Old/New Testament
God’s People
7 The Lord your God will bring you into the land. You are entering that land to own it. As you go in, he will force out these nations: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. These seven nations are stronger than you. 2 The Lord your God will hand these nations over to you. You will defeat them. You must destroy them completely. Do not make a peace treaty with them. Do not show them any mercy. 3 Do not marry any of them. Don’t let your daughters marry their sons. And don’t let your sons marry their daughters. 4 Those people will turn your children away from me. Your children will begin serving other gods. The Lord will be very angry with you. And he will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you must do to those people: Tear down their altars. Smash their holy stone pillars. Cut down their Asherah idols and burn their idols in the fire. 6 You are holy people. You belong to the Lord your God. He has chosen you from all the people on earth. You are his very own.
7 The Lord did not care for you and choose you because there were many of you. You are the smallest nation of all. 8 But the Lord chose you because he loved you. And he kept his promise to your ancestors. So he brought you out of Egypt by his great power. He brought you back from the land of slavery. He bought you back from the power of the king of Egypt. 9 So know that the Lord your God is God. He is the faithful God. He will keep his agreement of love for a thousand lifetimes. He does this for people who love him and obey his commands. 10 But he will pay back those people who hate him. He will destroy them. And he will not be slow to pay back those who hate him. 11 So be careful to obey the commands, rules and laws I give you today.
12 Pay attention to these laws. Obey them carefully. Then the Lord your God will keep his agreement and show his love to you. He promised your ancestors he would. 13 He will love and bless you. He will make the number of your people grow. He will bless you with children. He will bless your fields with good crops. He will give you grain, new wine and oil. He will bless your cows with calves and your sheep with lambs. This is the way it will be in the land he promised your ancestors he would give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people. Every husband and wife will have children. All your cattle will have calves. 15 The Lord will take away all disease from you. You will not have the terrible diseases that were in Egypt. But he will give them to your enemies. 16 You must destroy all the people the Lord your God hands over to you. Do not feel sorry for them. Do not worship their gods. They will trap you.
17 You might say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. We can’t force them out.” 18 But don’t be afraid of them. Remember what the Lord your God did to all of Egypt and its king. 19 You saw for yourselves the troubles, signs and miracles he did. You saw how the Lord’s great power and strength brought you out of Egypt. The Lord your God will do the same thing to all the nations you now fear. 20 The Lord your God will also send hornets to attack them. Even those who are alive and hiding from you will die. 21 Don’t be afraid of them. The Lord your God is with you. He is a great God and people are afraid of him. 22 The Lord your God will force those nations out of the land. They will leave little by little ahead of you. Don’t destroy them all at once. Otherwise, the wild animals will grow too many in number. 23 But the Lord your God will hand those nations over to you. He will confuse them until they are destroyed. 24 The Lord will help you defeat their kings. The world will forget who they were. No one will be able to stop you. You will destroy them all. 25 Burn up their idols in the fire. Do not wish for the silver and gold on them. Don’t take it for yourselves, or you will be trapped by it. The Lord your God hates it. 26 Do not bring one of those hated things into your house. If you do, you will be completely destroyed along with it. Hate and reject those things. They must be completely destroyed.
Remember the Lord
8 Carefully obey every command I give you today. Then you will live and grow in number. And you will enter and own the land the Lord promised your ancestors. 2 Remember how the Lord your God has led you in the desert for these 40 years. He took away your pride. He tested you. He wanted to know what was in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey his commands. 3 He took away your pride. He let you get hungry. Then he fed you with manna. Manna was something neither you nor your ancestors had ever seen. This was to teach you that a person does not live only by eating bread. But a person lives by everything the Lord says. 4 During these 40 years, your clothes did not wear out. And your feet did not swell. 5 Know in your heart that the Lord your God corrects you. He corrects you as a father does his son.
6 Obey the commands of the Lord your God. Live as he has commanded you and respect him. 7 The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. The land has rivers and pools of water. Springs flow in the valleys and hills. 8 The land has wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey. 9 It is a land where you will have plenty of food. You will have everything you need there. The rocks are iron. You can dig copper out of the hills.
10 You will have all you want to eat. Then praise the Lord your God. He has given you a good land. 11 Be careful not to forget the Lord your God. Do not fail to obey his commands, laws and rules. I am giving them to you today. 12 You will eat all you want. You will build nice houses and live in them. 13 Your herds of cattle and flocks of sheep will grow large. Your silver and gold will grow. You will have more of everything. 14 Then your heart will become proud. You will forget the Lord your God. He brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. 15 He led you through the large and terrible desert. It was dry and had no water. It had poisonous snakes and stinging insects. He gave you water from a solid rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the desert. Manna was something your ancestors had never seen. He did this to take away your pride and to test you. He did it so things would go well for you in the end. 17 You might say to yourself, “I am rich because of my own strength and power.” 18 But remember the Lord your God! It is he who gives you the power to become rich. He keeps the agreement he promised to your ancestors. So it is today.
19 Never forget the Lord your God. Do not follow other gods. Do not worship them. Do not bow down to them. If you do, I warn you today that you will be destroyed. 20 The Lord destroyed the other nations for you. And you can be destroyed the same way if you do not obey the Lord your God.
