Henry: Welcome To Immerse: The Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day two hundred and ninety 8
Psalm 78.
A Psalm of asap Oh my people.
Listen to my instructions.
Open your ears to what I am saying for I will speak to you in a parable.
I will teach you hidden lessons from our past stories.
We have heard and known stories.
Our ancestors handed down to us.
We will not hide these truths from our children.
We will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
about his power and his mighty wonders for he issued his laws to Jacob.
He gave his instructions to Israel.
He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children so the next
generation might know them, even the children not yet born, and they in
turn will teach their own children.
So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious
miracles and obeying his commands.
Then they will not be like their ancestors, stubborn, rebellious,
and unfaithful, refusing to give their hearts to God.
The warriors of Ephraim, though armed with Bowes, turned their
backs and fled on the day of battle.
They did not keep God's covenant and refused to live by his instructions.
They forgot what he had done.
The great wonders he had shown them, the miracles he did for their ancestors on
the plane of Zoe in the land of Egypt, for he divided the sea and led them through
making the water stand up like walls.
In the daytime, he led them by a cloud, and all night by a pillar of fire, he
split open the rocks in the wilderness to give them water as from a gushing spring.
He made streams pour from the rock, making the waters flow down like a river.
Yet they kept on sinning against him, rebelling against
the most high in the desert.
They stubbornly tested God in their hearts, demanding the foods they craved.
They even spoke against God himself saying, God can't give
us food in the wilderness.
Yes, he can strike a rock, so water gushes out, but he can't
give his people bread and meat.
When the Lord heard them, he was furious.
The fire of his wrath burned against Jacob.
Yes, his anger rose against Israel for they did not believe God or
trust him to care for them, but he commanded the skies to open.
He opened the doors of heaven.
He rained down manna for them to eat.
He gave them bread from Heaven.
They ate the food of angels.
God gave them all they could hold.
He released the east wind in the heavens and guided the
south wind by his mighty power.
He rained down meat as thick as dust birds, as plentiful
as the sand on the seashore.
He caused the birds to fall within their camp and all around their tents.
The people ate their fill.
He gave them what they craved, but before they satisfied their craving,
while the meat was yet in their mouths, the anger of God rose against them.
And he killed their strongest men.
He struck down the finest of Israel's young men.
But in spite of this, the people kept sinning.
Despite his wonders.
They refused to trust him, so he ended their lives in failure.
Their years in terror, when God began killing them, they finally sought him.
They repented and took God seriously.
Then they remembered that God was their rock, that God most
high was their redeemer, but all they gave him was lip service.
They lied to him with their tongues.
Their hearts were not loyal to him.
They did not keep his covenant.
Yet he was merciful and forgave their sins and did not destroy them all.
Many times he held back his anger and did not unleash his fury for he
remembered that they were merely mortal.
Gone like a breath of wind that never returns.
Oh, how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved his heart
in that dry wasteland again and again.
They tested God's patience and provoked the holy one of Israel.
They did not remember his power and how he rescued them from their enemies.
They did not remember his miraculous signs in Egypt.
His wonders on the plane of Zoe.
For, he turned their rivers into blood so no one could drink from the streams.
He sent vast swarms of flies to consume them and hordes of frogs to ruin them.
He gave their crops to caterpillars.
Their harvest was consumed by locusts.
He destroyed their grape vines with hail and shattered their
sycamore figs With sleet.
He abandoned their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning.
He loosed on them, his fierce anger, all his fury, rage, and hostility.
He dispatched against them, a band of destroying angels.
He turned his anger against them.
He did not spare the Egyptians lives, but ravaged them with the plague.
He killed the oldest son in each Egyptian family, the flower of
you throughout the land of Egypt.
But he led his own people like a flock of sheep.
Guiding them safely through the wilderness.
He kept them safe, so they were not afraid, but the sea covered their enemies.
He brought them to the border of his holy land to this land of hills.
He had won for them.
He drove out the nations before them.
He gave them their inheritance by lot.
He settled the tribes of Israel into their homes, but they kept testing
and rebelling against God most high.
They did not obey his laws.
They turned back and were as faithless as their parents.
They were as undependable as a crooked bow.
They angered God by building shrines to other gods.
They made him jealous with their idols when God heard them.
He was very angry and he completely rejected Israel.
Then he abandoned his dwelling at Shiloh, the tabernacle where
he had lived among the people.
He allowed the ark of his might to be captured.
He surrendered his glory into enemy hands.
He gave his people over to be butchered by the sword because he was so angry with
his own people, his special possession, their young men were killed by fire.
Their young women died before singing their wedding songs.
Their priests were slaughtered and their widows could not mourn their deaths.
Then the Lord rose up as though waking from sleep like a warrior
aroused from a drunken stupor.
He routed his enemies and sent them to eternal shame, but he
rejected Joseph's descendants.
He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
He chose instead the tribe of Judah and Mount Zion, which he loved.
There.
He built his sanctuary as high as the heavens, as solid
and enduring as the earth.
He chose his servant David, calling him from the sheep pens.
He took David from tending the use and lambs and made him the shepherd of Jacobs
descendants, God's own people, Israel.
He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.
Psalm 79, a Psalm of Asaf, oh God.
Pagan nations have conquered your land, your special possession.
They have defiled your holy temple and made Jerusalem a heap of ruins.
They have left the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven.
The flesh of your godly ones has become food for the wild animals.
Blood has flowed like water all around Jerusalem.
No one is left to bury the dead.
We are mocked by our neighbors an object of scorn and derision to those around us.
Oh Lord.
How long will you be angry with us for?
Forever.
How long will your jealousy burn like fire?
