Sept 25th

When Yahweh will have compassion on Jacob and again choose Israel, and put them in their own land, then sojourners will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob.

And the peoples will take them along and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them as an inheritance in the land of Yahweh for their male and female slaves; and they will take their captors captive and will have dominion over their taskmasters.

And it will be in the day when Yahweh gives you rest from your pain and turmoil and harsh slavery in which you have been enslaved,

that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say,

“I will rise up against them,” declares Yahweh of hosts, “and will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, offspring and posterity,” declares Yahweh.

“I will also make it a possession for the hedgehog and swamps of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” declares Yahweh of hosts.

Yahweh of hosts has sworn saying, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have counseled so it will stand,

to break Assyria in My land, and I will trod him down on My mountains. Then his yoke will be removed from them and his burden removed from their shoulder.

This is the counsel that is counseled against the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out against all the nations.

For Yahweh of hosts has counseled, and who can thwart it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?”

In the year that King Ahaz died this oracle came:

You are looking at things as they are outwardly. If anyone is confident in himself that he is Christ’s, let him consider this again within himself, that just as he is Christ’s, so also are we.

For even if I boast somewhat further about our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be put to shame,

for I do not wish to seem as if I would terrify you by my letters.

For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is weak and his words contemptible.”

Let such a person consider this, that what we are in word by letters when absent, such persons we are also in deed when present.

For we do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves, but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.

But we will not boast beyond our measure, but within the measure of the area of influence which God apportioned to us as a measure, to reach even as far as you.

For we are not overextending ourselves, as if we did not reach you, (for we were the first to come even as far as you in the gospel of Christ),

not boasting beyond our measure in other men’s labors, but having the hope—that as your faith grows—to be enlarged even more by you within our area of influence,

so as to proclaim the gospel even to the regions beyond you, and not to boast in what has been accomplished in the area of influence of another.

But he who boasts is to boast in the Lord.

For it is not the one who commends himself that is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you are bearing with me.

For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit which you did not receive, or a different gospel which you did not accept, you bear this beautifully.

For I consider myself in no way inferior to the most-eminent apostles.

But even if I am unskilled in word, yet I am not so in knowledge; in fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things.

Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I proclaimed the gospel of God to you without charge?

I robbed other churches by taking wages from them to minister to you.

And when I was present with you and was in need, I was not a burden to anyone; for when the brothers came from Macedonia they fully supplied my need, and in everything I kept and will keep myself from being a burden to you.

As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia.

Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!