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Take a breath, find your place, and read deeply. Discover the joy of reading God’s word with the Immerse New Living Translation (NLT) Bible.
This daily Bible podcast will take you through the Bible in a year following the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. So grab your family and small group and go through the Bible in a year together with Immerse. Each of the 6 volumes is available online or at your favorite Christian bookstore.
Ethan: Welcome to Immerse: the
daily bible reading experience.
Day 100 and 86
the Ark of the Lord remained
in Philistine territory.
Seven months in all.
Then the Philistines called in their
priests and diviners and asked them, what
should we do about the ark of the Lord?
Tell us how to return
it to its own country.
Send the Ark of the God of
Israel back with a gift.
They were told.
Send a guilt offering
so the plague will stop.
Then if you are healed, you will know
it was his hand that caused the plague.
What sort of guilt
offering should we send?
They asked and they were told.
Since the plague has struck both you and
your five rulers make five gold tumors and
five gold rats, just like those that have
ravaged your land, make these things to
show honor to the God of Israel, perhaps.
Then he will stop afflicting
you, your gods and your land.
Don't be stubborn and rebellious
as Pharaoh and the Egyptians were.
By the time God was finished with
them, they were eager to let Israel go.
Now build a new cart and find two cows
that have just given birth to calves.
Make sure the cows have
never been yoked to a cart.
Hitch the cows to the cart, but shut
their calves away from them in a pen.
Put the arc of the Lord on the cart
and beside it, place a chest containing
the gold rats and gold tumors you
are sending as a guilt offering.
Then let the cows go wherever they want.
If they cross the border of our
land and go to Beth Shems, we will
know it was the Lord who brought
this great disaster upon us.
If they don't, we will know.
It was not his hand
that caused the plague.
It came simply by chance.
So these instructions were carried out.
Two cows were hitched to
the cart, and their newborn
calves were shut up in a pen.
Then the arc of the Lord and the chest
containing the gold rats and gold
tumors were placed on the cart, and
sure enough, without veering off in
other directions, the cows went straight
along the road toward Beth Shem lowing.
As they went, the Philistine
rulers followed them as far
as the border of Beth Shemesh.
The people of Beth Shemesh were
harvesting wheat in the valley, and when
they saw the ark, they were overjoyed.
The cart came into the field
of a man named Joshua and
stopped beside a large rock.
So the people broke up the wood
of the cart for a fire and killed
the cows and sacrificed them to
the Lord as a burnt offering.
Several men of the tribe of Levi
lifted the arc of the Lord and
the chest containing the gold rats
and gold tumors from the cart and
placed them on the large rock.
Many sacrifices and burnt offerings
were offered to the Lord that
day by the people of Beth Shamus.
The five Philistine rulers
watched all this and then
returned to Akron that same day.
The five gold tumors sent by
the Philistines as a guilt
offering to the Lord were gifts
from the rulers of Ash stud.
Gaza, Ashlan, Gath, and Akron.
The five gold rats represented the
five Philistine towns and their
surrounding villages, which were
controlled by the five rulers.
The large rock at Beth Shamus, where
they set the Ark of the Lord still
stands in the field of Joshua as
a witness to what happened there.
But the Lord killed 70 men
from Beth Shamus because they
looked into the ark of the Lord.
The people mourned greatly because of
what the Lord had done, who is able
to stand in the presence of the Lord.
This holy God, they cried out,
where can we send the ark from here?
So they sent messengers to the people at
Ky Jiram and told them the Philistines
have returned the ark of the Lord.
Come here and get it.
So the men of Curth, JIRAM came
to get the ark of the Lord.
They took it to the hillside home
of Abada and ordered Eliezer,
his son to be in charge of it.
The ark remained in Kieth GM
for a long time, 20 years in.
All during that time, all
Israel mourned because it seemed
the Lord had abandoned them.
Then Samuel said to all the people
of Israel, if you want to return to
the Lord with all your hearts, get
rid of your foreign gods and your
images of eth, turn your hearts
to the Lord and obey him alone.
Then he will rescue you
from the Philistines.
So the Israelites got rid of
their images of Baal and eth
and worshiped only the Lord.
Then Samuel told them, gather
all of Israel to mpa and I
will pray to the Lord for you.
So they gathered at MPA and in a
great ceremony, drew water from a well
and poured it out before the Lord.
They also went without food
all day and confessed that they
had sinned against the Lord.
It was at MSPA that Samuel
became Israel's judge.
When the Philistine rulers heard
that Israel had gathered at mpa, they
mobilized their army and advanced.
The Israelites were badly frightened
when they learned that the
Philistines were approaching Don't
stop pleading with the Lord our God,
to save us from the Philistines.
They begged Samuel.
So Samuel took a young lamb and offered
it to the Lord as a whole burnt offering.
He pleaded with the Lord to help
Israel and the Lord answered him.
Just as Samuel was sacrificing the
burnt offering, the Philistines
arrived to attack Israel.
But the Lord spoke with a mighty
voice of thunder from heaven that
day, and the Philistines were
thrown into such confusion that
the Israelites defeated them.
The men of Israel chased them from
SBA to a place below Beth Carr,
slaughtering them all along the way.
Samuel then took a large stone and placed
it between the towns of SBA and Ana.
He named it Ebenezer, which
means the stone of help.
For, he said, up to this point,
the Lord has helped us, so the
Philistines were subdued and didn't
invade Israel again for some time.
And throughout Samuel's lifetime,
the Lord's Powerful hand was
raised against the Philistines.
The Israelite villages near Akron and
Gaff that the Philistines had captured
were restored to Israel along with
the rest of the territory that the
Philistines had taken, and there was
peace between Israel and the Amorites.
In those days.
Samuel continued as Israel's
judge for the rest of his life.
Each year he traveled around setting
up his court, first at Bethel,
then at Gilgel, and then at mspa.
He judged the people of Israel
at each of these places.
Then he would return to his home at
Rama and he would hear cases there too.
And Samuel built an altar
to the Lord at Rama.
This concludes today's
immerse reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.