The Lord Will Be with Israel
9 Listen, Israel. You will soon cross the Jordan River. You will go in to force out nations that are bigger and stronger than you. They have large cities with walls up to the sky. 2 The people there are Anakites. They are strong and tall. You know about them. You have heard it said: “No one can stop the Anakites.” 3 But today remember that the Lord your God goes in before you. He will destroy them like a fire that burns things up. He will defeat them ahead of you. And you will force them out. You will destroy them quickly. It will happen just as the Lord has said.
4 The Lord your God will force those nations out ahead of you. After that, don’t say to yourself, “The Lord brought me here. I own this land because I am so good.” No! It is because these nations are evil. That is why the Lord will force them out ahead of you. 5 You are going in to own the land. But it is not because you are good and honest. It is because these nations are evil. That is why the Lord your God will force them out ahead of you. The Lord will keep his promise to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 6 The Lord your God is giving you this good land to own. But know this: It is not because you are good. You are a stubborn people.
Remember the Lord’s Anger
7 Remember this. Do not forget it. You made the Lord your God angry in the desert. You would not obey the Lord from the day you left Egypt until you arrived here. 8 At Mount Sinai you made the Lord angry. He was angry enough to destroy you. 9 I went up on the mountain to receive the stone tablets. The tablets were the agreement the Lord had made with you. I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. I did not eat bread or drink water. 10 The Lord gave me two stone tablets. God had written on them with his own finger. On them were all the commands of the Lord. He gave them to you on the mountain out of the fire. This was on the day you were gathered there.
11 Then the 40 days and 40 nights were over. And the Lord gave me the two stone tablets. Those tablets had the agreement on them. 12 Then the Lord told me, “Get up. Go down quickly from here. The people you brought out from Egypt are ruining themselves. They have quickly turned away from what I commanded. They have made an idol for themselves.”
13 The Lord said to me, “I have watched these people. They are very stubborn! 14 Get away. I will destroy them. I will make the whole world forget who they are. Then I will make another nation from you. It will be bigger and stronger than they are.”
15 So I turned and came down the mountain. The mountain was burning with fire. And the two stone tablets with the agreement were in my hands. 16 When I looked, I saw you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made an idol in the shape of a calf. You had quickly turned away from what the Lord had told you to do. 17 So I took the two stone tablets and threw them down. I broke them into pieces right in front of you.
18 Then I again bowed facedown on the ground before the Lord. I did this for 40 days and 40 nights. I did not eat bread or drink water. You had sinned by doing what the Lord said was evil. You made him angry. 19 I was afraid of the Lord’s anger and rage. He was angry enough with you to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me again. 20 And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. But then I prayed for Aaron, too. 21 I took that sinful calf idol you had made. And I burned it in the fire. I crushed it into a powder like dust. And I threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain.
22 You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, Massah and Kibroth Hattaavah.
23 Then the Lord sent you away from Kadesh Barnea. He said, “Go up and take the land I have given you.” But you would not obey the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him. 24 You have refused to obey the Lord as long as I have known you.
25 The Lord had said he would destroy you. So I threw myself down in front of him for those 40 days and 40 nights. 26 I prayed to the Lord. I said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people. They are your own people. You freed them and brought them out of Egypt by your great power and strength. 27 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Don’t look at how stubborn these people are. Don’t look at their sin and evil. 28 Otherwise, Egypt will say, ‘The Lord was not able to take his people into the land he promised them. He hated them. So he took them into the desert to kill them.’ 29 But they are your people, Lord. They are your own people. You brought them out of Egypt with your great power and strength.”
19 That night, Jesus and his followers[a] left the city.
The Power of Faith
20 The next morning, Jesus was passing by with his followers. They saw the fig tree, and it was dry and dead, even to the roots. 21 Peter remembered the tree and said to Jesus, “Teacher, look! Yesterday, you cursed the fig tree. Now it is dry and dead!”
22 Jesus answered, “Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth. You can say to this mountain, ‘Go, mountain, fall into the sea.’ And if you have no doubts in your mind and believe that the thing you say will happen, then God will do it for you. 24 So I tell you to ask for things 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, then forgive him. If you do this, then your Father in heaven will also forgive your sins.” 26 [But if you don’t forgive other people, then your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins.][b]
Leaders Doubt Jesus’ Authority
27 Jesus and his followers went again to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking in the Temple. The leading priests, the teachers of the law, and the Jewish elders came to him. 28 They said to him, “Tell us! What authority do you have to do these things? Who gave you this authority?”
29 Jesus answered, “I will ask you one question. You answer it. Then I will tell you whose authority I use to do these things. 30 Tell me: When John baptized people, was that from God or from man? Answer me!”
31 They argued about Jesus’ question. They said to each other, “If we answer, ‘John’s baptism was from God,’ then Jesus will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe John?’ 32 But if we say, ‘From man,’ then the people will be against us.” (These leaders were afraid of the people. All the people believed that John was a prophet.)
33 So the leaders answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Jesus said, “Then I will not tell you what authority I use to do these things.”
The Holy Bible, International Children’s Bible® Copyright© 1986, 1988, 1999, 2015 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission.