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Micah 6-7 (Listen)

The Indictment of the Lord

6:1 Hear what the Lord says:
Arise, plead your case before the mountains,
  and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the Lord,
  and you enduring foundations of the earth,
for the Lord has an indictment against his people,
  and he will contend with Israel.

“O my people, what have I done to you?
  How have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
  and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
  Aaron, and Miriam.
O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised,
  and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
  that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

What Does the Lord Require?

“With what shall I come before the Lord,
  and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
  with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with [1] thousands of rams,
  with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
  the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O man, what is good;
  and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, [2]
  and to walk humbly with your God?

Destruction of the Wicked

The voice of the Lord cries to the city—
  and it is sound wisdom to fear your name:
“Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it! [3]
  Can I forget any longer the treasures [4] of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
  and the scant measure that is accursed?
Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales
  and with a bag of deceitful weights?
Your [5] rich men are full of violence;
  your inhabitants speak lies,
  and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow,
  making you desolate because of your sins.
You shall eat, but not be satisfied,
  and there shall be hunger within you;
you shall put away, but not preserve,
  and what you preserve I will give to the sword.
You shall sow, but not reap;
  you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;
  you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.
For you have kept the statutes of Omri, [6]
  and all the works of the house of Ahab;
  and you have walked in their counsels,
that I may make you a desolation, and your [7] inhabitants a hissing;
  so you shall bear the scorn of my people.”

Wait for the God of Salvation

7:1 Woe is me! For I have become
  as when the summer fruit has been gathered,
  as when the grapes have been gleaned:
there is no cluster to eat,
  no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.
The godly has perished from the earth,
  and there is no one upright among mankind;
they all lie in wait for blood,
  and each hunts the other with a net.
Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well;
  the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;
  thus they weave it together.
The best of them is like a brier,
  the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
The day of your watchmen, of your punishment, has come;
  now their confusion is at hand.
Put no trust in a neighbor;
  have no confidence in a friend;
guard the doors of your mouth
  from her who lies in your arms; [8]
for the son treats the father with contempt,
  the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
  a man's enemies are the men of his own house.
But as for me, I will look to the Lord;
  I will wait for the God of my salvation;
  my God will hear me.

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
  when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
  the Lord will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord
  because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
  and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
  I shall look upon his vindication.
Then my enemy will see,
  and shame will cover her who said to me,
  “Where is the Lord your God?”
My eyes will look upon her;
  now she will be trampled down
  like the mire of the streets.

A day for the building of your walls!
  In that day the boundary shall be far extended.
In that day they [9] will come to you,
  from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,
and from Egypt to the River,
  from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
But the earth will be desolate
  because of its inhabitants,
  for the fruit of their deeds.

Shepherd your people with your staff,
  the flock of your inheritance,
who dwell alone in a forest
  in the midst of a garden land; [10]
let them graze in Bashan and Gilead
  as in the days of old.
As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
  I will show them [11] marvelous things.
The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might;
they shall lay their hands on their mouths;
  their ears shall be deaf;
they shall lick the dust like a serpent,
  like the crawling things of the earth;
they shall come trembling out of their strongholds;
  they shall turn in dread to the Lord our God,
  and they shall be in fear of you.

God's Steadfast Love and Compassion

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
  and passing over transgression
  for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
  because he delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion on us;
  he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our [12] sins
  into the depths of the sea.
You will show faithfulness to Jacob
  and steadfast love to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our fathers
  from the days of old.

Revelation 12 (Listen)

The Woman and the Dragon

12:1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

Satan Thrown Down to Earth

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers [13] has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood [14] on the sand of the sea.

Footnotes

[1] 6:7 Or Will the Lord accept
[2] 6:8 Or steadfast love
[3] 6:9 The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain
[4] 6:10 Or Are there still treasures
[5] 6:12 Hebrew whose
[6] 6:16 Hebrew For the statutes of Omri are kept
[7] 6:16 Hebrew its
[8] 7:5 Hebrew bosom
[9] 7:12 Hebrew he
[10] 7:14 Hebrew of Carmel
[11] 7:15 Hebrew him
[12] 7:19 Hebrew their
[13] 12:10 Or brothers and sisters
[14] 12:17 Some manuscripts And I stood, connecting the sentence with 13:1