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25 Eternal One, You are my God.
I will lift You up and praise Your name.
Because You have made wonders marvelous and beautiful—
the most ancient designs holding strong and sure.
2 Your power is awesome. You have brought down whole cities,
turned fortresses and strongholds into piles of sticks and rubble.
A citadel of foreigners is no longer even a city.
Those structures are gone forever.
3 This is why nations strong and mighty will glorify You;
the cities of ruthless people will fear and respect You.
4 Because You stand up for the poor and weak,
You comfort and empower them in their distress,
Giving them safe harbor and cool shade when it’s hot;
You shelter them from their oppressors’ blows
As a strong wall holds back the driving rain.
5 You shelter from the relentless heat of the desert.
You quiet the clamor of outsiders, ease them to stillness.
Like a full, dark cloud relieves the heat,
You silence the arrogant song of the violent.
6 The Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, is preparing a feast,
a feast for everyone on this mystical mountain
With aged wine and good food, the finest wine and choicest meat.
7 And God will swallow up the oppression that weighs us down.
He will take away the heavy shroud
that is draped over all peoples of the world.
8 God will swallow up death forever.
The Lord, the Eternal, will wipe away the tears from each and every face
And deflect the scorn and shame His people endure from the whole world,
for the Eternal determined that it should be so.
9 And in that moment, at that glorious time, people will say,
People: This is our God! We put our hope in him.
We knew that He would save us!
This is our God, the Eternal for whom we waited.
Let us rejoice and celebrate in His liberation.
10 For on this mountain, the powerful hand of the Eternal abides.
He will smash and tread Moab like straw on manure.
11 And God will reach out, like a swimmer pulling water,
and drag down their arrogance and everything that made them proud.
12 God will bring down their strongest walls, their impenetrable defenses,
and grind them to the ground until they are only dust.
26 When that time arrives, the people of this place called Judah will sing this song:
People: By the grace of God, our city is strong;
its structures and defenses He made secure.
2 Now open the gates to welcome the righteous,
so that those who keep faith may enter in.
3 You will keep the peace, a perfect peace, for all who trust in You,
for those who dedicate their hearts and minds to You.
4 So trust in the Eternal One forever,
for He is like a great Rock—strong, stable, trustworthy, and lasting.
5 He humbles the high and mighty.
Even the indomitable city falls before His strength, reducing it to dust.
6 The feet of the poor, the weak, the infirm and forgotten
will trample the dust of the formerly great.
7 The path of those who do right is straight and smooth.
O God, You who are upright, You make the way of the righteous level.
8 When we act in justice and righteousness—following Your laws—we wait for You.
We are eager to hear Your holy name and remember Your ways.
9 At night I long for You with all that is in Me.
When morning comes, I seek You with all my heart.
For when Your justice is done on earth,
then everyone in the world will learn righteousness.
10 If grace is extended to those who do wrong,
the perpetrators never learn what is right.
Even when surrounded by upright people, they gravitate to evil
and never even notice the awesome beauty of the Eternal.
11 O Eternal One, even when Your hand is raised against them, they do not see it.
When they finally do see how passionately
You act on the people’s behalf, they will be ashamed.
Ah, let the fire that consumes Your enemies consume them.
12 Eternal One, You are preparing peace for us;
in fact, everything we have accomplished has come from You.
13 Others have tried to rule over us,
but You, Eternal One, are our God.
At the end of the day, when all is done,
we acknowledge only You.
14 But now these would-be rulers are dead, never to live again;
these shadowy spirits will never rise.
You have punished and utterly destroyed them—
You erased every memory of them.
15 By contrast You have made this people great, Eternal One—
made this nation vital and strong. To you be all glory!
You have expanded the borders of this land.
16 When You corrected their wrongdoing, Eternal One,
they could hardly even whisper a prayer.
Weak with distress, they looked to You for help.
17 You witnessed us twist and turn before You, O Eternal,
like a birthing woman in agony of labor.
18 We were that woman, laboring to deliver,
but we gave birth only to futility and emptiness.
We couldn’t deliver the earth, save it, renew it.
