The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Wednesday March 27, 2024 (NIV)

7 When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take as a possession, and when he clears away many nations before you (the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and stronger than you), ² and when the Lord your God has given them over to you and he has struck them down, you are to devote them to destruction. Do not make a treaty with them, and do not show mercy to them. ³ Do not form marriage alliances with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters for your sons, ⁴ because they will turn your sons away from following me, and they will serve other gods. The anger of the Lord will burn against you, and then he will destroy you quickly. ⁵ Instead, this is the way you must deal with them: Break down their altars. Smash their sacred memorial stones. Cut down their Asherah poles. ^[a]Burn their idols with fire.

⁶ For you are a people that is holy to the Lord your God, because the Lord your God has chosen you to belong to him as a people that is his treasured possession, chosen from all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. ⁷ The Lord became attached to you by love and has chosen you, not because you were more numerous than all the peoples. Actually you were the fewest of all the peoples. ⁸ But because of the Lord’s love for you and because he was keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that is why the Lord brought you out by a strong hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁹ He did this so that you would know that the Lord your God, yes, he is God, the faithful God who maintains both his covenant and his mercy for those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations. ¹⁰ But he also repays the ones who hate him to their face by destroying them. He will not delay repaying anyone who hates him. To his face he will fully repay him. ¹¹ So you are to be careful to keep the set of commandments and the statutes and the ordinances that I am commanding you today.

¹² When you obey these ordinances and are careful to keep them, the Lord your God will keep for your benefit the covenant and the mercy that he promised to your fathers with an oath. ¹³ He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will bless the fruit from your womb and the fruit from your soil, your grain and your new wine and your fresh olive oil, the offspring of your cattle and the young of your flock upon the land that he swore to your fathers that he would give you. ¹⁴ You will be blessed beyond all the peoples. There will not be an infertile male or infertile female among you or among your livestock. ¹⁵ The Lord will remove from you all sickness, and he will not place on you all of the diseases of Egypt, the calamities that you experienced. Instead he will put them on all those who hate you. ¹⁶ You will consume all the peoples that the Lord your God is giving to you. Your eye is not to look with compassion on them. You are not to serve their gods, because that would be a snare to you.

¹⁷ If you say in your heart, “These nations are more numerous than we are. How are we able to take possession of their land?” ¹⁸ do not be afraid of them. Be sure to remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the Egyptians. ¹⁹ The great test which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders and the strong hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out—that is what the Lord your God will do to all the peoples that you fear.

²⁰ The Lord your God will also send the hornet against them until those who are left and are hiding from you have been destroyed. ²¹ Do not be overwhelmed before them, because the Lord your God is right among you, a great and awe-inspiring God.

²² The Lord your God, the God before you, will clear away the nations little by little. You will not succeed in finishing them off too quickly, so that the wild animals do not become too numerous for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will give them over to you, and he will throw these peoples into complete confusion until they are destroyed. ²⁴ He will give their kings into your hands, and he will cause their names to die out under the heavens, because none of them will be able to hold their ground against you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ Burn the images of their gods with fire, and do not covet the silver and gold on them or take it for yourself, so that you are not snared by it, because it is an abomination to the Lord your God. ²⁶ Do not bring a detestable thing to your house and in that way become devoted to destruction just like it. Detest it and regard it as an utterly disgusting thing, because it is devoted to destruction.

8 Be conscientious about carrying out the entire body of commands that I am giving you today so that you may thrive and increase and you may go in and possess the land that the Lord promised by oath to give to your fathers. ² Remember the whole journey on which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you and to test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. ³ So he humbled you and allowed you to be hungry. Then he fed you manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known before, in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ The clothes you wore did not wear out, and your feet did not swell these forty years. ⁵ So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. ⁶ Therefore you are to keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by revering him.

⁷ For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, ⁸ a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey,^{[b] 9} a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.

¹⁰ Then you will eat, and you will be filled, and you will praise the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. ¹¹ Be very careful so that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and ordinances and his statutes that I am commanding you today. ¹² When you eat and are satisfied, and you build nice houses and move into them, ¹³ and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold increase, and everything that you have prospers, ¹⁴ watch out so that your heart does not become arrogant and forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. ¹⁵ Do not forget the Lord, who led you in the great and terrifying wilderness, where there were venomous snakes and scorpions, where the thirsty ground had no water, but the Lord made water come out of a flint rock for you. ¹⁶ Do not forget the Lord, who in the wilderness fed you manna, which your fathers had not known before, to humble you and to test you so that it would be good for you later on.

¹⁷ You might say in your heart, “My ability and the power of my hand have earned this wealth for me.” ¹⁸ But then you are to remember that the Lord your God is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth, to confirm his covenant that he promised to your fathers with an oath, as he does to this day.

¹⁹ But if you ever do forget the Lord your God and you follow other gods, and if you serve them and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will certainly perish. ²⁰ Just like the nations that the Lord is about to destroy in front of you, you also will perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

Jesus Is Anointed by a Sinful Woman

³⁶ A certain one of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him. Jesus entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. ³⁷ Just then a sinful woman from that town learned that he was reclining in the Pharisee’s house. She brought an alabaster jar of perfume, ³⁸ stood behind him near his feet weeping, and began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she began to wipe them with her hair while also kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume. ³⁹ When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would realize who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, because she is a sinner.”

⁴⁰ Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

He said, “Teacher, say it.”

⁴¹ “A certain moneylender had two debtors. The one owed five hundred denarii,^[a] and the other fifty. ⁴² When they could not pay, he forgave them both. So, which of them will love him more?”

⁴³ Simon answered, “I suppose the one who had the larger debt forgiven.”

Then he told him, “You have judged correctly.” ⁴⁴ Turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house, but you did not give me water for my feet. Yet she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. ⁴⁵ You did not give me a kiss, but she, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume. ⁴⁷ Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that is why she loved so much. But the one who is forgiven little loves little.” ⁴⁸ Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.”

⁴⁹ Those reclining at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

⁵⁰ He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

Preaching the Gospel

8 Soon afterward Jesus was traveling from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him ² and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and diseases: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out; ³ Joanna, the wife of Cuza, Herod’s household manager; Susanna; and many others who provided support for them^[b] out of their own possessions.

Psalm 69

Prayer of an Innocent Sufferer: Save Me, O God

Heading

For the choir director. According to “Lilies.”^[a] By David.

Prayer of an Innocent Sufferer

The Unfairness of His Enemies

His Guilt and Shame

An Interlude of Prayer

More Examples of Righteous Behavior