Book of Common Prayer

A maskil from Ethan the Ezrahite.

¹⁰ “Jeremiah, you will tell the people of Judah these things, and the people will ask you, ‘Why has the Lord said these terrible things to us? What have we done wrong? What sin have we done against the Lord our God?’ ¹¹ You must tell them: ‘Terrible things will happen to you because your ancestors stopped following me.’ This message is from the Lord. ‘They stopped following me and began to follow and serve other gods. They worshiped those other gods. Your ancestors left me and stopped obeying my law. ¹² But you people have sinned more than your ancestors. You are very stubborn, and you are doing only what you want to do. You are not obeying me. Because you do only what you want to do, ¹³ I will throw you out of this country. I will force you to go to a foreign land. You will go to a land that you and your ancestors never knew. There you can serve false gods all you want to. I will not help you or show you any favors.’

¹⁴ “People make promises and say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives—the Lord who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt ….’ But the time is coming,” says the Lord, “when people will not say that. ¹⁵ They will say something new. They will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives—the Lord who brought the Israelites out of the northern land, who brought them out of all the countries where he had sent them ….’ Why will they say that? Because I will bring the Israelites back to the land that I gave to their ancestors.

¹⁶ “I will soon send for many fishermen to come to this land.” This message is from the Lord. “They will catch the people of Judah. After that happens, I will send for many hunters^[a] to come to this land. They will hunt the people of Judah on every mountain and hill and in the cracks of the rocks. ¹⁷ I see everything they do. The people of Judah cannot hide the things they do. Their sin is not hidden from me. ¹⁸ I will pay the people of Judah back for the evil things they did—I will punish them two times for every sin. I will do this because they have made my land ‘dirty.’ They made my land ‘dirty’ with their terrible idols. I hate those idols, but they have filled my country with their idols.”

An Example From Marriage

7 Brothers and sisters, you all understand the Law of Moses. So surely you know that the law rules over people only while they are alive. ² It’s like what the law says about marriage: A woman must stay married to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is made free from the law of marriage. ³ But if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, the law says she is guilty of adultery. But if her husband dies, she is made free from the law of marriage. So if she marries another man after her husband dies, she is not guilty of adultery.

⁴ In the same way, my brothers and sisters, your old selves died and you became free from the law through the body of Christ. Now you belong to someone else. You belong to the one who was raised from death. We belong to Christ so that we can be used in service to God. ⁵ In the past we were ruled by our sinful selves. The law made us want to do sinful things. And those sinful desires controlled our bodies, so that what we did only brought us spiritual death. ⁶ In the past the law held us as prisoners, but our old selves died, and we were made free from the law. So now we serve God in a new way, not in the old way, with the written rules. Now we serve God in the new way, with the Spirit.

Our Fight Against Sin

⁷ You might think I am saying that sin and the law are the same. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin means. I would never have known it is wrong to want something that is not mine. But the law said, “You must not want what belongs to someone else.”^{[a] 8} And sin found a way to use that command and make me want all kinds of things that weren’t mine. So sin came to me because of the command. But without the law, sin has no power. ⁹ Before I knew the law, I was alive. But when I heard the law’s command, sin began to live, ¹⁰ and I died spiritually. The command was meant to bring life, but for me it brought death. ¹¹ Sin found a way to fool me by using the command to make me die.

¹² Now the law is holy, and the command is holy and right and good.

Jesus Feeds More Than 5000^(A)

6 Later, Jesus went across Lake Galilee (also known as Lake Tiberias). ² A great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he did in healing the sick. ³ Jesus went up on the side of the hill and sat there with his followers. ⁴ It was almost the time for the Jewish Passover festival.

⁵ Jesus looked up and saw a crowd of people coming toward him. He said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough bread for all these people to eat?” ⁶ He asked Philip this question to test him. Jesus already knew what he planned to do.

⁷ Philip answered, “We would all have to work a month to buy enough bread for each person here to have only a little piece!”

⁸ Another follower there was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. Andrew said, ⁹ “Here is a boy with five loaves of barley bread and two little fish. But that is not enough for so many people.”

¹⁰ Jesus said, “Tell everyone to sit down.” This was a place with a lot of grass, and about 5000 men sat down there. ¹¹ Jesus took the loaves of bread and gave thanks for them. Then he gave them to the people who were waiting to eat. He did the same with the fish. He gave them as much as they wanted.

¹² They all had plenty to eat. When they finished, Jesus said to his followers, “Gather the pieces of fish and bread that were not eaten. Don’t waste anything.” ¹³ So they gathered up the pieces that were left. The people had started eating with only five loaves of barley bread. But the followers filled twelve large baskets with the pieces of food that were left.

¹⁴ The people saw this miraculous sign that Jesus did and said, “He must be the Prophet^[a] who is coming into the world.”

¹⁵ Jesus knew that the people planned to come get him and make him their king. So he left and went into the hills alone.