Message Bible Daily Reading - Old/New Testament (MSG)

Old/New Testament Reading for Thursday November 13, 2014 (MSG)

Posted: 12 Nov 2014 09:00 PM PST

Lamentations 1-2

Worthless, Cheap, Abject!

1 Oh, oh, oh . . .
How empty the city, once teeming with people.
A widow, this city, once in the front rank of nations,
once queen of the ball, she's now a drudge in the kitchen.

²She cries herself to sleep each night, tears soaking her pillow.
No one's left among her lovers to sit and hold her hand.
Her friends have all dumped her.

³After years of pain and hard labor, Judah has gone into exile.
She camps out among the nations, never feels at home.
Hunted by all, she's stuck between a rock and a hard place.

⁴Zion's roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts.
All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair.
Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.

⁵Her enemies have become her masters. Her foes are living it up
because God laid her low, punishing her repeated rebellions.
Her children, prisoners of the enemy, trudge into exile.

⁶All beauty has drained from Daughter Zion's face.
Her princes are like deer famished for food,
chased to exhaustion by hunters.

⁷Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,
when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.
Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.

⁸Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.
All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.
Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.

⁹She played fast and loose with life, she never considered tomorrow,
and now she's crashed royally, with no one to hold her hand:
"Look at my pain, O God! And how the enemy cruelly struts."

¹⁰The enemy reached out to take all her favorite things. She watched
as pagans barged into her Sanctuary, those very people for whom
you posted orders: keep out: this assembly off-limits.

¹¹All the people groaned, so desperate for food, so desperate to stay alive
that they bartered their favorite things for a bit of breakfast:
"O God, look at me! Worthless, cheap, abject!

¹²"And you passersby, look at me! Have you ever seen anything like this?
Ever seen pain like my pain, seen what he did to me,
what God did to me in his rage?

¹³"He struck me with lightning, skewered me from head to foot,
then he set traps all around so I could hardly move.
He left me with nothing—left me sick, and sick of living.

¹⁴"He wove my sins into a rope
and harnessed me to captivity's yoke.
I'm goaded by cruel taskmasters.

¹⁵"The Master piled up my best soldiers in a heap,
then called in thugs to break their fine young necks.
The Master crushed the life out of fair virgin Judah.

¹⁶"For all this I weep, weep buckets of tears,
and not a soul within miles around cares for my soul.
My children are wasted, my enemy got his way."

¹⁷Zion reached out for help, but no one helped.
God ordered Jacob's enemies to surround him,
and now no one wants anything to do with Jerusalem.

¹⁸"God has right on his side. I'm the one who did wrong.
Listen everybody! Look at what I'm going through!
My fair young women, my fine young men, all herded into exile!

¹⁹"I called to my friends; they betrayed me.
My priests and my leaders only looked after themselves,
trying but failing to save their own skins.

²⁰"O God, look at the trouble I'm in! My stomach in knots,
my heart wrecked by a life of rebellion.
Massacres in the streets, starvation in the houses.

²¹"Oh, listen to my groans. No one listens, no one cares.
When my enemies heard of the trouble you gave me, they cheered.
Bring on Judgment Day! Let them get what I got!

²²"Take a good look at their evil ways and give it to them!
Give them what you gave me for my sins.
Groaning in pain, body and soul, I've had all I can take."

God Walked Away from His Holy Temple

2 Oh, oh, oh . . .
How the Master has cut down Daughter Zion
from the skies, dashed Israel's glorious city to earth,
in his anger treated his favorite as throwaway junk.

²The Master, without a second thought, took Israel in one gulp.
Raging, he smashed Judah's defenses,
made hash of her king and princes.

³His anger blazing, he knocked Israel flat,
broke Israel's arm and turned his back just as the enemy approached,
came on Jacob like a wildfire from every direction.

⁴Like an enemy, he aimed his bow, bared his sword,
and killed our young men, our pride and joy.
His anger, like fire, burned down the homes in Zion.

⁵The Master became the enemy. He had Israel for supper.
He chewed up and spit out all the defenses.
He left Daughter Judah moaning and groaning.

