Psalm 36:5-11
The Voice
5 Your love, O Eternal One, towers high into the heavens.
Even the skies are lower than Your faithfulness.
6 Your justice is like the majestic mountains.
Your judgments are as deep as the oceans, and yet in Your greatness,
You, O Eternal, offer life for every person and animal.
7 Your strong love, O True God, is precious.
All people run for shelter under the shadow of Your wings.
8 In Your house, they eat and are full at Your table.
They drink from the river of Your overflowing kindness.
9 You have the fountain of life that quenches our thirst.
Your light has opened our eyes and awakened our souls.
10 May Your love continue to grow deeply in the lives of all who know You.
May Your salvation reach every heart committed to do right.
11 Give me shelter from prideful feet that hunt me down
and wicked hands that push me from Your path.
Isaiah 42:1-9
The Voice
42 Eternal One: Look here, let Me present My servant;
I have taken hold of him. He is My chosen, and I delight in him.
I have put My Spirit on him; by this he will bring justice to the nations.
This poem is the first of several Servant Songs. God’s special Servant is described in various ways. In this song (42:1–9), the Servant is portrayed as one who faithfully establishes justice in the world and serves as a light for the nations. In the second song (49:1–13), the Servant is called from the womb and ordained to restore the nation of Israel and take salvation to the ends of the earth. In the third song (50:4–9), the Servant is portrayed as a teacher, intimately in touch with God, yet brutally beaten and disgraced by his enemies. In the fourth song (52:13–53:12), the suffering and rejection of God’s Servant takes priority over his other tasks; yet even in his suffering God is working to repair the world from the harm done by sin and evil.
2 Eternal One: He will not scream or yell,
crying out for all to hear.
3 What is bruised and bent, he will not break;
he will not blow out a smoldering candle.
Rather, he will faithfully turn his attention to doing justice.
4 And though he faces obstacles, resistance, and great pressure,
he will not crack; he will not give up until things are set right.
Even the coastlands wait patiently for his instruction.
5 God, the Eternal One, who made the starry skies,
stretched them tight above and around;
Who cast the shimmering globe of earth and filled it with life;
who gives breath and animates the people;
Who walks and talks with life-giving spirit has this to say:
6 Eternal One: I am the Eternal One. By righteousness I have called you.
I will take you by the hand and keep you safe.
You are given as a covenant between Me and the people:
a light for the nations, a shining beacon to the world.
7 You will open blind eyes so they will see again.
You will lead prisoners, blinking, out from caverns of captivity,
from cells pitch black with despair.
8 I am the Eternal One.
I Am is My name.
My beauty is unique, a weighty splendor all My own.
And nothing else—no idols could possibly gain My praise.
9 Look here, what’s done is done and gone.
The now is new, and there’s hope in the not-yet.
I will tell you what’s to come, even before the events are brand-new.
Hebrews 9:11-15
The Voice
11 When the Anointed One arrived as High Priest of the good things that are to come, He entered through a greater and more perfect sanctuary that was not part of the earthly creation or made by human hands. 12 He entered once for all time into the most holy place—entering, not with the blood of goats or calves or some other prescribed animal, but offering His own blood and thus obtaining redemption for us for all time. 13 Think about it: if the blood of bulls or of goats, or the sprinkling of ashes from a heifer, restores the defiled to bodily cleanliness and wholeness; 14 then how much more powerful is the blood of the Anointed One, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself as a spotless sacrifice to God, purifying your conscience from the dead things of the world to the service of the living God?
15 This is why Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant: through His death, He delivered us from the sins that we had built up under the first covenant, and His death has made it possible for all who are called to receive God’s promised inheritance.
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John 12:1-11
The Voice
12 Six days before the Passover feast, Jesus journeyed to the village of Bethany, to the home of Lazarus who had recently been raised from the dead, 2 where they hosted Him for dinner. Martha was busy serving as the hostess, Lazarus reclined at the table with Him, 3 and Mary took a pound of fine ointment, pure nard (which is both rare and expensive), and anointed Jesus’ feet with it; and then she wiped them with her hair. As the pleasant fragrance of this extravagant ointment filled the entire house, 4 Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples (who was plotting to betray Jesus), began to speak.
Judas Iscariot: 5 How could she pour out this vast amount of fine oil? Why didn’t she sell it? It is worth nearly a year’s wages;[a] the money could have been given to the poor.
6 This had nothing to do with Judas’s desire to help the poor. The truth is he served as the treasurer, and he helped himself to the money from the common pot at every opportunity.
Jesus: 7 Leave her alone. She has observed this custom in anticipation of the day of My burial. 8 The poor are ever present, but I will be leaving.
9 Word spread of Jesus’ presence, and a large crowd was gathering to see Jesus and the formerly deceased Lazarus, whom He had brought back from the dead. 10 The chief priests were secretly plotting Lazarus’s murder since, 11 because of him, many Jews were leaving their teachings and believing in Jesus.
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- 12:5 Literally, 300 denarii, Roman coins
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
