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The Promise of Heaven by Dr. David Jeremiah

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Fear Not! A Guide to Living a Fearless Life

Prayers for Peace of Mind: Help for Anxiety, Worry, or Stress

Coming to Life: 30-Day Devotional

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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
 <div class="book bk2KI">
 <div class="chapter ch23" data-usfm="2KI.23">
 <div class="label">23</div><div class="s1">Josiah Renews the Covenant</div><div class="p"> 1Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. 2He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets&#8212;all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. 3The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord&#8212;to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.</div><div class="p"> 4The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. 5He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem&#8212;those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. 6He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. 7He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.</div><div class="p"> 8Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the gateway at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which was on the left of the city gate. 9Although the priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.</div><div class="p"> 10He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek. 11He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court#23:11 The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain. near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.</div><div class="p"> 12He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley. 13The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption&#8212;the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon. 14Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.</div><div class="p"> 15Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin&#8212;even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. 16Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.</div><div class="p"> 17The king asked, &#8220;What is that tombstone I see?&#8221;</div><div class="p">The people of the city said, &#8220;It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 18&#8220;Leave it alone,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Don&#8217;t let anyone disturb his bones.&#8221; So they spared his bones and those of the prophet who had come from Samaria.</div><div class="p"> 19Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that had aroused the Lord&#8217;s anger. 20Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.</div><div class="p"> 21The king gave this order to all the people: &#8220;Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.&#8221; 22Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed. 23But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.</div><div class="p"> 24Furthermore, Josiah got rid of the mediums and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the requirements of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the temple of the Lord. 25Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did&#8212;with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.</div><div class="p"> 26Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to arouse his anger. 27So the Lord said, &#8220;I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, &#8216;My Name shall be there.&#8217;#23:27 1 Kings 8:29&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 28As for the other events of Josiah&#8217;s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?</div><div class="p"> 29While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Necho faced him and killed him at Megiddo. 30Josiah&#8217;s servants brought his body in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father.</div><div class="s1">Jehoahaz King of Judah</div><div class="p"> 31Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother&#8217;s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah. 32He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done. 33Pharaoh Necho put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath so that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and he imposed on Judah a levy of a hundred talents#23:33 That is, about 3 3/4 tons or about 3.4 metric tons of silver and a talent#23:33 That is, about 75 pounds or about 34 kilograms of gold. 34Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim son of Josiah king in place of his father Josiah and changed Eliakim&#8217;s name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz and carried him off to Egypt, and there he died. 35Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh Necho the silver and gold he demanded. In order to do so, he taxed the land and exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land according to their assessments.</div><div class="s1">Jehoiakim King of Judah</div><div class="p"> 36Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother&#8217;s name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah; she was from Rumah. 37And he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done.</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
 <div class="book bk2CH">
 <div class="chapter ch35" data-usfm="2CH.35">
 <div class="label">35</div><div class="s1">Josiah Celebrates the Passover</div><div class="p"> 1Josiah celebrated the Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, and the Passover lamb was slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the first month. 2He appointed the priests to their duties and encouraged them in the service of the Lord&#8217;s temple. 3He said to the Levites, who instructed all Israel and who had been consecrated to the Lord: &#8220;Put the sacred ark in the temple that Solomon son of David king of Israel built. It is not to be carried about on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and his people Israel. 4Prepare yourselves by families in your divisions, according to the instructions written by David king of Israel and by his son Solomon.</div><div class="p"> 5&#8220;Stand in the holy place with a group of Levites for each subdivision of the families of your fellow Israelites, the lay people. 6Slaughter the Passover lambs, consecrate yourselves and prepare the lambs for your fellow Israelites, doing what the Lord commanded through Moses.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 7Josiah provided for all the lay people who were there a total of thirty thousand lambs and goats for the Passover offerings, and also three thousand cattle&#8212;all from the king&#8217;s own possessions.</div><div class="p"> 8His officials also contributed voluntarily to the people and the priests and Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah and Jehiel, the officials in charge of God&#8217;s temple, gave the priests twenty-six hundred Passover offerings and three hundred cattle. 