One Year Bible

Jeremiah 16:16-18:23

16 But for now I will send for many fishermen, declares the Lord, and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill, even from the clefts of the rocks.

17 For My eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from My face, and their guilt is not concealed from My eyes. 18And I will first repay them double their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled My land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and they have filled My inheritance with their abominations.”

19 O LORD, my strength and my fortress,

my refuge in the day of distress,

the nations will come to You

from the ends of the earth, and they will say,

“Our fathers inherited nothing but lies,

worthless idols of no benefit at all.

20 Can man make gods for himself?

Such are not gods!”

21“Therefore behold, I will inform them,

and this time I will make them know

My power and My might;

then they will know

that My name is the Lord.’’

The Sin and Punishment of Judah

1 “ The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus,

engraved with a diamond point

on the tablets of their hearts

and on the horns of their altars.

2 Even their children remember their altars and Asherah poles

by the green trees and on the high hills.

3 O My mountain in the countryside,

I will give over your wealth

and all your treasures as plunder,

because of the sin of your high places,

within all your borders.

4 And you yourself will relinquish

the inheritance that I gave you.

I will enslave you to your enemies

in a land that you do not know,

for you have kindled My anger;

it will burn forever.”

5 This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind,

who makes mere flesh his strength

and turns his heart from the Lord.

6 He will be like a shrub in the desert;

he will not see when prosperity comes.

He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

in a salt land where no one lives.

7 But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in Him.

8 He is like a tree planted by the waters

that sends out its roots toward the stream.

It does not fear when the heat comes,

and its leaves are always green.

It does not worry in a year of drought,

nor does it cease to produce fruit.

9 The heart is deceitful above all things

and beyond cure.

Who can understand it?

10 I, the Lord, search the heart;

I examine the mind

to reward a man according to his way,

by what his deeds deserve.

11 Like a partridge hatching eggs it did not lay

is the man who makes a fortune unjustly.

In the middle of his days his riches will desert him,

and in the end he will be the fool.”

Jeremiah’s Prayer for Deliverance

12 A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning,

is the place of our sanctuary.

13 O LORD, the hope of Israel,

all who abandon You will be put to shame.

All who turn away will be written in the dust,

for they have abandoned the Lord,

the fountain of living water.

14 Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed;

save me, and I will be saved,

for You are my praise.

15 Behold, they keep saying to me,

“Where is the word of the Lord?

Let it come now!”

16 But I have not run away from being Your shepherd;

I have not desired the day of despair.

You know that the utterance of my lips

was spoken in Your presence.

17 Do not become a terror to me;

You are my refuge in the day of disaster.

18 Let my persecutors be put to shame,

but do not let me be put to shame.

Let them be terrified,

but do not let me be terrified.

Bring upon them the day of disaster

and shatter them with double destruction.

Restoring the Sabbath

(Nehemiah 13:15–22)

19 This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and stand at the gate of the people, through which the kings of Judah go in and out; and stand at all the other gates of Jerusalem.

20 Say to them, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, all people of Judah and Jerusalem who enter through these gates. 21This is what the Lord says: Take heed for yourselves; do not carry a load or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. 22You must not carry a load out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath day, but you must keep the Sabbath day holy, just as I commanded your forefathers. 23Yet they would not listen or incline their ear, but they stiffened their necks and would not listen or receive My discipline.

24 If, however, you listen carefully to Me, says the Lord, and bring no load through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, and keep the Sabbath day holy, and do no work on it, 25then kings and princes will enter through the gates of this city. They will sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses with their officials, along with the men of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever. 26And people will come from the cities of Judah and the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, and from the foothills, the hill country, and the Negev, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and frankincense, and thank offerings to the house of the Lord.

27 But if you do not listen to Me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying a load while entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in its gates to consume the citadels of Jerusalem.’”

The Potter and the Clay

1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2“Go down at once to the potter’s house, and there I will give you My message.”

3 So I went down to the potter’s house and saw him working at the wheel. 4But the vessel that he was shaping from the clay became flawed in his hand; so he formed it into another vessel, as it seemed best for him to do.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 6“O house of Israel, declares the Lord, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

7 At any time I might announce that a nation or kingdom will be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed. 8But if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent of the disaster I had planned to bring.

9 And if at another time I announce that I will build up and establish a nation or kingdom, 10and if it does evil in My sight and does not listen to My voice, then I will relent of the good I had intended for it.

11 Now therefore, tell the men of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem that this is what the Lord says: ‘Behold, I am planning a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways, and correct your ways and deeds.’

