Daily Bible CEV November 16 Scroll

Friendship with the World

James 4 Why do you fight and argue with each other? Isn't it because you are full of selfish desires that fight to control your body? ²You want something you don't have, and you will do anything to get it. You will even kill! But you still cannot get what you want, and you won't get it by fighting and arguing. You should pray for it. ³Yet even when you do pray, your prayers are not answered, because you pray just for selfish reasons.

⁴You people aren't faithful to God! Don't you know that if you love the world, you are God's enemies? And if you decide to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. ⁵Do you doubt the Scriptures that say, "God truly cares about the Spirit he has put in us"? ⁶In fact, God treats us with even greater kindness, just as the Scriptures say,

"God opposes everyone who is proud,

but he is kind to everyone who is humble."

⁷Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you. ⁸Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Clean up your lives, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you people who can't make up your mind. ⁹Be sad and sorry and weep. Stop laughing and start crying. Be gloomy instead of glad. ¹⁰Be humble in the Lord's presence, and he will honor you.

Saying Cruel Things about Others

¹¹My friends, don't say cruel things about others! If you do, or if you condemn others, you are condemning God's Law. And if you condemn the Law, you put yourself above the Law and refuse to obey either it ¹²or God who gave it. God is our judge, and he can save or destroy us. What right do you have to condemn anyone?

Warning against Bragging

¹³You should know better than to say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to the city. We will do business there for a year and make a lot of money!" ¹⁴What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears. ¹⁵You should say, "If the Lord lets us live, we will do these things." ¹⁶Yet you are stupid enough to brag, and it is wrong to be so proud. ¹⁷If you don't do what you know is right, you have sinned.

Slaves of Nebuchadnezzar

Jeremiah 27 ^1-2Not long after Zedekiah became king of Judah, the LORD told me:

Jeremiah, make a wooden yoke with leather straps, and place it on your neck. ³Then send a message to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon. Some officials from these countries are in Jerusalem, meeting with Zedekiah. ⁴So have them tell their kings that I have said:

I am the All-Powerful LORD God of Israel, ⁵and with my power I created the earth, its people, and all animals. I decide who will rule the earth, ^6-7and I have chosen my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia to rule all nations, including yours. I will even let him rule the wild animals. All nations will be slaves of Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and his grandson. Then many nations will join together, and their kings will be powerful enough to make slaves of the Babylonians.

⁸This yoke stands for the power of King Nebuchadnezzar, and I will destroy any nation that refuses to obey him. Nebuchadnezzar will attack, and many will die in battle or from hunger and disease. ⁹You might have people in your kingdom who claim they can tell the future by magic or by talking with the dead or by dreams or messages from a god. But don't pay attention if any of them tell you not to obey Nebuchadnezzar. ¹⁰If you listen to such lies, I will have you dragged far from your country and killed. ¹¹But if you and your nation are willing to obey Nebuchadnezzar, I will let you stay in your country, and your people will continue to live and work on their farms.

¹²After I had spoken to the officials from the nearby kingdoms, I went to King Zedekiah and told him the same thing. Then I said:

Zedekiah, if you and the people of Judah want to stay alive, you must obey Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. ¹³But if you refuse, then you and your people will die from war, hunger, and disease, just as the LORD has warned. ¹⁴Your prophets have told you that you don't need to obey Nebuchadnezzar, but don't listen to their lies. ¹⁵Those prophets claim to be speaking for the LORD, but he didn't send them. They are lying! If you do what they say, he will have both you and them dragged off to another country and killed. The LORD has spoken.

¹⁶When I finished talking to the king, I went to the priests and told them that the LORD had said:

Don't listen to the prophets when they say that very soon the Babylonians will return the things they took from my temple. Those prophets are lying! ¹⁷If you choose to obey the king of Babylonia, you will live. But if you listen to those prophets, this whole city will be nothing but a pile of rubble.

