The Daily Audio Bible
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The End Has Come for Israel
7 The Word of the Lord came to me saying, 2 “Son of man, this is what the Lord God says to the land of Israel: ‘The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. 3 Now the end is upon you. I will send My anger against you and punish you because of your ways. I will make you pay for all your sinful actions. 4 My eye will have no pity on you. And I will not let you go without punishment. I will punish you for your ways, and for the hated sins that are among you. Then you will know that I am the Lord!’
5 “The Lord God says, ‘See, much trouble is coming! 6 An end has come! The end has come! It has come up against you. See, it has come! 7 Your punishment has come upon you, O you who live in the land. The time has come. The day is near. The sound of trouble and not of joy is upon the mountains. 8 Now I will soon pour out My anger upon you. I will send My anger against you. I will punish you for your ways and for the hated sins that are among you. 9 My eye will show no pity, and I will not let you go without punishment. I will make you pay for your ways, and for the hated sins that are among you. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, Who punishes you.
10 ‘See, the day! See, it is coming! The time for your punishment has come. The power against you has started to grow. Pride has begun to grow. 11 Angry action has grown into a power of sin. None of them will be left. None of their people, none of their riches, or anything of honor, will be left among them. 12 The time has come. The day has come. Let not the one who buys have joy, or the one who sells have sorrow. For anger is against all their people. 13 For the one who sells will not get back what he has sold as long as both of them live. For the punishment of all their people will not be turned back. Because of their sins, not one of them will keep his life.
14 ‘They have sounded the horn and made everything ready, but no one is going to the battle. For My anger is against all their people. 15 The sword is outside, and disease and hunger are inside. He who is in the field will die by the sword. And he who is in the city will be destroyed by disease and hunger. 16 Whoever gets away alive will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys. Each of them will be crying in sorrow because of his sin. 17 All hands will hang without strength, and all knees will be as weak as water. 18 They will dress themselves in cloth made from hair. Much fear will cover them. Shame will be upon all faces, and the hair will be cut from all their heads. 19 They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will become an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to help them in the day of the Lord’s anger. They cannot stop their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For riches have been the cause of their falling into sin. 20 They turned the beauty of gold into objects of pride, and made their hated objects of worship with it. So I will make it an unclean thing to them. 21 I will give it to the strangers and to the sinful people of the earth as a prize of war, and they will make it sinful. 22 I will turn My face from them, and they will make My secret place sinful. Robbers will go into it and make it sinful.
23 ‘Make chains, for the land is guilty of blood and the city is full of angry actions. 24 So I will bring the worst of the nations to take their houses for their own. I will put an end to the pride of the strong ones, and their holy places will become unclean. 25 When suffering comes, they will look for peace, but there will be none. 26 Trouble will come upon trouble, and one story will come after another. They will look for a special dream from a man of God, but the Law will be lost from the religious leader. And wisdom will be lost from the leaders. 27 The king will be full of sorrow. The king’s son will be covered with fear. And the hands of the people of the land will shake in fear. I will punish them for their ways. I will give them the punishment they have earned. And they will know that I am the Lord.’”
False Gods in the House of God
8 On the fifth day of the sixth month in the sixth year, I was sitting in my house with the leaders of Judah sitting in front of me. And the hand of the Lord God came upon me there. 2 Then I saw what looked like a man. From the center of His body and down to his feet, there was what looked like fire. And from the center of His body and up to his head, there was a bright light which looked like shining brass. 3 He put out what looked like a hand and caught me by the hair on my head. Then the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me to see Jerusalem in a special way. He brought me to the north gate of the open space within its walls, and there was the seat of the false god which causes jealousy. 4 And I saw that the shining-greatness of the God of Israel was there, like what I had seen in the plain.
5 He said to me, “Son of man, look toward the north.” So I looked toward the north, and saw that to the north of the altar gate was this false god of jealousy in the doorway. 6 And the Spirit said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the people of Israel are doing? Do you see the hated sins that they are doing here to drive Me far from My holy place? But you will see even worse sins.”
7 Then He brought me to the gate of the open space, and I looked and saw a hole in the wall. 8 And He said to me, “Son of man, now dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall and saw a door. 9 He said to me, “Go in and see the hated sins that they are doing here.” 10 So I went in and looked. And I saw that on the wall all around were pictures of every kind of thing which moves along the ground, and wild animals, and hated things, and all the false gods of the people of Israel. 11 Standing in front of these pictures were seventy leaders of the people of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them. Each man held a dish in his hand from which the smell of special perfume rose up in a cloud. 12 Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the leaders of the people of Israel are doing without anyone seeing them? They are worshiping in a room full of false gods. For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us. The Lord has left the land.’” 13 And He said to me, “You will see even worse sins which they are doing.”
14 Then He brought me to the north gate of the Lord’s house. And I saw women sitting there crying for the false god Tammuz. 15 Then He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? You will see even worse sins than this.”
