Old/New Testament

1 These are the messages that came to Isaiah, son of Amoz, in the visions he saw during the reigns of King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz, and King Hezekiah—all kings of Judah. In these messages God showed him what was going to happen to Judah and Jerusalem in the days ahead.

² Listen, O heaven and earth, to what the Lord is saying:

The children I raised and cared for so long and tenderly have turned against me. ³ Even the animals—the donkey and the ox—know their owner and appreciate his care for them, but not my people Israel. No matter what I do for them, they still don’t care.

⁴ Oh, what a sinful nation they are! They walk bent-backed beneath their load of guilt. Their fathers before them were evil too. Born to be bad, they have turned their backs upon the Lord and have despised the Holy One of Israel. They have cut themselves off from his help.

^5-6 Oh, my people, haven’t you had enough of punishment? Why will you force me to whip you again and again? Must you forever rebel? From head to foot you are sick and weak and faint, covered with bruises and welts and infected wounds, unanointed and unbound. ⁷ Your country lies in ruins; your cities are burned; while you watch, foreigners are destroying and plundering everything they see. ⁸ You stand there helpless and abandoned like a watchman’s shanty in the field when the harvesttime is over—or when the crop is stripped and robbed.

⁹ If the Lord Almighty had not stepped in to save a few of us, we would have been wiped out as Sodom and Gomorrah were. ¹⁰ An apt comparison!^[a] Listen, you leaders of Israel, you men of Sodom and Gomorrah, as I call you now. Listen to the Lord. Hear what he is telling you! ¹¹ I am sick of your sacrifices. Don’t bring me any more of them. I don’t want your fat rams; I don’t want to see the blood from your offerings. ^12-13 Who wants your sacrifices when you have no sorrow for your sins? The incense you bring me is a stench in my nostrils. Your holy celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath, and your special days for fasting—even your most pious meetings—all are frauds! I want nothing more to do with them. ¹⁴ I hate them all; I can’t stand the sight of them. ¹⁵ From now on, when you pray with your hands stretched out to heaven, I won’t look or listen. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear, for your hands are those of murderers; they are covered with the blood of your innocent victims.

¹⁶ Oh, wash yourselves! Be clean! Let me no longer see you doing all these wicked things; quit your evil ways. ¹⁷ Learn to do good, to be fair, and to help the poor, the fatherless, and widows.

¹⁸ Come, let’s talk this over, says the Lord; no matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you white as wool! ¹⁹ If you will only let me help you, if you will only obey, then I will make you rich! ²⁰ But if you keep on turning your backs and refusing to listen to me, you will be killed by your enemies; I, the Lord, have spoken.

²¹ Jerusalem, once a faithful wife! And now a prostitute! Running after other gods! Once “The City of Fair Play,” but now a gang of murderers. ²² Once like sterling silver; now mixed with worthless alloy! Once so pure, but now diluted like watered-down wine! ²³ Your leaders are rebels, companions of thieves; all of them take bribes and won’t defend the widows and orphans. ²⁴ Therefore the Lord, the Mighty One of Israel, says: I will pour out my anger on you, my enemies! ²⁵ I myself will melt you in a smelting pot and skim off your slag.

²⁶ And afterwards I will give you good judges and wise counselors like those you used to have. Then your city shall again be called “The City of Justice” and “The Faithful Town.”

²⁷ Those who return to the Lord, who are just and good, shall be redeemed. ²⁸ (But all sinners shall utterly perish, for they refuse to come to me.) ²⁹ Shame will cover you, and you will blush to think of all those times you sacrificed to idols in your groves of “sacred” oaks. ³⁰ You will perish like a withered tree or a garden without water. ³¹ The strongest among you will disappear like burning straw; your evil deeds are the spark that sets the straw on fire, and no one will be able to put it out.

2 This is another message to Isaiah from the Lord concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

² In the last days Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord will become the world’s greatest attraction,^[b] and people from many lands will flow there to worship the Lord.

³ “Come,” everyone will say, “let us go up the mountain of the Lord, to the Temple of the God of Israel; there he will teach us his laws, and we will obey them.” For in those days the world will be ruled from Jerusalem. ⁴ The Lord will settle international disputes; all the nations will convert their weapons of war into implements of peace.^[c] Then at the last all wars will stop and all military training will end. ⁵ O Israel, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord and be obedient to his laws!^[d]

⁶ The Lord has rejected you because you welcome foreigners from the East who practice magic and communicate with evil spirits, as the Philistines do.

