Daily Bible GNT March 15 Scroll

A Woman's Faith
(Mark 7.24-30)

Matthew 15 ²¹Jesus left that place and went off to the territory near the cities of Tyre and Sidon. ²²A Canaanite woman who lived in that region came to him. "Son of David!" she cried out. "Have mercy on me, sir! My daughter has a demon and is in a terrible condition."

²³But Jesus did not say a word to her. His disciples came to him and begged him, "Send her away! She is following us and making all this noise!"

²⁴Then Jesus replied, "I have been sent only to the lost sheep of the people of Israel."

²⁵At this the woman came and fell at his feet. "Help me, sir!" she said.

²⁶Jesus answered, "It isn't right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

²⁷"That's true, sir," she answered, "but even the dogs eat the leftovers that fall from their masters' table."

²⁸So Jesus answered her, "You are a woman of great faith! What you want will be done for you." And at that very moment her daughter was healed.

Jesus Heals Many People

²⁹Jesus left there and went along by Lake Galilee. He climbed a hill and sat down. ³⁰Large crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the dumb, and many other sick people, whom they placed at Jesus' feet; and he healed them. ³¹The people were amazed as they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they praised the God of Israel.

Jesus Feeds Four Thousand
(Mark 8.1-10)

³²Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I feel sorry for these people, because they have been with me for three days and now have nothing to eat. I don't want to send them away without feeding them, for they might faint on their way home."

³³The disciples asked him, "Where will we find enough food in this desert to feed this crowd?"

³⁴"How much bread do you have?" Jesus asked.

"Seven loaves," they answered, "and a few small fish."

³⁵So Jesus ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. ³⁶Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, gave thanks to God, broke them, and gave them to the disciples; and the disciples gave them to the people. ³⁷They all ate and had enough. Then the disciples took up seven baskets full of pieces left over. ³⁸The number of men who ate was four thousand, not counting the women and children.

³⁹Then Jesus sent the people away, got into a boat, and went to the territory of Magadan.

Blessings for Obedience
(Deuteronomy 7.12-24; 28.1-14)

Leviticus 26 The LORD said, "Do not make idols or set up statues, stone pillars, or carved stones to worship. I am the LORD your God. ²Keep the religious festivals and honor the place where I am worshiped. I am the LORD.

³"If you live according to my laws and obey my commands, ⁴I will send you rain at the right time, so that the land will produce crops and the trees will bear fruit. ⁵Your crops will be so plentiful that you will still be harvesting grain when it is time to pick grapes, and you will still be picking grapes when it is time to plant grain. You will have all that you want to eat, and you can live in safety in your land.

⁶"I will give you peace in your land, and you can sleep without being afraid of anyone. I will get rid of the dangerous animals in the land, and there will be no more war there. ⁷You will be victorious over your enemies; ⁸five of you will be able to defeat a hundred, and a hundred will be able to defeat ten thousand. ⁹I will bless you and give you many children; I will keep my part of the covenant that I made with you. ¹⁰Your harvests will be so plentiful that they will last for a year, and even then you will have to throw away what is left of the old harvest to make room for the new. ¹¹I will live among you in my sacred Tent, and I will never turn away from you. ¹²I will be with you; I will be your God, and you will be my people. ¹³I, the LORD your God, brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves. I broke the power that held you down and I let you walk with your head held high."

Punishment for Disobedience
(Deuteronomy 28.15-68)

¹⁴The LORD said, "If you will not obey my commands, you will be punished. ¹⁵If you refuse to obey my laws and commands and break the covenant I have made with you, ¹⁶I will punish you. I will bring disaster on you--incurable diseases and fevers that will make you blind and cause your life to waste away. You will plant your crops, but it will do you no good, because your enemies will conquer you and eat what you have grown. ¹⁷I will turn against you, so that you will be defeated, and those who hate you will rule over you; you will be so terrified that you will run when no one is chasing you.

¹⁸"If even after all of this you still do not obey me, I will increase your punishment seven times. ¹⁹I will break your stubborn pride; there will be no rain, and your land will be dry and as hard as iron. ²⁰All your hard work will do you no good, because your land will not produce crops and the trees will not bear fruit.

²¹"If you still continue to resist me and refuse to obey me, I will again increase your punishment seven times. ²²I will send dangerous animals among you, and they will kill your children, destroy your livestock, and leave so few of you that your roads will be deserted.

²³"If after all of this punishment you still do not listen to me, but continue to defy me, ²⁴then I will turn on you and punish you seven times harder than before. ²⁵I will bring war on you to punish you for breaking our covenant, and if you gather in your cities for safety, I will send incurable diseases among you, and you will be forced to surrender to your enemies. ²⁶I will cut off your food supply, so that ten women will need only one oven to bake all the bread they have. They will ration it out, and when you have eaten it all, you will still be hungry.

