Then God said to Noah and his sons with him,
“Behold, I now establish My covenant with you and your descendants after you,
and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth—every living thing that came out of the ark.
And I establish My covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between Me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
. . .
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
The fear and dread of you will fall on every living creature on the earth, every bird of the air, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are delivered into your hand.
Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you all things.
But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it.
And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man:
. . .
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit,
in whom He also went and preached to the spirits in prison
who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water.
And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to Him.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh.”
At this, the Jews began to argue among themselves, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you.
Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
. . .
And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
You must 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. Farewell.
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off—to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself.”
Jesus said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come, but woe to the one through whom they come!
It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
Watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.
Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to say, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
. . .
Now when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them,
the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose.
So the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.
. . .
When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from that time and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts will accomplish this.
Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed. He is a pattern of the One to come.
But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare.
In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes, a Mede by descent, who was made ruler over the kingdom of the Chaldeans—
in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the sacred books, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.
So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.
And I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed, “O, Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of loving devotion to those who love Him and keep His commandments,
we have sinned and done wrong. We have acted wickedly and rebelled. We have turned away from Your commandments and ordinances.
. . .
When Moses came and told the people all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all responded with one voice: “All the words that the LORD has spoken, we will do.”
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
. . .
Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
So Abram departed, as the LORD had directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
And Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions and people they had acquired in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,
. . .
After these events, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”
But Abram replied, “O Lord GOD, what can You give me, since I remain childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”
Abram continued, “Behold, You have given me no offspring, so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
Then the word of the LORD came to Abram, saying, “This one will not be your heir, but one who comes from your own body will be your heir.”
And the LORD took him outside and said, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He told him, “So shall your offspring be.”
. . .
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between Me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.
Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
And whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of every kind that is on the earth.”
. . .
By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous when God gave approval to his gifts. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, purify our consciences from works of death, so that we may serve the living God!
I will sing for my beloved a song of his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour!
“And now, O dwellers of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I exhort you to judge between Me and My vineyard.
What more could I have done for My vineyard than I already did for it? Why, when I expected sweet grapes, did it bring forth sour fruit?
Now I will tell you what I am about to do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled.
. . .
Now in the days that Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, Rezin king of Aram marched up to wage war against Jerusalem. He was accompanied by Pekah son of Remaliah the king of Israel, but he could not overpower the city.
When it was reported to the house of David that Aram was in league with Ephraim, the hearts of Ahaz and his people trembled like trees in the forest shaken by the wind.
Then the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out with your son Shear-jashub to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct that feeds the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field,
and say to him: Calm down and be quiet. Do not be afraid or disheartened over these two smoldering stubs of firewood—over the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah.
For Aram, along with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has plotted your ruin, saying:
. . .
Jesus put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
But while everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and slipped away.
When the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the weeds also appeared.
The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. So the servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
. . .
Then the whole congregation lifted up their voices and cried out, and that night the people wept.
All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this wilderness!
Why is the LORD bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will become plunder. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?”
So they said to one another, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.”
Then Moses and Aaron fell facedown before the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel.
. . .
Then I saw the thrones, and those seated on them had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image, and had not received its mark on their foreheads or hands. And they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
And He told me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life.