Pour out your wrath on the nations that refuse to acknowledge you on kingdoms
that do not call upon your name, for they have devoured your people, Israel,
making the land a desolate wilderness.
Do not hold us guilty for the sins of our ancestors.
Let your compassion quickly meet our needs for we are on the brink of despair.
Help us, oh God of our salvation.
Help us for the glory of your name.
Save us and forgive our sins for the honor of your name.
Why should pagan nations be allowed to scoff asking Where is their God?
Show us your vengeance against the nations for they have spilled
the blood of your servants.
Listen to the moaning of the prisoners.
Demonstrate your great power by saving those condemned to die.
Oh Lord.
Pay back our neighbors seven times for the scorn they have hurled at you.
Then we, your people, the sheep of your pasture will thank you forever
and ever praising your greatness from generation to generation.
Psalm 80 for the choir director, a psalm of ASAP to be sung to
the tune lilies of the covenant.
Please listen.
O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph's descendants like a flock.
Oh God.
Enthroned above the cherubim.
Display your radiant glory to Raim Benjamin and Manasa.
Show us your mighty power.
Come to rescue us.
Turn us again to yourself.
Oh God.
Make your face shine down upon us.
Only then will we be saved.
Oh Lord God of heaven's armies.
How long will you be angry with our prayers?
You have fed us with sorrow and made us drink tears by the bucketful.
You have made us the scorn of neighboring nations.
Our enemies treat us as a joke.
Turn us again to yourself.
Oh God of heaven's armies.
Make your face shine down upon us.
Only then will we be saved.
You brought us from Egypt like a grapevine.
You drove away the pagan nations and transplanted us into your land.
You cleared the ground for us and we took root and filled the land.
Our shade covered the mountains.
Our branches covered the mighty cedars.
We spread our branches west to the Mediterranean Sea.
Our chutes spread east to the Euphrates River.
But now, Why have you broken down our walls so that all who
pass by may steal our fruit?
The wild boar from the forest devours it and the wild animals feed on it.
Come back.
We beg you, oh God of heaven's armies.
Look down from heaven and see our plight.
Take care of this grapevine that you, yourself have planted.
This son you have raised for yourself.
For we are chopped up and burned by our enemies.
May they perish at the sight of your frown.
Strengthen the man you love, the son of your choice.
Then we will never abandon you again.
Revive us so we can call on your name once more.
Turn us again to yourself.
Oh Lord god of heaven's armies.
Make your face shine down upon us.
Only then will we be saved.
Psalm 81 for the choir director, a Psalm of ASAP to be accompanied
by a stringed instrument.
Sing praises to God our strength.
Sing to the God of Jacob Sing.
Beat the tambourine.
Play the sweet liar in the harp.
Blow the Rams horn at New Moon and again at Full Moon to call a festival for this
is required by the decrees of Israel.
It is a regulation of the God of Jacob.
He made it a law for Israel when he attacked Egypt to set us free.
I heard an unknown voice say, now I will take the load from your shoulders.
I will free your hands from their heavy tasks.
You cried to me in trouble and I saved you.
I answered out of the thundercloud and tested your faith when there
was no water at MEbA interlude.
Listen to me, oh my people, while I give you stern warnings.
Oh, Israel, if you would only listen to me, you must never have a full God.
You must not bow down before a false God for it was I the Lord your God,
who rescued you from the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it with good things.
But no, my people wouldn't listen, Israel did not want me around, so I let
them follow their own stubborn desires, living according to their own ideas.
Oh, that my people would listen to me.
Oh, that Israel would follow me, walking in my paths, how quickly
I would then subdue their enemies.
How soon my hands would be upon their foes.
Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him.
They would be doomed forever.
But I would feed you with the finest wheat.
I would satisfy you with wild honey from the rock.
Psalm 82, A Psalm of ASAP God presides over heaven's court.
He pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings.
How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring
the wicked interlude?
Give justice to the poor and the orphan.
Uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute Rescue the
poor and helpless deliver them from the grasp of evil people.
But these oppressors know nothing.
They are so ignorant.
They wander about in darkness while the whole world is shaken to the core.
I say, you are gods.
You are all children of the most high, but he will die like mere mortals
and fall like every other ruler.
Rise up, oh God, and judge the earth for all the nations belong to you.
Psalm 83, a Psalm a Psalm of asap.
Oh God, do not be silent.
Do not be deaf.
Do not be quiet.
Oh God.
Don't you hear the uproar of your enemies?
Don't you see that your arrogant enemies are rising up?
They devise crafty schemes against your people.
They conspire against your precious ones come.
They say, let us wipe out Israel as a nation.
We will destroy the very memory of its existence.
Yes, this was their unanimous decision.
They signed a treaty as allies against you.
These Edomites and Ishmaelites.
Moabites and Hag writes Alite, Ammonites and Amalekites, and
people from Felicia and Tyre.
Assyria has joined them too and is Allied with the descendants of Lot
Interlude due to them as you did to the Midianites and as you did to
Cicero and Jabin at the Kai River.
They were destroyed at Endor and their decaying corpses fertilize the
soil, let their mighty nobles die as or, and Zeev did let all their
princes die, like Zeba and zelena for they said, let us seize for our own.
Use these pasture lands of God.
Oh my God.
Scatter them like tumbleweed, like chaff before the wind as a fire, burns a forest
and as a flame sets mountains ablaze.
Chase them with your fierce storm.
Terrify them with your tempest, utterly disgrace them until
they submit to your name.
Oh Lord.
Let them be ashamed and terrified forever.
Let them die in disgrace.
Then they will learn that you alone are called the Lord.
That you alone are the most high supreme over all the earth.
This concludes today's immer reading experience.
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