150 Hallelujah! Yes, praise the Lord!

Praise him in his Temple and in the heavens he made with mighty power.^{[a] 2} Praise him for his mighty works. Praise his unequaled greatness. ³ Praise him with the trumpet and with lute and harp. ⁴ Praise him with the drums and dancing. Praise him with stringed instruments and horns. ⁵ Praise him with the cymbals, yes, loud clanging cymbals.

⁶ Let everything alive give praises to the Lord! You praise him!

Hallelujah!

30 This is another of the Lord’s messages to Jeremiah:

² The Lord God of Israel says: Write down for the record all that I have said to you. ³ For the time is coming when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, and I will bring them home to this land that I gave to their fathers; they shall possess it and live here again.

⁴ And write this also concerning Israel and Judah:

⁵ “Where shall we find peace?” they cry. “There is only fear and trembling. ⁶ Do men give birth? Then why do they stand there, ashen-faced, hands pressed against their sides like women in labor?”

⁷ Alas, in all history when has there ever been a time of terror such as in that coming day? It is a time of trouble for my people—for Jacob—such as they have never known before. Yet God will rescue them! ⁸ For on that day, says the Lord Almighty, I will break the yoke from their necks and snap their chains, and foreigners shall no longer be their masters! ⁹ For they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their King,^[a] whom I will raise up for them, says the Lord.

¹⁰ So don’t be afraid, O Jacob my servant; don’t be dismayed, O Israel; for I will bring you home again from distant lands, and your children from their exile. They shall have rest and quiet in their own land, and no one shall make them afraid. ¹¹ For I am with you and I will save you, says the Lord. Even if I utterly destroy the nations where I scatter you, I will not exterminate you; I will punish you, yes—you will not go unpunished.

¹⁰ So now we can tell who is a child of God and who belongs to Satan. Whoever is living a life of sin and doesn’t love his brother shows that he is not in God’s family; ¹¹ for the message to us from the beginning has been that we should love one another.

¹² We are not to be like Cain, who belonged to Satan and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing wrong and he knew very well that his brother’s life was better than his. ¹³ So don’t be surprised, dear friends, if the world hates you.

¹⁴ If we love other Christians, it proves that we have been delivered from hell and given eternal life. But a person who doesn’t have love for others is headed for eternal death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates his Christian brother is really a murderer at heart; and you know that no one wanting to murder has eternal life within. ¹⁶ We know what real love is from Christ’s example in dying for us. And so we also ought to lay down our lives for our Christian brothers.