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Fri 2023-12-15 1 Kings12 Philippians3 Ezekiel42 Psalms94
1 Kings 12.
12:1 Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all the Israelites had gone there to make him king.
12:2 When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard this (he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), he returned from Egypt.
12:3 So they sent for Jeroboam, and he and the whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him:
12:4 "Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you."
12:5 Rehoboam answered, "Go away for three days and then come back to me." So the people went away.
12:6 Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. "How would you advise me to answer these people?" he asked.
12:7 They replied, "If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants."
12:8 But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him.
12:9 He asked them, "What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, 'Lighten the yoke your father put on us'?"
12:10 The young men who had grown up with him replied, "Tell these people who have said to you, 'Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter'--tell them, 'My little finger is thicker than my father's waist.
12:11 My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.'"
12:12 Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, "Come back to me in three days."
12:13 The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders,
12:14 he followed the advice of the young men and said, "My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions."
12:15 So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the LORD, to fulfill the word the LORD had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.
12:16 When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: "What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse's son? To your tents, O Israel! Look after your own house, O David!" So the Israelites went home.
12:17 But as for the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah, Rehoboam still ruled over them.
12:18 King Rehoboam sent out Adoniram, who was in charge of forced labor, but all Israel stoned him to death. King Rehoboam, however, managed to get into his chariot and escape to Jerusalem.
12:19 So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.
12:20 When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David.
12:21 When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mustered the whole house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin--a hundred and eighty thousand fighting men--to make war against the house of Israel and to regain the kingdom for Rehoboam son of Solomon.
12:22 But this word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God:
12:23 "Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah, to the whole house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people,
12:24 'This is what the LORD says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.'" So they obeyed the word of the LORD and went home again, as the LORD had ordered.
12:25 Then Jeroboam fortified Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there. From there he went out and built up Peniel.
12:26 Jeroboam thought to himself, "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.
12:27 If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam."
12:28 After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
12:29 One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.
12:30 And this thing became a sin; the people went even as far as Dan to worship the one there.
12:31 Jeroboam built shrines on high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites.
12:32 He instituted a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival held in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. This he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves he had made. And at Bethel he also installed priests at the high places he had made.
12:33 On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings.
Philippians 3.
3:1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
3:2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.
3:3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh--
3:4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
3:5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;
3:6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
3:7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
3:8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
3:9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
3:11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
3:13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
3:14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
3:15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
3:16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
3:17 Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.
3:18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
3:19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.
3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
3:21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Ezekiel 42.
42:1 Then the man led me northward into the outer court and brought me to the rooms opposite the temple courtyard and opposite the outer wall on the north side.
42:2 The building whose door faced north was a hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide.
42:3 Both in the section twenty cubits from the inner court and in the section opposite the pavement of the outer court, gallery faced gallery at the three levels.
42:4 In front of the rooms was an inner passageway ten cubits wide and a hundred cubits long. Their doors were on the north.
42:5 Now the upper rooms were narrower, for the galleries took more space from them than from the rooms on the lower and middle floors of the building.
42:6 The rooms on the third floor had no pillars, as the courts had; so they were smaller in floor space than those on the lower and middle floors.
42:7 There was an outer wall parallel to the rooms and the outer court; it extended in front of the rooms for fifty cubits.
42:8 While the row of rooms on the side next to the outer court was fifty cubits long, the row on the side nearest the sanctuary was a hundred cubits long.
42:9 The lower rooms had an entrance on the east side as one enters them from the outer court.
42:10 On the south side along the length of the wall of the outer court, adjoining the temple courtyard and opposite the outer wall, were rooms
42:11 with a passageway in front of them. These were like the rooms on the north; they had the same length and width, with similar exits and dimensions. Similar to the doorways on the north
42:12 were the doorways of the rooms on the south. There was a doorway at the beginning of the passageway that was parallel to the corresponding wall extending eastward, by which one enters the rooms.
42:13 Then he said to me, "The north and south rooms facing the temple courtyard are the priests' rooms, where the priests who approach the LORD will eat the most holy offerings. There they will put the most holy offerings--the grain offerings, the sin offerings and the guilt offerings--for the place is holy.
42:14 Once the priests enter the holy precincts, they are not to go into the outer court until they leave behind the garments in which they minister, for these are holy. They are to put on other clothes before they go near the places that are for the people."
42:15 When he had finished measuring what was inside the temple area, he led me out by the east gate and measured the area all around:
42:16 He measured the east side with the measuring rod; it was five hundred cubits.
42:17 He measured the north side; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod.
42:18 He measured the south side; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod.
42:19 Then he turned to the west side and measured; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod.
42:20 So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common.
Psalms 94.
94:1 O LORD, the God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth.
94:2 Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve.
94:3 How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant?
94:4 They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting.
94:5 They crush your people, O LORD; they oppress your inheritance.
94:6 They slay the widow and the alien; they murder the fatherless.
94:7 They say, "The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed."
94:8 Take heed, you senseless ones among the people; you fools, when will you become wise?
94:9 Does he who implanted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?
94:10 Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Does he who teaches man lack knowledge?
94:11 The LORD knows the thoughts of man; he knows that they are futile.
94:12 Blessed is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law;
94:13 you grant him relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked.
94:14 For the LORD will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance.
94:15 Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it.
94:16 Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
94:17 Unless the LORD had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
94:18 When I said, "My foot is slipping," your love, O LORD, supported me.
94:19 When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.
94:20 Can a corrupt throne be allied with you--one that brings on misery by its decrees?
94:21 They band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.
94:22 But the LORD has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.
94:23 He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the LORD our God will destroy them.