⁷ Israel has vast treasures of silver and gold, and great numbers of horses and chariots ⁸ and idols—the land is full of them! They are man-made, and yet you worship them! ⁹ Small and great, all bow before them; God will not forgive you for this sin.

¹⁰ Crawl into the caves in the rocks and hide in terror from his glorious majesty, ¹¹ for the day is coming when your proud looks will be brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted. ¹² On that day the Lord Almighty will move against the proud and haughty and bring them to the dust. ¹³ All the tall cedars of Lebanon and all the mighty oaks of Bashan shall bend low, ¹⁴ and all the high mountains and hills, ¹⁵ and every high tower and wall, ¹⁶ and all the proud ocean ships and trim harbor craft—all shall be crushed before the Lord that day. ¹⁷ All the glory of mankind will bow low; the pride of men will lie in the dust, and the Lord alone will be exalted. ¹⁸ And all idols will be utterly abolished and destroyed.

¹⁹ When the Lord stands up from his throne to shake up the earth, his enemies will crawl with fear into the holes in the rocks and into the caves because of the glory of his majesty. ²⁰ Then at last they will abandon their gold and silver idols to the moles and bats ²¹ and crawl into the caverns to hide among the jagged rocks at the tops of the cliffs, to try to get away from the terror of the Lord and the glory of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth. ²² Puny man! Frail as his breath! Don’t ever put your trust in him!

5 So Christ has made us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get all tied up again in the chains of slavery to Jewish laws and ceremonies. ² Listen to me, for this is serious: if you are counting on circumcision and keeping the Jewish laws to make you right with God, then Christ cannot save you. ³ I’ll say it again. Anyone trying to find favor with God by being circumcised must always obey every other Jewish law or perish. ⁴ Christ is useless to you if you are counting on clearing your debt to God by keeping those laws; you are lost from God’s grace.

⁵ But we by the help of the Holy Spirit are counting on Christ’s death to clear away our sins and make us right with God. ⁶ And we to whom Christ has given eternal life don’t need to worry about whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we are obeying the Jewish ceremonies or not; for all we need is faith working through love.

⁷ You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth? ⁸ It certainly isn’t God who has done it, for he is the one who has called you to freedom in Christ. ⁹ But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others.

¹⁰ I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will deal with that person, whoever he is, who has been troubling and confusing you.

¹¹ Some people even say that I myself am preaching that circumcision and Jewish laws are necessary to the plan of salvation. Well, if I preached that, I would be persecuted no more—for that message doesn’t offend anyone. The fact that I am still being persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through faith in the cross of Christ alone.

¹² I only wish these teachers who want you to cut yourselves by being circumcised would cut themselves off from you and leave you alone!^[a]

¹³ For, dear brothers, you have been given freedom: not freedom to do wrong, but freedom to love and serve each other. ¹⁴ For the whole Law can be summed up in this one command: “Love others as you love yourself.” ¹⁵ But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always critical and catty, watch out! Beware of ruining each other.

¹⁶ I advise you to obey only the Holy Spirit’s instructions. He will tell you where to go and what to do, and then you won’t always be doing the wrong things your evil nature wants you to. ¹⁷ For we naturally love to do evil things that are just the opposite from the things that the Holy Spirit tells us to do; and the good things we want to do when the Spirit has his way with us are just the opposite of our natural desires. These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us, and our wishes are never free from their pressures. ¹⁸ When you are guided by the Holy Spirit, you need no longer force yourself to obey Jewish laws.

¹⁹ But when you follow your own wrong inclinations, your lives will produce these evil results: impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, ²⁰ idolatry, spiritism (that is, encouraging the activity of demons), hatred and fighting, jealousy and anger, constant effort to get the best for yourself, complaints and criticisms, the feeling that everyone else is wrong except those in your own little group—and there will be wrong doctrine, ²¹ envy, murder, drunkenness, wild parties, and all that sort of thing. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

²² But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control; and here there is no conflict with Jewish laws.

²⁴ Those who belong to Christ have nailed their natural evil desires to his cross and crucified them there.

²⁵ If we are living now by the Holy Spirit’s power, let us follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. ²⁶ Then we won’t need to look for honors and popularity, which lead to jealousy and hard feelings.