We couldn’t make it teem with life.
19 But Your dead will live; their lifeless bodies will rise up again!
You who sleep in the dust, get up and shout for joy!
The dew of a new day will wash you glistening fresh,
and the earth will push forth those who had passed before.
20 O my people, hide in your rooms for a time. Shut the doors behind you
and hide away until God’s anger has passed.
21 See here, the Eternal One will emerge from His place
to punish the earth’s inhabitants for their wrongdoing.
The earth will not hide the blood that has been spilled into her dust;
she will no longer cover those who have been murdered.
27 On that day, the Eternal One will unsheathe His sword—fierce, great, and strong—and punish the monster of chaos and terror, Leviathan the fleeing serpent. He will strike Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and slay the dragon of the sea.
2 In that day, O joy, sing out about the vineyard most fruitful.
3 Eternal One: I, the Eternal One, tend and keep this vineyard;
I water and guard it day and night,
Protecting it against any that might wish to harm it.
4 I am empty of anger.
If it produces nasty weeds and thorns,
I will simply stomp them down and burn them up.
5 But let My vineyard look to Me for protection and nurture;
let it seek My peace;
let it seek My peace.
6 In days to come this people, Jacob, will take root;
Israel, My promise people, will burst into bloom
And fill the whole world with fruit to enjoy.
7 Has God struck Israel as He struck those who struck her?
Has she been killed as her killers were killed?
8 By driving her away, You have dealt with her;
You blew her away with a fierce blast
As when the east wind comes ripping through.
You sent her away to live as strangers in a foreign land.
9 In this way, the people descended from Jacob will have their sins forgiven.
This is how they’ll pay in full the penalty for their wrongdoing—
When God crumbles all the stones of their altars into dust like chalk,
and when not one of their sacred poles and incense altars is left standing.
10 The city that had been so strong and vibrant
is isolated and alone, abandoned, a deserted wilderness.
Calves munch through it, lounging around
and eating whatever twigs dare to shoot up.
11 When the branches are dead and dried and broken,
women will gather and burn them up.
For these people are foolish and lack understanding,
so their Creator will not be compassionate toward them.
Though He made them, He will not show them favor.
12 On that day, people of Israel—people of promise—the Eternal will thresh the lands from the Euphrates to the Nile, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and gather you up one by one. 13 With a great trumpet blast, everyone who was dying in captivity—in Assyria and Egypt—will come to worship the Eternal on the holy mountain that is Jerusalem.
28 Oh, it will be bad for you drunkards of Ephraim.
That once proud elegance of yours
Now droops and falls like a fading flower.
You leaders of the fertile valley are now drowning in your own wine.
Samaria overlooks the finest land in Israel. But these are the last days for this fading flower because God has selected Assyria as His agent of judgment.
2 Look well—the Eternal has called up one who is fierce and mighty.
Like a powerful hailstorm followed by destructive winds,
Like a storm that spawns devastating floods,
God’s agent will drive Ephraim down and smash him to earth.
3 Then the tarnished elegance of intoxicated Ephraim
will lie trampled in the dirt.
4 And the fading flower of its glorious beauty
that crowned Ephraim’s fertile valley
Will be snatched up and consumed as soon as someone sees it,
like the first ripened fig before summer.
5 In that day the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, will be a beautiful crown,
a glorious diadem, for His people who survive.
6 He will be a spirit of justice to those who sit in judgment
and a source of strength to those who battle at the gate.
7 Ah, what contrast to the drunken and bumbling priests and prophets
who can’t even see straight, whose minds are addled,
Whose steps wobble, whose visions mislead,
whose judgments waver, because of all their drinking.
8 There’s vomit on all of the tables,
filth all over the place.
9 The priests and prophets mock:
“Who is left for God to instruct in knowledge?
Who will listen and understand His message?
Maybe those infants just weaned off of milk,
those innocents just taken from the breast?
10 For here is how it goes: Command after command. Command on top of command.
Rule after rule. Rule on top of rule. A little here, A little there.”
