made their necks hard and would not change their ways.

²⁴ “Listen to Me,” says the Lord, “and bring no load through the city gates on the Day of Rest. Keep the Day of Rest holy by doing no work on it. ²⁵ Then kings and their sons will come through the city gates who will sit on the throne of David. They will come in war-wagons and on horses, with the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem. And people will live in this city forever. ²⁶ People will come in from the cities of Judah and from the places around Jerusalem. They will come from the land of Benjamin, from the valleys, from the hill country, and from the Negev. They will bring burnt gifts, animals to kill on the altar in worship, grain gifts, special perfume, and gifts of thanks to the house of the Lord. ²⁷ But if you do not listen to Me, to keep the Day of Rest holy by not carrying a load when coming through the gates of Jerusalem on the Day of Rest, then I will start a fire in its gates. And it will burn up the beautiful houses of the kings of Jerusalem and will not be stopped.”’”

The Pot-Maker and the Clay

18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, ² “Go down to the pot-maker’s house, and there I will let you hear My words.” ³ So I went down to the pot-maker’s house, and saw him making one on the wheel. ⁴ But the pot he was making of clay did not come out like he wanted it. So the pot-maker used the clay to make another pot that pleased him.

⁵ Then the Word of the Lord came to me saying, ⁶ “O people of Israel, can I not do with you as this potmaker has done?” says the Lord. “Like the clay in the pot-maker’s hand, so are you in My hand, O people of Israel. ⁷ If at any time I speak about a nation, to pull up, and to break down and to destroy, ⁸ and if that nation I spoke against turns from its sin, then I will change My mind about the trouble I planned to bring upon it. ⁹ If at another time I speak about a nation, that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰ and if it does what is sinful in My eyes by not obeying My voice, then I will change My mind about the good I had promised to bring to it. ¹¹ So now speak to the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem. Tell them, ‘The Lord says, “See, I am making trouble for you and making a plan against you. So each of you turn from your sinful way. Change your ways and your works.”’ ¹² But they will say, ‘There is no hope! For we are going to follow our own plans. Each of us will act in the strong-will of his sinful heart.’

The People Turn from the Lord

¹³ “So the Lord says, ‘Ask now among the nations: Who has heard such things? Pure Israel has done a very sinful thing. ¹⁴ Does the snow of Lebanon ever leave its rocky mountains? Does the cold flowing water of other lands ever dry up? ¹⁵ But My people have forgotten Me. They burn special perfume to false gods of no worth. They have fallen in their ways, from the old paths, and have gone on side roads, not on the straight road. ¹⁶ They make their land a waste, a thing that is spoken against forever. Everyone who passes by it will be surprised and shake his head. ¹⁷ I will send them out everywhere like an east wind in front of those who hate them. I will show them My back and not My face in the day of their trouble.’”

Plans to Kill Jeremiah

¹⁸ They said, “Come and let us make plans against Jeremiah. For the Law is not going to be lost to the religious leader, or wise words to the wise man, or the Word of God to the man of God! Come and let us hurt him with our tongue, and let us not listen to any of his words.”

¹⁹ Think of me, O Lord, and listen to what those who hate me are saying! ²⁰ Should bad be given in return for good? Yet they have dug a deep hole for me. Remember how I stood before You to speak good for them, to turn Your anger away from them. ²¹ So give their children over to hunger. Give them up to the power of the sword. Let their wives lose their children and husbands. Let their men be put to death. And let their young men be killed by the sword in battle. ²² May a cry be heard from their houses when You bring an army upon them by surprise. For they have dug a deep hole to take me, and have hidden traps for my feet. ²³ Yet You, O Lord, know all their plans to kill me. Do not forgive their wrong-doing or cover their sin from Your eyes. Let them be taken down before You. Punish them in the time of Your anger.

Paul Tells Them to Live Holy Lives

4 Christian brothers, we ask you, because of the Lord Jesus, to keep on living in a way that will please God. I have already told you how to grow in the Christian life. ² The Lord Jesus gave us the right and the power to tell you what to do. ³ God wants you to be holy. You must keep away from sex sins. ⁴ God wants each of you to use his body in the right way by keeping it holy and by respecting it. ⁵ You should not use it to please your own desires like the people who do not know God. ⁶ No man should do wrong to his Christian brother in anything. The Lord will punish a person who does. I have told you this before. ⁷ For God has not called us to live in sin. He has called us to live a holy life. ⁸ The one who turns away from this teaching does not turn away from man, but from God. It is God Who has given us His Holy Spirit.

⁹ You do not need anyone to write to you about loving your Christian brothers. God has taught you to love each other. ¹⁰ You love all the Christians in all the country of Macedonia. But we ask you to love them even more. ¹¹ Do your best to live a quiet life. Learn to do your own work well. We told you about this before. ¹² By doing this, you will be respected by those who are not Christians. Then you will not be in need and others will not have to help you.

The Lord Is Coming Again

¹³ Christian brothers, we want you to know for sure about those who have died. You have no reason to have sorrow as those who have no hope. ¹⁴ We believe that Jesus died and then came to life again. Because we believe this, we know that God will bring to life again all those who belong to Jesus. ¹⁵ We tell you this as it came from the Lord. Those of us who are alive when the Lord comes again will not go ahead of those who have died. ¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a loud call. The head angel will speak with a loud voice. God’s horn will give its sounds. First, those who belong to Christ will come out of their graves to meet the Lord. ¹⁷ Then, those of us who are still living here on earth will be gathered together with them in the clouds. We will meet the Lord in the sky and be with Him forever. ¹⁸ Because of this, comfort each other with these words.

Watch for the Lord to Come Again

5 You do not need anyone to write to tell you when and at what kind of times these things will happen. ² You know for sure that the day the Lord comes back to earth will be as a robber coming in the night. ³ When they say, “Everything is fine and safe,” then all at once they will be destroyed. It will be like pain that comes on a woman when a child is born. They will not be able to get away from it.

A Song to God’s Care

81 Sing for joy to God our strength! Call out for joy to the God of Jacob! ² Sing a song, beat the timbrel. Play the sweet-sounding harps. ³ Blow the horn at the new moon, at the full moon on the day of our special supper. ⁴ For this is a Law for Israel, a Law of the God of Jacob. ⁵ He made it a Law for Joseph, when he went through the land of Egypt. I heard a language that I did not know:

⁶ “I took the load off his shoulders. His hands were set free from the basket. ⁷ You called in your trouble, and I took you out of it. I answered you in the hiding place of thunder. I tested you at the waters of Meribah. ⁸ Hear, O My people, and I will tell you what to do. O Israel, if you would listen to Me! ⁹ Let there be no strange god among you. Do not worship any false god. ¹⁰ I, the Lord, am your God. I brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

¹¹ “But My people did not listen to My voice. And Israel did not obey Me. ¹² So I let them follow the desires of their sinful hearts. They followed their own plans. ¹³ If only My people would listen to Me! If only Israel would follow My ways! ¹⁴ I would hurry to crush those who fight against them. I would turn My hand against those who hate them. ¹⁵ Those who hate the Lord would pretend to obey Him. And their punishment would last forever. ¹⁶ But I would feed you with the best of grain. And I would fill you with honey from the rock.”

⁶ Do not honor yourself in front of the king, and do not stand in the place of great men. ⁷ For it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put down in front of the ruler whom your eyes have seen.

⁸ Do not go out in a hurry to argue. Or what will you do in the end, when your neighbor puts you to shame?