Old/New Testament
Israel, God’s Special People
7 “The Lord your God will lead you into the land that you are entering to take for your own. He will force out many nations for you—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—seven nations greater and more powerful than you. 2 The Lord your God will put these nations under your power. And you will defeat them. You must destroy them completely. Don’t make an agreement with them or show them mercy. 3 Don’t marry any of them, and don’t let your sons or daughters marry any of the people from those other nations. 4 If you do, they will turn your children away from following me. Then your children will serve other gods, and the Lord will be very angry with you. He will quickly destroy you!
Destroy False Gods
5 “This is what you must do to those nations: You must smash their altars and break their memorial stones into pieces. Cut down their Asherah poles and burn their statues. 6 Do this because you are the Lord’s own people. From all the people on earth, the Lord your God chose you to be his special people—people who belong only to him. 7 Why did the Lord love and choose you? It was not because you are such a large nation. You had the fewest of all people! 8 But the Lord brought you out of Egypt with great power and made you free from slavery. He freed you from the control of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. The Lord did this because he loves you and he wanted to keep the promise he made to your ancestors.
9 “So remember that the Lord your God is the only God, and you can trust him! He keeps his agreement. He shows his love and kindness to all people who love him and obey his commands. He continues to show his love and kindness through a thousand generations, 10 but the Lord punishes people who hate him. He will destroy them. He will not be slow to punish those who hate him. 11 So you must be careful to obey the commands, laws, and rules that I give you today.
12 “If you listen to these laws, and if you are careful to obey them, the Lord your God will keep his agreement of love with you. He promised this to your ancestors. 13 He will love you and bless you. He will make your nation grow. He will bless your children. He will bless your fields with good crops and will give you grain, new wine, and oil. He will bless your cows with calves and your sheep with lambs. You will have all these blessings in the land that he promised your ancestors to give you.
14 “You will be blessed more than all people. Every husband and wife will be able to have children. Your cows will be able to have calves. 15 The Lord will take away all sickness from you and he will not let you catch any of the terrible diseases that you had in Egypt. But he will make your enemies catch those diseases. 16 You must destroy all the people the Lord your God helps you defeat. Don’t feel sorry for them, and don’t worship their gods! They will trap you—they will ruin your life.
The Lord Promises to Help His People
17 “Don’t say in your heart, ‘These nations are stronger than we are. How can we force them out?’ 18 You must not be afraid of them. You must remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the people of Egypt. 19 You saw the great troubles he gave them and the amazing things he did. You saw the Lord use his great power and strength to bring you out of Egypt. The Lord your God will use that same power against all the people you fear.
20 “The Lord your God will send the hornet[a] against them. He will do this until he destroys all the people who escaped and tried to hide. 21 Don’t be afraid of them, because the Lord your God is with you. He is a great and awesome God. 22 The Lord your God will force those nations to leave your country little by little. You will not destroy them all at once. If you did, the wild animals would grow to be too many for you. 23 But the Lord your God will let you defeat those nations. He will confuse them in battle, until they are destroyed. 24 He will help you defeat their kings. You will kill them, and the world will forget they ever lived. No one will be able to stop you. You will destroy them all!
25 “You must throw the statues of their gods into the fire and burn them. You must not want to keep the silver or the gold that is on those statues for yourselves. It will be like a trap to you—it will ruin your life. The Lord your God hates those idols. 26 You must not bring any of those disgusting idols into your homes, or you will be destroyed just as they will be. You must treat them as the disgusting things they are! They are to be destroyed.
Remember the Lord
8 “You must obey all the commands that I give you today, because then you will live and grow to become a great nation. You will get the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 And you must remember the entire trip that the Lord your God has led you through these 40 years in the desert. He was testing you. He wanted to make you humble. He wanted to know what is in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey his commands. 3 He humbled you and let you be hungry. Then he fed you with manna—something you did not know about before. It was something your ancestors had never seen. Why did the Lord do this? Because he wanted you to know that it is not just bread that keeps people alive. People’s lives depend on what the Lord says. 4 These past 40 years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell. 5 You must remember that the Lord your God teaches and corrects you as a father teaches and corrects his son.
6 “You must obey the commands of the Lord your God. Follow him and respect him. 7 The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with rivers and pools of water. Water flows out of the ground in the valleys and hills. 8 It is a land with wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates. It is a land with olive oil and honey. 9 There you will have plenty of food and everything you need. It is a land where the rocks are iron. You can dig copper out of the hills. 10 You will have all you want to eat. Then you will praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Don’t Forget What the Lord Did
11 “Be careful. Don’t forget the Lord your God! Be careful to obey the commands, laws, and rules that I give you today. 12 Then you will have plenty to eat, and you will build good houses and live in them. 13 Your cattle, sheep, and goats will grow large. You will get plenty of gold and silver. You will have plenty of everything. 14 When that happens, you must be careful not to become proud. You must not forget the Lord your God. You were slaves in Egypt, but he made you free and brought you out of that land. 15 He led you through that great and terrible desert where there were poisonous snakes and scorpions. The ground was dry, and there was no water anywhere. But he gave you water out of a solid rock. 16 In the desert he fed you manna—something your ancestors had never seen. He tested you to make you humble so that everything would go well for you in the end. 17 Don’t ever say to yourself, ‘I got all this wealth by my own power and ability.’ 18 Remember the Lord your God is the one who gives you power to do these things. He does this because he wants to keep the agreement that he made with your ancestors, as he is doing today!
19 “Don’t ever forget the Lord your God. Don’t ever follow other gods or worship and serve them. If you do that, I warn you today: You will surely be destroyed! 20 The Lord is destroying other nations for you. But if you stop listening to the Lord your God, you will be destroyed just like them!