16 He brought me into the open space of the Lord’s house. And I saw about twenty-five men at the gate to the house of the Lord, between the porch and the altar. Their backs were toward the Lord’s house, and their faces were toward the east. They were bowing toward the east worshiping the sun. 17 And He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it a little thing for the people of Judah to do the hated sins which they have done here? They have filled the land with sinful actions and have made Me angry again and again. See, they are doing what I hate. 18 So I will act in My anger. My eye will have no pity, and I will not let any go without punishment. Even if they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not listen to them.”
The Sinful Are Killed
9 Then I heard Him call out in a loud voice, “Come near, you who punish the city, each with a destroying ax in his hand.” 2 And I saw six men coming from the upper gate on the north side. Each man had his battle-ax in his hand. Among them was a certain man dressed in linen, with things for writing at his side. And the men went in and stood by the brass altar.
3 Then the shining-greatness of the God of Israel went up from the cherub where it had been, to the door of the Lord’s house. And He called to the man dressed in linen with the things for writing at his side. 4 The Lord said to him, “Go through the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who cry inside themselves over all the hated sins which are being done among them.” 5 But to the others I heard Him say, “Go through the city after him, and destroy. Do not let your eye have pity. And do not let any sinner go without punishment. 6 Kill and destroy old men, young men, young women, little children, and women. But do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at My holy house.” So they started with the leaders who were in front of the Lord’s house. 7 He said to them, “Make the house of worship unclean and fill the open spaces with the dead. Go out!” So they went out and killed the people in the city. 8 As they were killing, I alone was left, and I fell on my face and cried out, “It is bad, O Lord God! Are You destroying all the people of Israel who are left, by pouring out Your anger on Jerusalem?”
9 Then He said to me, “The sin of the people of Israel and Judah is very, very bad. The land is filled with blood, and the city is full of wrong-doing. For they say, ‘The Lord has left the land, and the Lord does not see.’ 10 But as for Me, My eye will have no pity, and I will not leave any sinner without punishment. I will bring their wrong-doing upon their own heads.”
11 Then I saw the man dressed in linen, who had the things for writing at his side, come and say, “I have done just as You have told me.”
The Job of a Religious Leader
5 Every Jewish religious leader is chosen from among men. He is a helper standing between God and men. He gives gifts on the altar in worship to God from the people. He gives blood from animals for the sins of the people. 2 A Jewish religious leader is weak in many ways because he is just a man himself. He knows how to be gentle with those who know little. He knows how to help those who are doing wrong. 3 Because he is weak himself, he must give gifts to God for his own sins as well as for the sins of the people. 4 A Jewish religious leader does not choose this honor for himself. God chooses a man for this work. Aaron was chosen this way.
Christ Is Our Religious Leader Who Has Made the Way for Man to Go to God
5 It is the same way with Christ. He did not choose the honor of being a Religious Leader Who has made the way for man to go to God. Instead, God said to Christ, “You are My Son. Today I have become Your Father.” (A) 6 God says in another part of His Word, “You will be a Religious Leader forever. You will be like Melchizedek.” (B) 7 During the time Jesus lived on earth, He prayed and asked God with loud cries and tears. Jesus’ prayer was to God Who was able to save Him from death. God heard Christ because Christ honored God. 8 Even being God’s Son, He learned to obey by the things He suffered. 9 And having been made perfect, He planned and made it possible for all those who obey Him to be saved from the punishment of sin. 10 In God’s plan He was to be a Religious Leader Who made the way for man to go to God. He was like Melchizedek.
Do Not Fall Back Into Sin
11 There is much we could say about this, but it is hard to make you understand. It is because you do not want to hear well. 12 By now you should be teachers. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the first things you need to know from God’s Word. You still need milk instead of solid food. 13 Anyone who lives on milk cannot understand the teaching about being right with God. He is a baby. 14 Solid food is for full-grown men. They have learned to use their minds to tell the difference between good and bad.
God’s Work with Israel
105 O give thanks to the Lord. Call on His name. Make His works known among the people. 2 Sing to Him. Sing praises to Him. Tell of all His great works. 3 Honor His holy name. Let the heart of those who look to the Lord be glad. 4 Look for the Lord and His strength. Look for His face all the time. 5 Remember the great and powerful works that He has done. Keep in mind what He has decided and told us, 6 O children of His servant Abraham, O sons of Jacob, His chosen ones! 7 He is the Lord our God. What He has decided is in all the earth.
8 He has remembered His agreement forever, the promise He made to last through a thousand families-to-come, 9 the agreement that He made with Abraham, and His promise to Isaac. 10 He gave it to Jacob as a Law, to Israel as an agreement that will last forever. 11 He said, “I will give the land of Canaan to you as your share,” 12 when they were only a few men in number and were strangers in it. 13 They went from nation to nation, from the people under one king to the people under another. 14 He did not allow anyone to hold power over them. And He spoke sharp words to kings because of them. 15 He said, “Do not touch My chosen ones. And do not hurt those who speak for Me.”
28 A lying tongue hates those it crushes, and a mouth that speaks false words destroys.
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