Daily Bible GNT November 16 Scroll

Friendship with the World

James 4 Where do all the fights and quarrels among you come from? They come from your desires for pleasure, which are constantly fighting within you. ²You want things, but you cannot have them, so you are ready to kill; you strongly desire things, but you cannot get them, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have what you want because you do not ask God for it. ³And when you ask, you do not receive it, because your motives are bad; you ask for things to use for your own pleasures. ⁴Unfaithful people! Don't you know that to be the world's friend means to be God's enemy? If you want to be the world's friend, you make yourself God's enemy. ⁵Don't think that there is no truth in the scripture that says, "The spirit that God placed in us is filled with fierce desires." ⁶But the grace that God gives is even stronger. As the scripture says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

⁷So then, submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will run away from you. ⁸Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you hypocrites! ⁹Be sorrowful, cry, and weep; change your laughter into crying, your joy into gloom! ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Warning against Judging One Another

¹¹Do not criticize one another, my friends. If you criticize or judge another Christian, you criticize and judge the Law. If you judge the Law, then you are no longer one who obeys the Law, but one who judges it. ¹²God is the only lawgiver and judge. He alone can save and destroy. Who do you think you are, to judge someone else?

Warning against Boasting

¹³Now listen to me, you that say, "Today or tomorrow we will travel to a certain city, where we will stay a year and go into business and make a lot of money." ¹⁴You don't even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears. ¹⁵What you should say is this: "If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶But now you are proud, and you boast; all such boasting is wrong.

¹⁷So then, if we do not do the good we know we should do, we are guilty of sin.

Jeremiah Wears an Ox Yoke

Jeremiah 27 Soon after Josiah's son Zedekiah became king of Judah, the LORD told me ²to make myself a yoke out of leather straps and wooden crossbars and to put it on my neck. ³Then the LORD told me to send a message to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon through their ambassadors who had come to Jerusalem to see King Zedekiah. ⁴The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, told me to command them to tell their kings that the LORD had said: ⁵"By my great power and strength I created the world, human beings, and all the animals that live on the earth; and I give it to anyone I choose. ⁶I am the one who has placed all these nations under the power of my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, and I have made even the wild animals serve him. ⁷All nations will serve him, and they will serve his son and his grandson until the time comes for his own nation to fall. Then his nation will serve powerful nations and great kings.

⁸"But if any nation or kingdom will not submit to his rule, then I will punish that nation by war, starvation, and disease until I have let Nebuchadnezzar destroy it completely. ⁹Do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim they can predict the future, either by dreams or by calling up the spirits of the dead or by magic. They all tell you not to submit to the king of Babylonia. ¹⁰They are deceiving you and will cause you to be taken far away from your country. I will drive you out, and you will be destroyed. ¹¹But if any nation submits to the king of Babylonia and serves him, then I will let it stay on in its own land, to farm it and live there. I, the LORD, have spoken."

¹²I said the same thing to King Zedekiah of Judah, "Submit to the king of Babylonia. Serve him and his people, and you will live. ¹³Why should you and your people die in war or of starvation or disease? That is what the LORD has said will happen to any nation that does not submit to the king of Babylonia. ¹⁴Do not listen to the prophets who tell you not to surrender to him. They are deceiving you. ¹⁵The LORD himself has said that he did not send them and that they are lying to you in his name. And so he will drive you out, and you will be killed, you and the prophets who are telling you these lies."

¹⁶Then I told the priests and the people that the LORD had said: "Do not listen to the prophets who say that the Temple treasures will soon be brought back from Babylonia. They are lying to you. ¹⁷Don't listen to them! Submit to the king of Babylonia and you will live! Why should this city become a pile of ruins? ¹⁸If they are really prophets and if they have my message, let them ask me, the LORD Almighty, not to allow the treasures that remain in the Temple and in the royal palace to be taken to Babylonia."

( ^19-20 When King Nebuchadnezzar took away to Babylonia the king of Judah, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim, and the leading men of Judah and Jerusalem, he left the columns, the bronze tank, the carts, and some of the other Temple treasures.)

