Book of Common Prayer

A Song About God’s Loyalty

A maskil of Ethan the Ezrahite.

Amen and amen.

¹⁰ “You will tell the people of Judah these things. And they 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 “Then say to them: ‘This is because your ancestors quit following me,’ says the Lord. ‘And they began to follow other gods. They served and worshiped other gods. Your ancestors left me. And they quit obeying my teaching. ¹² But you have done even more evil than your ancestors. You are very stubborn. You do only what you want to do. You have not obeyed me. ¹³ So I will throw you out of this country. You will go to a land that you and your ancestors never knew. There you can serve false gods day and night. I will not help you or show you any favors.’

¹⁴ “People say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the people of Israel out of Egypt . . .’ But the time is coming,” says the Lord, “when people will not say this anymore. ¹⁵ They will say instead, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites from the northern land and from all the countries where he had sent them . . .’ And I will bring them back to the land I gave to their ancestors.

¹⁶ “I will soon send for many fishermen to come to this land,” says the Lord. “The fishermen will catch the people of Judah. After that, I will send for many hunters to come to this land. Those hunters will hunt the people of Judah on every mountain and hill. And they will hunt Judah in the cracks of the rocks. ¹⁷ I see everything they do. They cannot hide the things they do from me. Their sin is not hidden from my eyes! ¹⁸ I will pay back the people of Judah for the evil they have done. I will punish them two times for every one of their sins. I will do this because they have made my land unclean. They have done it with their hated idols. They have filled my country with them!”

An Example from Marriage

7 Brothers, all of you understand the law of Moses. So surely you know that the law rules over a person only while he is alive. ² For example, a woman must stay married to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, then she is 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, then the woman is 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, 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 things we wanted to do controlled our bodies, so that the things we did were only bringing us death. ⁶ In the past, the law held us like 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 written rules. Now we serve God in the new way, with the Spirit.

Our Fight Against Sin

⁷ You might think that I am saying that sin and the law are the same thing. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin meant. I would never have known what it means to want something wrong if the law had not said, “You must not want to take your neighbor’s things.”^{[a] 8} And sin found a way to use that command and cause me to want every kind of wrong thing. So sin came to me because of that command. But without the law, sin has no power. ⁹ I was alive without the law before I knew the law. But when the law’s command came to me, then sin began to live. ¹⁰ And I died because of sin. The command was meant to bring life, but for me that command brought death. ¹¹ Sin found a way to fool me by using the command. Sin used the command to make me die.

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

More Than 5,000 People Fed

6 After this, Jesus went across Lake Galilee (or, Lake Tiberias). ² Many people followed him because they saw the miracles he did to heal the sick. ³ Jesus went up on a hill and there sat down with his followers. ⁴ It was almost the time for the Jewish Passover Feast.

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

⁷ Philip answered, “Someone would have to work almost a year to buy enough bread for each person here to have only a little piece.”

⁸ Another follower there was Andrew. He was Simon Peter’s brother. 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 the people to sit down.” This was a very grassy place. There were about 5,000 men who sat down there. ¹¹ Then Jesus took the loaves of bread. He thanked God for the bread and gave it to the people who were sitting there. He did the same with the fish. He gave them as much as they wanted.

¹² They all had enough to eat. When they had 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. They filled 12 large baskets with the pieces that were left of the five barley loaves.

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

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