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Jeremiah 7-8 (Listen)

Evil in the Land

7:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

“For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.

“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.

“As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? Therefore thus says the Lord God: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

“So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

“‘Cut off your hair and cast it away;
raise a lamentation on the bare heights,
for the Lord has rejected and forsaken
the generation of his wrath.’

The Valley of Slaughter

“For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.

8:1 “At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs. And they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have gone after, and which they have sought and worshiped. And they shall not be gathered or buried. They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, declares the Lord of hosts.

Sin and Treachery

“You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:
When men fall, do they not rise again?
  If one turns away, does he not return?
Why then has this people turned away
  in perpetual backsliding?
They hold fast to deceit;
  they refuse to return.
I have paid attention and listened,
  but they have not spoken rightly;
no man relents of his evil,
  saying, ‘What have I done?’
Everyone turns to his own course,
  like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
Even the stork in the heavens
  knows her times,
and the turtledove, swallow, and crane [1]
  keep the time of their coming,
but my people know not
  the rules [2] of the Lord.

“How can you say, ‘We are wise,
  and the law of the Lord is with us’?
But behold, the lying pen of the scribes
  has made it into a lie.
The wise men shall be put to shame;
  they shall be dismayed and taken;
behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
  so what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
  and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
  everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
  everyone deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
  saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
  when there is no peace.
Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
  No, they were not at all ashamed;
  they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among the fallen;
  when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
     says the Lord.
When I would gather them, declares the Lord,
  there are no grapes on the vine,
  nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
  and what I gave them has passed away from them.” [3]

Why do we sit still?
Gather together; let us go into the fortified cities
  and perish there,
for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish
  and has given us poisoned water to drink,
  because we have sinned against the Lord.
We looked for peace, but no good came;
  for a time of healing, but behold, terror.

“The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;
  at the sound of the neighing of their stallions
  the whole land quakes.
They come and devour the land and all that fills it,
  the city and those who dwell in it.
For behold, I am sending among you serpents,
  adders that cannot be charmed,
  and they shall bite you,”
     declares the Lord.

Jeremiah Grieves for His People

My joy is gone; grief is upon me; [4]
  my heart is sick within me.
Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people
  from the length and breadth of the land:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
  Is her King not in her?”
“Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images
  and with their foreign idols?”
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
  and we are not saved.”
For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded;
  I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people
not been restored?

1 Timothy 2 (Listen)

Pray for All People

2:1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man [5] Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

Footnotes

[1] 8:7 The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain
[2] 8:7 Or just decrees
[3] 8:13 The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain
[4] 8:18 Compare Septuagint; the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain
[5] 2:5 men and man render the same Greek word that is translated people in verses 1 and 4