¹⁸If I really had spoken to those prophets, they would know what I am going to do. Then they would be begging me not to let everything else be taken from the temple and the king's palace and the rest of Jerusalem. ^19-21After all, when Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin to Babylonia as a prisoner, he didn't take everything of value from Jerusalem. He left the bronze pillars, the huge bronze bowl called the Sea, and the movable bronze stands in the temple, and he left a lot of other valuable things in the palace and in the rest of Jerusalem.

But now I, the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, say that all these things ²²will be taken to Babylonia, where they will remain until I decide to bring them back to Jerusalem. I, the LORD, have spoken.

Jeremiah Accuses Hananiah of Being a False Prophet

Jeremiah 28 Later that same year, in the fifth month of the fourth year that Zedekiah was king, the prophet Hananiah son of Azzur from Gibeon came up to me in the temple. And while the priests and others in the temple were listening, ²he told me that the LORD had said:

I am the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, and I will smash the yoke that Nebuchadnezzar put on the necks of the nations to make them his slaves. ³And within two years, I will bring back to Jerusalem everything that he took from my temple and carried off to Babylonia. ⁴King Jehoiachin and the other people who were taken from Judah to Babylonia will be allowed to come back here as well. All this will happen because I will smash the power of the king of Babylonia!

⁵The priests and the others were still standing there, so I said:

⁶Hananiah, I hope the LORD will do exactly what you said. I hope he does bring back everything the Babylonians took from the temple, and that our people who were taken to Babylonia will be allowed to return home. ⁷But let me remind you and everyone else ⁸that long before we were born, prophets were saying powerful kingdoms would be struck by war, disaster, and disease. ⁹Now you are saying we will have peace. We will just have to wait and see if that is really what the LORD has said.

¹⁰Hananiah grabbed the wooden yoke from my neck and smashed it. ¹¹Then he said, "The LORD says this is the way he will smash the power Nebuchadnezzar has over the nations, and it will happen in less than two years."

I left the temple, ¹²and a little while later, the LORD told me ^13-14to go back and say to Hananiah:

I am the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel. You smashed a wooden yoke, but I will replace it with one made of iron. I will put iron yokes on all the nations, and they will have to do what King Nebuchadnezzar commands. I will even let him rule the wild animals.

^15-16Hananiah, I have never sent you to speak for me. And yet you have talked my people into believing your lies and rebelling against me. So now I will send you--I'll send you right off the face of the earth! You will die before this year is over.

¹⁷Two months later, Hananiah died.

Psalm 132
[A song for worship.]
The LORD Is Always with His People

¹Our LORD, don't forget David and how he suffered.

Mighty God of Jacob, remember how he promised:

³"I won't go home or crawl into bed

⁴or close my eyelids, ⁵until I find a home for you,

the mighty LORD God of Jacob."

⁶When we were in Ephrath, we heard

that the sacred chest was somewhere near Jaar.

⁷Then we said, "Let's go to the throne of the LORD

and worship at his feet."

⁸Come to your new home, LORD,

you and the sacred chest with all of its power.

⁹Let victory be like robes for the priests;

let your faithful people celebrate and shout.

¹⁰David is your chosen one, so don't reject him.

¹¹You made a solemn promise to David, when you said,

"I, the LORD, promise

that someone in your family will always be king.

¹²If they keep our agreement and follow my teachings,

then someone in your family will rule forever."

¹³You have gladly chosen Zion as your home, our LORD.

¹⁴You said, "This is my home! I will live here forever.

¹⁵I will bless Zion with food,

and even the poor will eat until they are full.

¹⁶Victory will be like robes for the priests,

and its faithful people will celebrate and shout.

¹⁷I will give mighty power to the kingdom of David.

Each one of my chosen kings will shine like a lamp

¹⁸

and wear a sparkling crown.

But I will disgrace their enemies."

These daily Bible readings from the Contemporary English Version (CEV) are published by BibleNetUSA. The web site and BibleCard® designs are by iCreative. BibleCard® images copyright iCreative. All rights reserved.