July 22
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Jeremiah 50:23-46

Jeremiah 50:23-46

23How the hammer of the whole earth
is cut down and smashed!
What a horror Babylon has become
among the nations!
24Babylon, I laid a trap for you, and you were caught,
but you did not even know it.
You were found and captured
because you fought against the Lord.
25The Lord opened His armory
and brought out His weapons of wrath,
because it is a task of the Lord God of Hosts
in the land of the Chaldeans.
26Come against her from the most distant places.
Open her granaries;
pile her up like mounds of grain
and completely destroy her.
Leave her no survivors.
27Put all her young bulls to the sword;
let them go down to the slaughter.
Woe to them, because their day has come,
the time of their punishment.
28"There is a voice of fugitives and those who escape
from the land of Babylon
announcing in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God,
the vengeance for His temple.
29Summon the archers to Babylon,
all who string the bow;
camp all around her; let none escape.
Repay her according to her deeds;
just as she has done, do the same to her,
for she has acted arrogantly against the Lord,
against the Holy One of Israel.
30Therefore, her young men will fall
in her public squares;
all the warriors will perish in that day.

This is the Lord's declaration.
31Look, I am against you, you arrogant one-

this is the declaration of

the Lord God of Hosts-
because your day has come,
the time when I will punish you.
32The arrogant will stumble and fall
with no one to pick him up.
I will set fire to his cities,
and it will consume everything around him."
33This is what the Lord of Hosts says:
Israelites and Judeans alike have been oppressed.
All their captors hold them fast;
they refuse to release them.
34Their Redeemer is strong;
Yahweh of Hosts is His name.
He will fervently plead their case
so that He might bring rest to the earth
but turmoil to those who live in Babylon.
35A sword is over the Chaldeans-

this is the Lord's declaration-
against those who live in Babylon,
against her officials, and against her sages.
36A sword is against the diviners,
and they will act foolishly.
A sword is against her heroic warriors,
and they will be terrified.
37A sword is against his horses and chariots
and against all the foreigners among them,
and they will be like women.
A sword is against her treasuries,
and they will be plundered.
38A drought will come on her waters,
and they will be dried up.
For it is a land of carved images,
and they go mad because of terrifying things.
39Therefore, desert creatures will live with hyenas,
and ostriches will also live in her.
It will never again be inhabited
or lived in through all generations.
40Just as God demolished Sodom and Gomorrah
and their neighboring towns-

this is the Lord's declaration-
so no one will live there;
no human being will even stay in it
as a temporary resident.
41Look! A people comes from the north.
A great nation and many kings will be stirred up
from the remote regions of the earth.
42They grasp bow and javelin.
They are cruel and show no mercy.
Their voice roars like the sea,
and they ride on horses,
lined up like men in battle formation
against you, Daughter Babylon.
43The king of Babylon has heard reports about them,
and his hands fall helpless.
Distress has seized him-
pain, like a woman in labor.
44"Look, it will be like a lion coming from the thickets of the Jordan to the watered grazing land. Indeed, I will chase Babylon away from her land in a flash. I will appoint whoever is chosen for her. For who is like Me? Who will summon Me? Who is the shepherd who can stand against Me?"
45Therefore, hear the plans that the Lord has drawn up against Babylon and the strategies He has devised against the land of the Chaldeans: Certainly the flock's little lambs will be dragged away; certainly the grazing land will be made desolate because of them. 46At the sound of Babylon's conquest the earth will quake; a cry will be heard among the nations.

John 4

Chapter 4

4:1When Jesus knew that the Pharisees heard He was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2(though Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3He left Judea and went again to Galilee. 4He had to travel through Samaria, 5so He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, worn out from His journey, sat down at the well. It was about six in the evening.
7A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
"Give Me a drink," Jesus said to her, 8for His disciples had gone into town to buy food.
9"How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" she asked Him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10Jesus answered, "If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would ask Him, and He would give you living water."
11"Sir," said the woman, "You don't even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do You get this 'living water'? 12You aren't greater than our father Jacob, are You? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock."
13Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again-ever! In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life."
15"Sir," the woman said to Him, "give me this water so I won't get thirsty and come here to draw water."
16"Go call your husband," He told her, "and come back here."
17"I don't have a husband," she answered.
"You have correctly said, 'I don't have a husband,'" Jesus said. 18"For you've had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true."
19"Sir," the woman replied, "I see that You are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem."
21Jesus told her, "Believe Me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
25The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When He comes, He will explain everything to us."
26"I am He," Jesus told her, "the One speaking to you."
27Just then His disciples arrived, and they were amazed that He was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, "What do You want?" or "Why are You talking with her?"
28Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the men, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah?" 30They left the town and made their way to Him.
31In the meantime the disciples kept urging Him, "Rabbi, eat something."
32But He said, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."
33The disciples said to one another, "Could someone have brought Him something to eat?"
34"My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work," Jesus told them. 35"Don't you say, 'There are still four more months, then comes the harvest'? Listen to what I'm telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ready for harvest. 36The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so the sower and reaper can rejoice together. 37For in this case the saying is true: 'One sows and another reaps.' 38I sent you to reap what you didn't labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor."
39Now many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of what the woman said when she testified, "He told me everything I ever did." 40Therefore, when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. 41Many more believed because of what He said. 42And they told the woman, "We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world."
43After two days He left there for Galilee. 44Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45When they entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him because they had seen everything He did in Jerusalem during the festival. For they also had gone to the festival.
46Then He went again to Cana of Galilee, where He had turned the water into wine. There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum. 47When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and pleaded with Him to come down and heal his son, for he was about to die.
48Jesus told him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe."
49"Sir," the official said to Him, "come down before my boy dies!"
50"Go," Jesus told him, "your son will live." The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed.
51While he was still going down, his slaves met him saying that his boy was alive. 52He asked them at what time he got better. "Yesterday at seven in the morning the fever left him," they answered. 53The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus had told him, "Your son will live." Then he himself believed, along with his whole household.
54This, therefore, was the second sign Jesus performed after He came from Judea to Galilee.

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