Book of Common Prayer

This is a special song that Ethan the Ezrahite wrote.

God's special love^[a]

God's covenant with David

A sad song

¹⁰ Tell the people everything that I have said. Then they will ask you, “Why has the Lord told us that he will punish us so much? What wrong things have we done? What sin have we done against the Lord, our God?” ¹¹ Then you must tell them what I say: “It is because your ancestors turned against me. They went to other gods. They worshipped and they served those gods. They turned against me and they did not obey my law. ¹² And you have done even more wicked things than your ancestors! You do any wicked thing that you want to do. You refuse to change. You do not obey me. ¹³ So I will throw you out of this land. I will send you away to a land that you and your ancestors never knew. There you will worship other gods, as much as you like. I will no longer help you.” ’

Hope for the future

¹⁴ The Lord also said, ‘Listen! A better time will come. When people make a promise, they will not say, “I promise to do this as surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites safely out of Egypt.” ¹⁵ Instead they will say, “I promise to do this as surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites safely back from the land in the north. He brought them back from all the places that he had sent them to as prisoners.” Yes, at that time I will bring them back to this land that I gave to their ancestors.

¹⁶ But now I will send enemies to catch these people. They will catch them like fishermen catch fish.^[a] They will chase after them like hunters who catch wild animals. They will find them everywhere in the mountains, in the hills and in holes in the rocks. ¹⁷ I am watching them carefully all the time. They cannot hide from me. I can see all their sins. ¹⁸ I will punish them for their sins. I will make them pay twice for the wrong things that they have done. That is because they have spoiled my land. They have made it unclean with their disgusting idols that have no life. They have filled my special land with the evil things that they have done.’

The authority of the law

7 My Christian friends, you know about laws. You know that we have to obey them. The laws have authority over someone while they are still alive. ² So think about this. A woman who has a husband must stay with him as long as he still lives. That is what the law says. But if her husband dies, she becomes free from that law about her marriage. ³ While her husband is alive, the law has authority over her. If she goes to live with another man, the law says that she has done something wrong. People will call her an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she becomes free from that law. If she then marries another man, she will not be doing anything wrong.

⁴ My friends, it is like that for you too. When Christ's body died on the cross, it is as if you also died with him. Because of that, you are no longer under the authority the law. Now you are free to belong to someone else. You belong to Christ, whom God raised up after his death. As a result, we can live in a good way that will please God. ⁵ In our old lives, we did the bad things that we wanted to do. God's laws brought bad thoughts into our minds. As a result, our bodies did many wrong things. In the end, those bad things lead to death.^{[a] 6} But now we have become free from the authority of the law. It is as if we have died. So those rules no longer control us. We do not still try to obey rules that someone has written down. That is the old way. Instead, we serve God in a new way. God's Spirit helps us to please him.

God's Law teaches us about sin

⁷ So someone might say, ‘God's Law must be bad.’ No! Certainly, it is not bad! Without that law, I would not have known what sin really is. One rule says, ‘You must not want to take things for yourself that belong to other people.’^[b] Without that command, I would not have known that it is wrong to want other people's things. ⁸ But the command gave sin a chance to come into my thoughts. As a result, I started to want all kinds of wrong things. If there is no law to tell us what is wrong, then sin has no power to make us guilty.

⁹ As for me, there was a time when I did not know God's laws. I was living without any law to obey. But when I learned about that command, sin now had power in my life. ¹⁰ As a result, I became separate from God, as if I had died.^[c] So the command that should have brought life to me brought death instead. ¹¹ That command gave sin a chance to deceive me. It caused me to become separate from God.

¹² So we understand that God's Law and its commands are completely good. They are holy, fair and good.

Jesus feeds 5,000 men and their families

6 Some time after that, Jesus went across Lake Galilee, which is also called Lake Tiberias. ² A large crowd of people followed him, because of the miracles that he had done. They had seen him make sick people well. ³ Jesus went up a hill and he sat down there with his disciples. ⁴ It was nearly the time for the Jewish Passover Festival.

⁵ Jesus looked up. He saw a large crowd of people who were coming towards him. He said to Philip, ‘Where can we buy enough bread to feed all these people?’ ⁶ Jesus himself already knew what he would do. But he asked Philip this question because he wanted to know what Philip would say. ⁷ Philip answered, ‘A man could work for eight months to get 200 silver coins. But he still would not have enough money to buy bread for all these people. There would not be enough bread for each person here to have even a little piece.’ ⁸ Then Andrew, another one of Jesus' disciples, spoke. He was Simon Peter's brother. ⁹ He said to Jesus, ‘Here is a boy who has five small loaves and two fish. But that will certainly not be enough food for so many people.’

¹⁰ Jesus said, ‘Tell the people to sit down.’ There was plenty of grass in that place, so the people sat down. There were about 5,000 men in the crowd. ¹¹ Jesus took the loaves of bread and he thanked God for them. Then he broke the loaves into pieces. He passed them to all the people who were sitting there. Everyone had as much bread as they wanted to eat. Jesus did the same with the fish. ¹² When everyone had eaten enough food, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Do not waste anything. Pick up all the little bits of food that people have not eaten.’ ¹³ So the disciples picked up all the pieces. They filled 12 baskets with the bits of bread that the people had not eaten.

¹⁴ The people saw this miracle that Jesus did. So they began to talk about it. They said, ‘Certainly, this man is the Prophet who must come into the world.’ ¹⁵ The people wanted to take hold of Jesus so that they could make him their king. But Jesus knew that they wanted to do this. So he went away to the hills again by himself.