12 But they will reply, ‘It is hopeless. We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’”

13 Therefore this is what the Lord says:

“Inquire among the nations:

Who has ever heard things like these?

Virgin Israel has done a most terrible thing.

14 Does the snow of Lebanon

ever leave its rocky slopes?

Or do its cool waters flowing from a distance

ever run dry?

15 Yet My people have forgotten Me.

They burn incense to worthless idols

that make them stumble in their ways,

leaving the ancient roads

to walk on rutted bypaths

instead of on the highway.

16 They have made their land a desolation,

a perpetual object of scorn;

all who pass by will be appalled

and shake their heads.

17 I will scatter them before the enemy

like the east wind.

I will show them My back and not My face

in the day of their calamity.”

Another Plot against Jeremiah

(Jeremiah 11:18–23)

18 Then some said, “Come, let us make plans against Jeremiah, for the law will never be lost to the priest, nor counsel to the wise, nor an oracle to the prophet. Come, let us denounce him and pay no heed to any of his words.”

19 Attend to me, O LORD.

Hear what my accusers are saying!

20 Should good be repaid with evil?

Yet they have dug a pit for me.

Remember how I stood before You

to speak good on their behalf,

to turn Your wrath from them.

21 Therefore, hand their children over to famine;

pour out the power of the sword upon them.

Let their wives become childless and widowed;

let their husbands be slain by disease,

their young men struck down by the sword in battle.

22 Let a cry be heard from their houses

when You suddenly bring raiders against them,

for they have dug a pit to capture me

and have hidden snares for my feet.

23 But You, O LORD, know all their deadly plots against me.

Do not wipe out their guilt

or blot out their sin from Your sight.

Let them be overthrown before You;

deal with them in the time of Your anger.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-5:3

Living to Please God

1 Finally, brothers, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus to live in a way that is pleasing to God, just as you have received from us. This is how you already live, so you should do so all the more. 2For you know the instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

3 For it is God’s will that you should be holy: You must abstain from sexual immorality; 4each of you must know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6and no one should ever violate or exploit his brother in this regard, because the Lord will avenge all such acts, as we have already told you and solemnly warned you. 7For God has not called us to impurity, but to holiness. 8Anyone, then, who rejects this command does not reject man but God, the very One who gives you His Holy Spirit.

9 Now about brotherly love, you do not need anyone to write to you, because you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. 10And you are indeed showing this love to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to excel more and more 11and to aspire to live quietly, to attend to your own matters, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you. 12Then you will behave properly toward outsiders, without being dependent on anyone.

The Return of the Lord

13 Brothers, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death , so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

15 By the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. 17After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

1 Now about the times and seasons, brothers, we do not need to write to you. 2For you are fully aware that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3While people are saying, “Peace and security,” destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

Psalm 81:1-16

Sing for Joy to God Our Strength

1 For the choirmaster. According to Gittith. Of Asaph.

Sing for joy to God our strength;

make a joyful noise to the God of Jacob.

2 Lift up a song, strike the tambourine,

play the sweet-sounding harp and lyre.

3 Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon,

and at the full moon on the day of our Feast.

4 For this is a statute for Israel,

an ordinance of the God of Jacob.

5 He ordained it as a testimony for Joseph

when he went out over the land of Egypt,

where I heard an unfamiliar language:

6“I relieved his shoulder of the burden;

his hands were freed from the basket.

7 You called out in distress, and I rescued you;

I answered you from the cloud of thunder;

I tested you at the waters of Meribah.

Selah

8 Hear, O My people, and I will warn you:

O Israel, if only you would listen to Me!

9 There must be no strange god among you,

nor shall you bow to a foreign god.

10 I am the Lord your God,

who brought you up out of Egypt.

Open wide your mouth,

and I will fill it.

11 But My people would not listen to Me,

and Israel would not obey Me.

12 So I gave them up to their stubborn hearts

to follow their own devices.

13 If only My people would listen to Me,

if Israel would follow My ways,

14 how soon I would subdue their enemies

and turn My hand against their foes!

15 Those who hate the Lord would feign obedience,

and their doom would last forever.

16 But I would feed you the finest wheat;

with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

Proverbs 25:6-8

6 Do not exalt yourself in the presence 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 demoted in the presence of the prince.

Even what you have seen with your own eyes,

8 do not bring hastily to court.

Otherwise, what will you do in the end

when your neighbor puts you to shame?

sozo church

One Year Bible

Jeremiah 16:16-18:23

1 Thessalonians 4:1-5:3

Psalm 81:1-16

Proverbs 25:6-8