²⁷"If after all of this you still continue to defy me and refuse to obey me, ²⁸then in my anger I will turn on you and again make your punishment seven times worse than before. ²⁹Your hunger will be so great that you will eat your own children. ³⁰I will destroy your places of worship on the hills, tear down your incense altars, and throw your dead bodies on your fallen idols. In utter disgust ³¹I will turn your cities into ruins, destroy your places of worship, and refuse to accept your sacrifices. ³²I will destroy your land so completely that the enemies who occupy it will be shocked at the destruction. ³³I will bring war on you and scatter you in foreign lands. Your land will be deserted, and your cities left in ruins. ^34-35Then the land will enjoy the years of complete rest that you would not give it; it will lie abandoned and get its rest while you are in exile in the land of your enemies.

³⁶"I will make those of you who are in exile so terrified that the sound of a leaf blowing in the wind will make you run. You will run as if you were being pursued in battle, and you will fall when there is no enemy near you. ³⁷You will stumble over one another when no one is chasing you, and you will be unable to fight against any enemy. ³⁸You will die in exile, swallowed up by the land of your enemies. ³⁹The few of you who survive in the land of your enemies will waste away because of your own sin and the sin of your ancestors.

⁴⁰"But your descendants will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, who resisted me and rebelled against me, ⁴¹and caused me to turn against them and send them into exile in the land of their enemies. At last, when your descendants are humbled and they have paid the penalty for their sin and rebellion, ⁴²I will remember my covenant with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will renew my promise to give my people the land. ⁴³First, however, the land must be rid of its people, so that it can enjoy its complete rest, and they must pay the full penalty for having rejected my laws and my commands. ⁴⁴But even then, when they are still in the land of their enemies, I will not completely abandon them or destroy them. That would put an end to my covenant with them, and I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵I will renew the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I showed all the nations my power by bringing my people out of Egypt, in order that I, the LORD, might be their God."

⁴⁶All these are the laws and commands that the LORD gave to Moses on Mount Sinai for the people of Israel.

Laws concerning Gifts to the LORD

Leviticus 27 The LORD gave Moses ²the following regulations for the people of Israel. When any of you have been given to the LORD in fulfillment of a special vow, you may be set free by the payment of the following sums of money, ^3-7according to the official standard:

--adult male, twenty to sixty years old: 50 pieces of silver

--adult female: 30 pieces of silver

--young male, five to twenty years old: 20 pieces of silver

--young female: 10 pieces of silver

--infant male under five: 5 pieces of silver

--infant female: 3 pieces of silver

--male above sixty years of age: 15 pieces of silver

--female above sixty: 10 pieces of silver

⁸If any of you make a vow and are too poor to pay the standard price, you shall bring the person to the priest, and the priest will set a lower price, according to your ability to pay.

⁹If your vow concerns an animal that is acceptable as an offering to the LORD, then every gift made to the LORD is sacred, ¹⁰and you may not substitute another animal for it. If you do, both animals belong to the LORD. ¹¹But if your vow concerns a ritually unclean animal, which is not acceptable as an offering to the LORD, you shall take the animal to the priest. ¹²The priest shall set a price for it, according to its good or bad qualities, and the price will be final. ¹³If you wish to buy it back, you must pay the price plus an additional 20 percent.

¹⁴When any of you dedicate your house to the LORD, the priest shall set the price according to its good or bad points, and the price will be final. ¹⁵If you wish to buy your house back, you must pay the price plus an additional 20 percent.

¹⁶If any of you dedicate part of your land to the LORD, the price shall be set according to the amount of seed it takes to sow it, at the rate of ten pieces of silver per bushel of barley. ¹⁷If you dedicate the land immediately after a Year of Restoration, the full price applies. ¹⁸If you dedicate it any time later, the priest shall estimate the cash value according to the number of years left until the next Year of Restoration, and set a reduced price. ¹⁹If you wish to buy your field back, you must pay the price plus an additional 20 percent. ²⁰If you sell the field to someone else without first buying it back from the LORD, you lose the right to buy it back. ²¹At the next Year of Restoration the field will become the LORD's permanent property; it shall belong to the priests.

²²If you dedicate to the LORD a field that you have bought, ²³the priest shall estimate its value according to the number of years until the next Year of Restoration, and you must pay the price that very day; the money belongs to the LORD. ²⁴At the Year of Restoration the field shall be returned to the original owner or to the descendants.

²⁵All prices shall be set according to the official standard.

²⁶The first-born of an animal already belongs to the LORD, so no one may dedicate it to him as a freewill offering. A calf, a lamb, or a kid belongs to the LORD, ²⁷but the first-born of an unclean animal may be bought back at the standard price plus an additional 20 percent. If it is not bought back, it may be sold to someone else at the standard price.