⁶He plowed up his old trysting place, trashed his favorite rendezvous.
God wiped out Zion's memories of feast days and Sabbaths,
angrily sacked king and priest alike.

⁷God abandoned his altar, walked away from his holy Temple
and turned the fortifications over to the enemy.
As they cheered in God's Temple, you'd have thought it was a feast day!

⁸God drew up plans to tear down the walls of Daughter Zion.
He assembled his crew, set to work and went at it.
Total demolition! The stones wept!

⁹Her city gates, iron bars and all, disappeared in the rubble:
her kings and princes off to exile—no one left to instruct or lead;
her prophets useless—they neither saw nor heard anything from God.

¹⁰The elders of Daughter Zion sit silent on the ground.
They throw dust on their heads, dress in rough penitential burlap—
the young virgins of Jerusalem, their faces creased with the dirt.

¹¹My eyes are blind with tears, my stomach in a knot.
My insides have turned to jelly over my people's fate.
Babies and children are fainting all over the place,

¹²Calling to their mothers, "I'm hungry! I'm thirsty!"
then fainting like dying soldiers in the streets,
breathing their last in their mothers' laps.

¹³How can I understand your plight, dear Jerusalem?
What can I say to give you comfort, dear Zion?
Who can put you together again? This bust-up is past understanding.

¹⁴Your prophets courted you with sweet talk.
They didn't face you with your sin so that you could repent.
Their sermons were all wishful thinking, deceptive illusions.

¹⁵Astonished, passersby can't believe what they see.
They rub their eyes, they shake their heads over Jerusalem.
Is this the city voted "Most Beautiful" and "Best Place to Live"?

¹⁶But now your enemies gape, slack-jawed.
Then they rub their hands in glee: "We've got them!
We've been waiting for this! Here it is!"

¹⁷God did carry out, item by item, exactly what he said he'd do.
He always said he'd do this. Now he's done it—torn the place down.
He's let your enemies walk all over you, declared them world champions!

¹⁸Give out heart-cries to the Master, dear repentant Zion.
Let the tears roll like a river, day and night,
and keep at it—no time-outs. Keep those tears flowing!

¹⁹As each night watch begins, get up and cry out in prayer.
Pour your heart out face-to-face with the Master.
Lift high your hands. Beg for the lives of your children
who are starving to death out on the streets.

²⁰"Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone like this?
Should women eat their own babies, the very children they raised?
Should priests and prophets be murdered in the Master's own Sanctuary?

²¹"Boys and old men lie in the gutters of the streets,
my young men and women killed in their prime.
Angry, you killed them in cold blood, cut them down without mercy.

²²"You invited, like friends to a party, men to swoop down in attack
so that on the big day of God's wrath no one would get away.
The children I loved and reared—gone, gone, gone."

The Message (MSG)

Hebrews 10:1-18

The Sacrifice of Jesus

10 ^1-10The old plan was only a hint of the good things in the new plan. Since that old "law plan" wasn't complete in itself, it couldn't complete those who followed it. No matter how many sacrifices were offered year after year, they never added up to a complete solution. If they had, the worshipers would have gone merrily on their way, no longer dragged down by their sins. But instead of removing awareness of sin, when those animal sacrifices were repeated over and over they actually heightened awareness and guilt. The plain fact is that bull and goat blood can't get rid of sin. That is what is meant by this prophecy, put in the mouth of Christ:

You don't want sacrifices and offerings year after year;
you've prepared a body for me for a sacrifice.
It's not fragrance and smoke from the altar
that whet your appetite.
So I said, "I'm here to do it your way, O God,
the way it's described in your Book."

When he said, "You don't want sacrifices and offerings," he was referring to practices according to the old plan. When he added, "I'm here to do it your way," he set aside the first in order to enact the new plan—God's way—by which we are made fit for God by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus.

^11-18Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in. It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process. The Holy Spirit confirms this:

This new plan I'm making with Israel
isn't going to be written on paper,
isn't going to be chiseled in stone;
This time "I'm writing out the plan in them,
carving it on the lining of their hearts."

He concludes,

I'll forever wipe the slate clean of their sins.

Once sins are taken care of for good, there's no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.

The Message (MSG)