²¹"Listen to what I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, say about the treasures that are left in the Temple and in the royal palace in Jerusalem: ²²They will be taken to Babylonia and will remain there until I turn my attention to them. Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place. I, the LORD, have spoken."

Jeremiah and the Prophet Hananiah

Jeremiah 28 That same year, in the fifth month of the fourth year that Zedekiah was king, Hananiah son of Azzur, a prophet from the town of Gibeon, spoke to me in the Temple. In the presence of the priests and of the people he told me ²that the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, had said: "I have broken the power of the king of Babylonia. ³Within two years I will bring back to this place all the Temple treasures that King Nebuchadnezzar took to Babylonia. ⁴I will also bring back the king of Judah, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim, along with all of the people of Judah who went into exile in Babylonia. Yes, I will break the power of the king of Babylonia. I, the LORD, have spoken."

⁵Then in the presence of the priests and of all the people who were standing in the Temple, I said to Hananiah, ⁶"Wonderful! I hope the LORD will do this! I certainly hope he will make your prophecy come true and will bring back from Babylonia all the Temple treasures and all the people who were taken away as prisoners. ⁷But listen to what I say to you and to the people. ⁸The prophets who spoke long ago, before my time and yours, predicted that war, starvation, and disease would come to many nations and powerful kingdoms. ⁹But a prophet who predicts peace can only be recognized as a prophet whom the LORD has truly sent when that prophet's predictions come true."

¹⁰Then Hananiah took the yoke off my neck, broke it in pieces, ¹¹and said in the presence of all the people, "The LORD has said that this is how he will break the yoke that King Nebuchadnezzar has put on the neck of all the nations; and he will do this within two years." Then I left.

¹²Some time after this the LORD told me ¹³to go and tell Hananiah: "The LORD has said that you may be able to break a wooden yoke, but he will replace it with an iron yoke. ¹⁴The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, has said that he will put an iron yoke on all these nations and that they will serve King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. The LORD has said that he will make even the wild animals serve Nebuchadnezzar."

¹⁵Then I told Hananiah this, and added, "Listen, Hananiah! The LORD did not send you, and you are making these people believe a lie. ¹⁶And so the LORD himself says that he is going to get rid of you. Before this year is over you will die because you have told the people to rebel against the LORD."

¹⁷And Hananiah died in the seventh month of that same year.

In Praise of the Temple

Psalm 132 LORD, do not forget David

and all the hardships he endured.

²Remember, LORD, what he promised,

the vow he made to you, the Mighty God of Jacob:

³"I will not go home or go to bed;

⁴

I will not rest or sleep,

⁵

until I provide a place for the LORD,

a home for the Mighty God of Jacob."

⁶In Bethlehem we heard about the Covenant Box,

and we found it in the fields of Jearim.

⁷We said, "Let us go to the LORD's house;

let us worship before his throne."

⁸Come to the Temple, LORD, with the Covenant Box,

the symbol of your power,

and stay here forever.

⁹May your priests do always what is right;

may your people shout for joy!

¹⁰You made a promise to your servant David;

do not reject your chosen king, LORD.

¹¹You made a solemn promise to David--

a promise you will not take back:

"I will make one of your sons king,

and he will rule after you.

¹²If your sons are true to my covenant

and to the commands I give them,

their sons, also, will succeed you for all time as kings."

¹³The LORD has chosen Zion;

he wants to make it his home:

¹⁴"This is where I will live forever;

this is where I want to rule.

¹⁵I will richly provide Zion with all she needs;

I will satisfy her poor with food.

¹⁶I will bless her priests in all they do,

and her people will sing and shout for joy.

¹⁷Here I will make one of David's descendants a great king;

here I will preserve the rule of my chosen king.

¹⁸I will cover his enemies with shame,

but his kingdom will prosper and flourish."

This reading is from The Holy Bible, Today's English Version, Second Edition copyright © American Bible Society, 1992;
Old Testament copyright © American Bible Society, 1976, 1992; New Testament © American Bible Society, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992.

These daily Bible readings from the Good News Translation (GNT), formerly the Today's English Version (TEV), are published by BibleNetUSA. The web site and BibleCard® designs are by iCreative. All BibleCard® images are copyrighted by iCreative. All rights reserved.