²⁸None of you may sell or buy back what you have unconditionally dedicated to the LORD, whether it is a human being, an animal, or land. It belongs permanently to the LORD. ²⁹Not even human beings who have been unconditionally dedicated may be bought back; they must be put to death.

³⁰One tenth of all the produce of the land, whether grain or fruit, belongs to the LORD. ³¹If you wish to buy any of it back, you must pay the standard price plus an additional 20 percent. ³²One of every ten domestic animals belongs to the LORD. When the animals are counted, every tenth one belongs to the LORD. ³³You may not arrange the animals so that the poor animals are chosen, and you may not make any substitutions. If you do substitute one animal for another, then both animals will belong to the LORD and may not be bought back.

³⁴These are the commands that the LORD gave Moses on Mount Sinai for the people of Israel.

The Philosopher's Experience

Ecclesiastes 1 ¹²I, the Philosopher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹³I determined that I would examine and study all the things that are done in this world.

God has laid a miserable fate upon us. ¹⁴I have seen everything done in this world, and I tell you, it is all useless. It is like chasing the wind. ¹⁵You can't straighten out what is crooked; you can't count things that aren't there.

¹⁶I told myself, "I have become a great man, far wiser than anyone who ruled Jerusalem before me. I know what wisdom and knowledge really are." ¹⁷I was determined to learn the difference between knowledge and foolishness, wisdom and madness. But I found out that I might as well be chasing the wind. ¹⁸The wiser you are, the more worries you have; the more you know, the more it hurts.
Ecclesiastes 2 I decided to enjoy myself and find out what happiness is. But I found that this is useless, too. ²I discovered that laughter is foolish, that pleasure does you no good. ³Driven on by my desire for wisdom, I decided to cheer myself up with wine and have a good time. I thought that this might be the best way people can spend their short lives on earth.

⁴I accomplished great things. I built myself houses and planted vineyards. ⁵I planted gardens and orchards, with all kinds of fruit trees in them; ⁶I dug ponds to irrigate them. ⁷I bought many slaves, and there were slaves born in my household. I owned more livestock than anyone else who had ever lived in Jerusalem. ⁸I also piled up silver and gold from the royal treasuries of the lands I ruled. Men and women sang to entertain me, and I had all the women a man could want.

⁹Yes, I was great, greater than anyone else who had ever lived in Jerusalem, and my wisdom never failed me. ¹⁰Anything I wanted, I got. I did not deny myself any pleasure. I was proud of everything I had worked for, and all this was my reward. ¹¹Then I thought about all that I had done and how hard I had worked doing it, and I realized that it didn't mean a thing. It was like chasing the wind--of no use at all. ¹²After all, a king can only do what previous kings have done.

So I started thinking about what it meant to be wise or reckless or foolish. ¹³Oh, I know, "Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. ¹⁴The wise can see where they are going, and fools cannot." But I also know that the same fate is waiting for us all. ¹⁵I thought to myself, "What happens to fools is going to happen to me, too. So what have I gained from being so wise?" "Nothing," I answered, "not a thing." ¹⁶No one remembers the wise, and no one remembers fools. In days to come, we will all be forgotten. We must all die--wise and foolish alike. ¹⁷So life came to mean nothing to me, because everything in it had brought me nothing but trouble. It had all been useless; I had been chasing the wind.

¹⁸Nothing that I had worked for and earned meant a thing to me, because I knew that I would have to leave it to my successor, ¹⁹and he might be wise, or he might be foolish--who knows? Yet he will own everything I have worked for, everything my wisdom has earned for me in this world. It is all useless. ²⁰So I came to regret that I had worked so hard. ²¹You work for something with all your wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then you have to leave it all to someone who hasn't had to work for it. It is useless, and it isn't right! ²²You work and worry your way through life, and what do you have to show for it? ²³As long as you live, everything you do brings nothing but worry and heartache. Even at night your mind can't rest. It is all useless.

²⁴The best thing we can do is eat and drink and enjoy what we have earned. And yet, I realized that even this comes from God. ²⁵How else could you have anything to eat or enjoy yourself at all? ²⁶God gives wisdom, knowledge, and happiness to those who please him, but he makes sinners work, earning and saving, so that what they get can be given to those who please him. It is all useless. It is like chasing the wind.

This reading is from The Holy Bible, Today's English Version, Second Edition copyright © American Bible Society, 1992;
Old Testament copyright © American Bible Society, 1976, 1992; New Testament © American Bible Society, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992.

These daily Bible readings from the Good News Translation (GNT), formerly the Today's English Version (TEV), are published by BibleNetUSA. The web site and BibleCard® designs are by iCreative. All BibleCard® images are copyrighted by iCreative. All rights reserved.