9Also Konaniah along with Shemaiah and Nethanel, his brothers, and Hashabiah, Jeiel and Jozabad, the leaders of the Levites, provided five thousand Passover offerings and five hundred head of cattle for the Levites.</div><div class="p"> 10The service was arranged and the priests stood in their places with the Levites in their divisions as the king had ordered. 11The Passover lambs were slaughtered, and the priests splashed against the altar the blood handed to them, while the Levites skinned the animals. 12They set aside the burnt offerings to give them to the subdivisions of the families of the people to offer to the Lord, as it is written in the Book of Moses. They did the same with the cattle. 13They roasted the Passover animals over the fire as prescribed, and boiled the holy offerings in pots, caldrons and pans and served them quickly to all the people. 14After this, they made preparations for themselves and for the priests, because the priests, the descendants of Aaron, were sacrificing the burnt offerings and the fat portions until nightfall. So the Levites made preparations for themselves and for the Aaronic priests.</div><div class="p"> 15The musicians, the descendants of Asaph, were in the places prescribed by David, Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun the king&#8217;s seer. The gatekeepers at each gate did not need to leave their posts, because their fellow Levites made the preparations for them.</div><div class="p"> 16So at that time the entire service of the Lord was carried out for the celebration of the Passover and the offering of burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord, as King Josiah had ordered. 17The Israelites who were present celebrated the Passover at that time and observed the Festival of Unleavened Bread for seven days. 18The Passover had not been observed like this in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; and none of the kings of Israel had ever celebrated such a Passover as did Josiah, with the priests, the Levites and all Judah and Israel who were there with the people of Jerusalem. 19This Passover was celebrated in the eighteenth year of Josiah&#8217;s reign.</div><div class="s1">The Death of Josiah</div><div class="p"> 20After all this, when Josiah had set the temple in order, Necho king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. 21But Necho sent messengers to him, saying, &#8220;What quarrel is there, king of Judah, between you and me? It is not you I am attacking at this time, but the house with which I am at war. God has told me to hurry; so stop opposing God, who is with me, or he will destroy you.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 22Josiah, however, would not turn away from him, but disguised himself to engage him in battle. He would not listen to what Necho had said at God&#8217;s command but went to fight him on the plain of Megiddo.</div><div class="p"> 23Archers shot King Josiah, and he told his officers, &#8220;Take me away; I am badly wounded.&#8221; 24So they took him out of his chariot, put him in his other chariot and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died. He was buried in the tombs of his ancestors, and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him.</div><div class="p"> 25Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah, and to this day all the male and female singers commemorate Josiah in the laments. These became a tradition in Israel and are written in the Laments.</div><div class="p"> 26The other events of Josiah&#8217;s reign and his acts of devotion in accordance with what is written in the Law of the Lord&#8212; 27all the events, from beginning to end, are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
 <div class="book bkACT">
 <div class="chapter ch15" data-usfm="ACT.15">
 <div class="label">15</div><div class="s1">The Council at Jerusalem</div><div class="p"> 1Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: &#8220;Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.&#8221; 2This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. 3The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. 4When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.</div><div class="p"> 5Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, &#8220;The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 6The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: &#8220;Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 12The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13When they finished, James spoke up. &#8220;Brothers,&#8221; he said, &#8220;listen to me. 14Simon#15:14 Greek Simeon, a variant of Simon; that is, Peter has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:</div><div class="q1"> 16&#8220;&#8198;&#8216;After this I will return</div><div class="q2">and rebuild David&#8217;s fallen tent.</div><div class="q1">Its ruins I will rebuild,</div><div class="q2">and I will restore it,</div><div class="q1"> 17that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,</div><div class="q2">even all the Gentiles who bear my name,</div><div class="q1">says the Lord, who does these things&#8217;#15:17 Amos 9:11,12 (see Septuagint)&#8212;</div><div class="q2"> 18things known from long ago.#15:17,18 Some manuscripts things&#8217;&#8212; / 18 the Lord&#8217;s work is known to him from long ago</div><div class="p"> 19&#8220;It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.&#8221;</div><div class="s1">The Council&#8217;s Letter to Gentile Believers</div><div class="p"> 22Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers. 23With them they sent the following letter:</div><div class="pmo">The apostles and elders, your brothers,</div><div class="b"></div><div class="pmo">To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:</div><div class="b"></div><div class="pmo">Greetings.</div><div class="b"></div><div class="pm"> 24We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul&#8212; 26men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.</div><div class="pmc">Farewell.</div><div class="p"> 30So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. 31The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. 32Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. 33After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. [34]#15:34 Some manuscripts include here But Silas decided to remain there. 35But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.</div><div class="s1">Disagreement Between Paul and Barnabas</div><div class="p"> 36Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, &#8220;Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.&#8221; 37Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. 41He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.</div>
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