Isaiah 28; Isaiah 29; Philippians 3

1 The kingdom of Israel is doomed! Its glory is fading like the crowns of flowers on the heads of its drunken leaders. Their proud heads are well perfumed, but there they lie, dead drunk.

2 The Lord has someone strong and powerful ready to attack them, someone who will come like a hailstorm, like a torrent of rain, like a rushing, overpowering flood, and will overwhelm the land.

3 The pride of those drunken leaders will be trampled underfoot.

4 The fading glory of those proud leaders will disappear like the first figs of the season, picked and eaten as soon as they are ripe.

5 A day is coming when the Lord Almighty will be like a glorious crown of flowers for his people who survive.

6 He will give a sense of justice to those who serve as judges, and courage to those who defend the city gates from attack.

7 Even the prophets and the priests are so drunk that they stagger. They have drunk so much wine and liquor that they stumble in confusion. The prophets are too drunk to understand the visions that God sends, and the priests are too drunk to decide the cases that are brought to them.

8 The tables where they sit are all covered with vomit, and not a clean spot is left.

9 They complain about me. They say, "Who does that man think he's teaching? Who needs his message? It's only good for babies that have just stopped nursing!

10 He is trying to teach us letter by letter, line by line, lesson by lesson."

11 If you won't listen to me, then God will use foreigners speaking some strange-sounding language to teach you a lesson.

12 He offered rest and comfort to all of you, but you refused to listen to him.

13 That is why the Lord is going to teach you letter by letter, line by line, lesson by lesson. Then you will stumble with every step you take. You will be wounded, trapped, and taken prisoner.

14 Now you arrogant leaders who rule here in Jerusalem over this people, listen to what the Lord is saying.

15 You boast that you have made a treaty with death and reached an agreement with the world of the dead. You are certain that disaster will spare you when it comes, because you depend on lies and deceit to keep you safe.

16 This, now, is what the Sovereign Lord says: "I am placing in Zion a foundation that is firm and strong. In it I am putting a solid cornerstone on which are written the words, "Faith that is firm is also patient.'

17 Justice will be the measuring line for the foundation, and honesty will be its plumb line." Hailstorms will sweep away all the lies you depend on, and floods will destroy your security.

18 The treaty you have made with death will be abolished, and your agreement with the world of the dead will be canceled. When disaster sweeps down, you will be overcome.

19 It will strike you again and again, morning after morning. You will have to bear it day and night. Each new message from God will bring new terror!

20 You will be like the person in the proverb, who tries to sleep in a bed too short to stretch out on, with a blanket too narrow to wrap himself in.

21 The Lord will fight as he did at Mount Perazim and in the valley of Gibeon, in order to do what he intends to do - strange as his actions may seem. He will complete his work, his mysterious work.

22 Don't laugh at the warning I am giving you! If you do, it will be even harder for you to escape. I have heard the Lord Almighty's decision to destroy the whole country.

23 Listen to what I am saying; pay attention to what I am telling you.

24 Farmers don't constantly plow their fields and keep getting them ready for planting.

25 Once they have prepared the soil, they plant the seeds of herbs such as dill and cumin. They plant rows of wheat and barley, and at the edges of their fields they plant other grain.

26 They know how to do their work, because God has taught them.

27 They never use a heavy club to beat out dill seeds or cumin seeds; instead they use light sticks of the proper size.

28 They do not ruin the wheat by threshing it endlessly, and they know how to thresh it by driving a cart over it without bruising the grains.

29 All this wisdom comes from the Lord Almighty. The plans God makes are wise, and they always succeed.

1 God's altar, Jerusalem itself, is doomed! The city where David camped is doomed! Let another year or two come and go, with its feasts and festivals,

2 and then God will bring disaster on the city that is called "God's altar." There will be weeping and wailing, and the whole city will be like an altar covered with blood.

