God the Righteous Judge

A Psalm of Asaph.

²³ Likewise, ^(A)when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, ‘Go up and possess the land which I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and ^(B)you did not believe Him nor obey His voice. ^24 (C)You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

^25 (D)“Thus I ^[a]prostrated myself before the Lord; forty days and forty nights I kept prostrating myself, because the Lord had said He would destroy you. ²⁶ Therefore I prayed to the Lord, and said: ‘O Lord God, do not destroy Your people and ^(E)Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin, ²⁸ lest the land from which You brought us should say, “Because the Lord was not able to bring them to the land which He promised them, and because He hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.” ²⁹ Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your mighty power and by Your outstretched arm.’

The Second Pair of Tablets^(F)

10 “At that time the Lord said to me, ^[b]‘Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ^(G)ark of wood. ² And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and ^(H)you shall put them in the ark.’

³ “So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand. ⁴ And He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten ^[c]Commandments, ^(I)which the Lord had spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me. ⁵ Then I turned and ^(J)came down from the mountain, and ^(K)put the tablets in the ark which I had made; ^(L)and there they are, just as the Lord commanded me.”

The Promise of Rest

4 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, ^(A)let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. ² For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, ^[a]not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. ³ For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:

although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. ⁴ For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: ^(C)“And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; ⁵ and again in this place: ^(D)“They shall not enter My rest.”

⁶ Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, ⁷ again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:

⁸ For if ^[b]Joshua had ^(F)given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. ⁹ There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. ¹⁰ For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.

^16 (A)For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten ^(B)Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ^17 (C)For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

^18 (D)“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. ¹⁹ And this is the condemnation, ^(E)that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For ^(F)everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. ²¹ But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been ^(G)done in God.”