The Lord Will Be With Israel
9 “Listen, you Israelites! You will go across the Jordan River today. You will go into that land to force out nations greater and stronger than you. Their cities are big and have walls as high as the sky! 2 The people there are tall and strong. They are the Anakites. You know about them. You heard our spies say, ‘No one can win against the Anakites.’ 3 But you can be sure that it is the Lord your God who goes across the river before you—and God is like a fire that destroys! He will destroy those nations and make them fall before you. You will force those nations out and quickly destroy them. The Lord has promised you that this will happen.
4 “The Lord your God will force those nations out for you. But don’t say to yourselves, ‘The Lord brought us to live in this land because we are such good people.’ No, the Lord forced those nations out because they were evil, not because you were good. 5 You are going in to take their land, but not because you are good and live right. You are going in, and the Lord your God is forcing those people out because of the evil way they lived. And the Lord wants to keep the promise he made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6 The Lord your God is giving you that good land to live in, but you should know that it is not because you are good. The truth is that you are very stubborn people!
Remember the Lord’s Anger
7 “Remember how you made the Lord your God angry in the desert. Never forget that! From the day you left the land of Egypt to the day you came to this place, you have refused to obey the Lord. 8 You made the Lord angry at Mount Horeb. The Lord was angry enough to destroy you! 9 I went up the mountain to get the stone tablets. The agreement that the Lord made with you was written on those stones. I stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. I did not eat any food or drink any water. 10 The Lord gave me the two stone tablets. He wrote his commands on the stones with his finger. The Lord wrote everything he said to you from the fire when you were gathered together at the mountain.
11 “So at the end of 40 days and 40 nights, the Lord gave me two stone tablets—the stones of the agreement. 12 Then the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and quickly go down from here. The people you brought out of Egypt have ruined themselves. They stopped obeying my commands so quickly. They melted gold and made an idol for themselves.’
13 “The Lord also said to me, ‘I have watched these people. They are very stubborn! 14 Let me destroy these people completely, so no one will even remember their names. Then I will make another nation from you that is stronger and greater than these people.’
The Golden Calf
15 “Then I turned and came down from the mountain. The mountain was burning with fire. And the two stone tablets of the agreement were in my hands. 16 I looked and I saw you had sinned against the Lord your God. I saw the calf you made from melted gold! You stopped obeying the Lord so quickly. 17 So I took the two stone tablets and threw them down. There before your eyes I broke the stones into pieces. 18 Then I bowed down before the Lord with my face to the ground for 40 days and 40 nights, as I did before. I did not eat any food or drink any water. I did this because you had sinned so badly. You did the thing that is evil to the Lord, and you made him angry. 19 I was afraid of the Lord’s terrible anger. He was angry enough to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me again. 20 The Lord was very angry with Aaron—enough to destroy him! So I also prayed for Aaron at that time. 21 I took that terrible thing, the calf you made, and burned it in the fire. I broke it into small pieces. And I crushed the pieces until they were dust. Then I threw the dust into the river that came down from the mountain.
Moses Asks God to Forgive Israel
22 “Also, at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth Hattaavah you made the Lord angry. 23 And you did not obey when the Lord told you to leave Kadesh Barnea. He said, ‘Go up and take the land I am giving you.’ But you refused to obey the Lord your God. You did not trust him. You did not listen to his command. 24 All the time that I have known you, you have refused to obey the Lord.
25 “So I bowed down before the Lord 40 days and 40 nights, because the Lord said he would destroy you. 26 I prayed to the Lord. I said, ‘Lord God, don’t destroy your people. They belong to you. You freed them and brought them out of Egypt with your great power and strength. 27 Remember your promise to your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Forget how stubborn these people are. Don’t look at their evil ways or their sins. 28 If you punish your people, the Egyptians might say, “The Lord was not able to take his people into the land he promised them. And he hated them. So he took them into the desert to kill them.” 29 But they are your people, Lord. They belong to you. You brought them out of Egypt with your great power and strength.’
19 That night Jesus and his followers left the city.
Jesus Shows the Power of Faith(A)
20 The next morning Jesus was walking with his followers. They saw the fig tree that he spoke to the day before. The tree was dry and dead, even the roots. 21 Peter remembered the tree and said to Jesus, “Teacher, look! Yesterday, you told that fig tree to die. Now it is dry and dead!”
22 Jesus answered, “Have faith in God. 23 The truth is, you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, mountain, fall into the sea.’ And if you have no doubts in your mind and believe that what you say will happen, then God will do it for you. 24 So I tell you to ask for what you want in prayer. And if you believe that you have received those things, then they will be yours. 25 When you are praying and you remember that you are angry with another person about something, forgive that person. Forgive them so that your Father in heaven will also forgive your sins.” 26 [a]
Jewish Leaders Doubt Jesus’ Authority(B)
27 Jesus and his followers went again to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking in the Temple area. The leading priests, the teachers of the law, and the older Jewish leaders came to him. 28 They said, “Tell us! What authority do you have to do these things? Who gave you this authority?”
29 Jesus answered, “I will ask you a question. You answer my question. Then I will tell you whose authority I use to do these things. 30 Tell me: When John baptized people, did his authority come from God or was it only from other people? Answer me.”
31 These Jewish leaders talked about Jesus’ question. They said to each other, “If we answer, ‘John’s baptism was from God,’ then he will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe John?’ 32 But we can’t say that John’s baptism was from someone else.” (These leaders were afraid of the people, because the people believed that John was a prophet.)
33 So the leaders answered Jesus, “We don’t know the answer.”
Jesus said, “Then I will not tell you who gave me the authority to do these things.”
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International