Book of Common Prayer

9 What I say is true and Christ knows it is. I do not tell a lie. My heart tells me it is true. And the Holy Spirit knows this.

² I am very sad. I am always troubled. 3I could almost wish I were taken away from Christ for the sake of my brothers, the people of my own nation.

³ They are Jews. God gave them the right to be his sons. He showed them how great he is. He made agreements with them. He gave them the law. He told them how to worship him. He gave them the promises.

⁴ The great men were their fathers. Christ was born a Jew. He is God over all. Praise him for ever! Yes, he is!

⁵ God will do what he said he would do. Not all who are Jews belong to the real Israel.

⁶ Not all the people in Abraham's family are his children. But the holy writings say, `It is Isaac's family who will be called your family.'

⁷ This means that not all who were born in Abraham's family are God's children. God promised Abraham a son [Isaac]. His children [the Jews] are the ones that God called Abraham's true family.

⁸ For this is what God promised, `About this time next year I will come and Sarah shall have a son.'

⁹ And that is not all. Rebecca also had children. Their father was Isaac, our father.

¹¹ When the children were not yet born, they had done nothing good or bad. God chooses the people he wants. He does not choose people because of what they have done. He chooses people who will answer his call. So he said to Rebecca, `The older one will be a slave of the younger one.'

¹² The holy writings also say, `I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau.'

¹³ So what shall we say? Does God do what is not right? No, never!

¹⁴ He says to Moses, `I will be kind to a person if I choose to be kind to him. I will share in the suffering of others if I choose to be sorry for them.'

¹⁵ God is not kind to a person because the person wants God to be kind to him. God is not kind to him because the person runs to him to ask him for help. God is kind because he chooses to be kind.

¹⁶ In the holy writings it says to Pharaoh, `That is why I made you live. I wanted to show my power through you. I wanted people to know about me all over the earth.'

¹⁷ So God is kind to any person if he wants to be kind to him. And God makes a man's heart hard if he wants to do that.

¹⁸ So you will ask me, `Why does God still blame us? Who can fight against what God has planned?'

²⁷ `You scribes and Pharisees will have trouble. You who are not true to yourselves! You are like graves that have been painted white. Outside they look very nice. But inside they are full of dead men's bones and all kinds of dirt.

²⁸ So it is with you. You look right on the outside. But inside you are full of lies and wrong ways.

²⁹ `You scribes and Pharisees will have trouble. You who are not true to yourselves! You build places to bury the prophets and fix up graves of good men.

³⁰ You say, "If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have helped to kill the prophets of God."

³¹ So you prove that you are the sons of the men who killed the prophets.

³² Finish doing what your fathers started to do.

³³ You snakes - a whole family of snakes! You cannot get away! You will be judged and sent to hell.

³⁴ That is why I send you prophets, wise men, and teachers. You will kill some of them and nail them to a cross. And you will beat some of them in your meeting houses and trouble them from one town to another.

³⁵ So you will be punished for all the blood of every good man that is on the ground. I mean all the blood from the time of Abel, who was a good man, to Zechariah, the son of Barachiah. You killed him between the temple and God's altar.

³⁶ I tell you the truth. The people who are still living now will be punished for all these things.

³⁷ `Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You kill the prophets. You throw stones to kill the men who are sent to you! How often I have wanted to gather your people together, as a mother hen gathers her little ones under her wings. But you would not come!

³⁸ Now you are left alone in your house.

³⁹ I tell you this. You will not see me again until the time when you say, "God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord." '