11 For now that God’s people reject His message,
He will speak to them through the stammering lips
And foreign language of an invader.[a]
Eternal One: 12 This is the way: here is rest for the weary.
I am showing you rest.
But they wouldn’t listen to Him.[b]
13 And so the word of the Eternal One to them will be just as they said:
“Command after command. Command on top of command.
Rule after rule. Rule on top of rule. A little here, a little there.”
But they’ll go and fail. They’ll fall back, broken and trapped,
and be taken away by another people.
10 Listen, whoever seeks to be righteous by following certain works of the law actually falls under the law’s curse. I’m giving it to you straight from Scripture because it is as true now as when it was written: “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t live by and do all that is written in the law.”[a] 11 Now it is absolutely clear that no one is made right with God through the law because the prophet Habakkuk told us, “By faith the just will obtain life.”[b] 12 The law is not the same thing as life formed by faith. In fact, you are warned against this when God says, “The one who observes My laws will live by them.”[c] I am trying to tell you that 13 the Anointed One, the Liberating King, has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. It was stated in the Scriptures, “Everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God.”[d] 14 This is what God had in mind all along: the blessing He gave to Abraham might extend to all nations through the Anointed One, Jesus; and we are the beneficiaries of this promise of the Spirit that comes only through faith.
15 My dear brothers and sisters, here’s a real-life example I can give you: With a last will and testament, when all the property is accounted for, the document is signed, witnessed, and notarized; and afterward no one can make changes to it. 16 In a similar way, God’s promises established a binding agreement with Abraham and his offspring. In the Scriptures, it is carefully stated, “and to your descendant” (meaning one), not “and to your descendants”[e] (meaning many). Therefore, in these covenant promises, God was not referring to every son and daughter born into Abraham’s family but to the Anointed One to come. 17 What this all means is that the law given to Israel comes along some 430 years after the promise made to Abraham; so it does not invalidate the covenant God previously agreed to or in any way do away with His promise. 18 You see, if the law became the sole basis for the inheritance, then it would put God in the position of breaking a covenant because He had promised it to Abraham.
Throughout this argument, one critical question remains: why would God give the law if it would not bring His people into a right standing with Him? Couldn’t God have found a better way of doing this? It isn’t as if the law is a bad thing or a mistake that God needs to correct. It has a good purpose, but a limited one. It never supplants God’s promise to Abraham. Rather, the law keeps sin in check until the time is right for the saving justice that comes through faith in Jesus. The law serves as a tutor or a schoolmaster, revealing our great need for salvation and pointing everyone toward Jesus.
19 Now you’re asking yourselves, “So why did God give us the law?” God commanded His heavenly messengers to deliver it into the hand of a mediator for this reason: to help us rein in our sins until the Offspring, about whom the promise was made in the first place, would come. 20 A mediator represents more than one, but God is only one. 21 “So,” you ask, “does the law contradict God’s promise?” Absolutely not! Never was there written a law that could lead to resurrection and life; if there had been, then surely we could have experienced saving righteousness through keeping the law. But we haven’t. 22 Scripture has subjected the whole world to sin’s power so that the faithful obedience of Jesus the Anointed might extend God’s promises to everyone who has faith.
Psalm 61
For the worship leader. A song of David accompanied by strings.
1 Hear me, O God, when I cry;
listen to my prayer.
2 You are the One I will call when pushed to the edge,
when my heart is faint.
Shoulder me to the rock above me.
3 For You are my protection,
an impenetrable fortress from my enemies.
4 Let me live in Your sanctuary forever;
let me find safety in the shadow of Your wings.
[pause][a]
5 You have heard the promises I made, O God.
You have laid upon me the legacy due to those who fear Your name.
6 Extend the king’s life, day after day;
increase his years for many generations.
7 May he be ever present before God,
attended and guarded by Your loyal love and truth.
8 So I will never stop singing Your praise;
as long as I live, I will fulfill my promise.
17 Don’t be envious of those wrapped up in sin,
but always maintain a healthy respect for the Eternal.
18 Your future with Him will be certain,
and you will not have hoped in vain.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.