3 God will attack the city, surround it, and besiege it.

4 Jerusalem will be like a ghost struggling to speak from under the ground, a muffled voice coming from the dust.

5 Jerusalem, all the foreigners who attack you will be blown away like dust, and their terrifying armies will fly away like straw. Suddenly and unexpectedly

6 the Lord Almighty will rescue you with violent thunderstorms and earthquakes. He will send windstorms and raging fire;

7 then all the armies of the nations attacking the city of God's altar, all their weapons and equipment - everything - will vanish like a dream, like something imagined in the night.

8 All the nations that assemble to attack Jerusalem will be like a starving person who dreams he is eating and wakes up hungry, or like someone dying of thirst who dreams he is drinking and wakes with a dry throat.

9 Go ahead and be stupid! Go ahead and be blind! Get drunk without any wine! Stagger without drinking a drop!

10 The Lord has made you drowsy, ready to fall into a deep sleep. The prophets should be the eyes of the people, but God has blindfolded them.

11 The meaning of every prophetic vision will be hidden from you; it will be like a sealed scroll. If you take it to someone who knows how to read and ask him to read it to you, he will say he can't because it is sealed.

12 If you give it to someone who can't read and ask him to read it to you, he will answer that he doesn't know how.

13 The Lord said, "These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized.

14 So I will startle them with one unexpected blow after another. Those who are wise will turn out to be fools, and all their cleverness will be useless."

15 Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are doomed! They carry out their schemes in secret and think no one will see them or know what they are doing.

16 They turn everything upside down. Which is more important, the potter or the clay? Can something you have made say, "You didn't make me"? Or can it say, "You don't know what you are doing"?

17 As the saying goes, before long the dense forest will become farmland, and the farmland will go back to forest.

18 When that day comes, the deaf will be able to hear a book being read aloud, and the blind, who have been living in darkness, will open their eyes and see.

19 Poor and humble people will once again find the happiness which the Lord, the holy God of Israel, gives.

20 It will be the end of those who oppress others and show contempt for God. Every sinner will be destroyed.

21 God will destroy those who slander others, those who prevent the punishment of criminals, and those who tell lies to keep honest people from getting justice.

22 So now the Lord, the God of Israel, who rescued Abraham from trouble, says, "My people, you will not be disgraced any longer, and your faces will no longer be pale with shame.

23 When you see the children that I will give you, then you will acknowledge that I am the holy God of Israel. You will honor me and stand in awe of me.

24 Foolish people will learn to understand, and those who are always grumbling will be glad to be taught."

1 In conclusion, my friends, be joyful in your union with the Lord. I don't mind repeating what I have written before, and you will be safer if I do so.

2 Watch out for those who do evil things, those dogs, those who insist on cutting the body.

3 It is we, not they, who have received the true circumcision, for we worship God by means of his Spirit and rejoice in our life in union with Christ Jesus. We do not put any trust in external ceremonies.

4 I could, of course, put my trust in such things. If any of you think you can trust in external ceremonies, I have even more reason to feel that way.

5 I was circumcised when I was a week old. I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew. As far as keeping the Jewish Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee,

6 and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.

7 But all those things that I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ's sake.

8 Not only those things; I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ

9 and be completely united with him. I no longer have a righteousness of my own, the kind that is gained by obeying the Law. I now have the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is based on faith.

10 All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death,

11 in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.

12 I do not claim that I have already succeeded or have already become perfect. I keep striving to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself.

13 Of course, my friends, I really do not think that I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead.

14 So I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above.

15 All of us who are spiritually mature should have this same attitude. But if some of you have a different attitude, God will make this clear to you.

16 However that may be, let us go forward according to the same rules we have followed until now.

17 Keep on imitating me, my friends. Pay attention to those who follow the right example that we have set for you.

18 I have told you this many times before, and now I repeat it with tears: there are many whose lives make them enemies of Christ's death on the cross.

19 They are going to end up in hell, because their god is their bodily desires. They are proud of what they should be ashamed of, and they think only of things that belong to this world.

20 We, however, are citizens of heaven, and we eagerly wait for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come from heaven.

21 He will change our weak mortal bodies and make them like his own glorious body, using that power by which he is able to bring all things under his rule.