Lectionary 10, Year A

Chapter 5

¹⁵ I will go and return to my place, until they acknowledge their offense, and seek my face. In their affliction they will seek me earnestly.”

Chapter 6

¹ “Come! Let’s return to the LORD; for he has torn us to pieces, and he will heal us; he has injured us, and he will bind up our wounds. ² After two days he will revive us. On the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before him. ³ Let’s acknowledge the LORD. Let’s press on to know the LORD. As surely as the sun rises, the LORD will appear. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain that waters the earth.” ⁴ “Ephraim, what shall I do to you? Judah, what shall I do to you? For your love is like a morning cloud, and like the dew that disappears early. ⁵ Therefore I have cut them to pieces with the prophets; I killed them with the words of my mouth. Your judgments are like a flash of lightning. ⁶ For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

⁷ “Hear, my people, and I will speak. Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. ⁸ I don’t rebuke you for your sacrifices. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. ⁹ I have no need for a bull from your stall, nor male goats from your pens. ¹⁰ For every animal of the forest is mine, and the livestock on a thousand hills. ¹¹ I know all the birds of the mountains. The wild animals of the field are mine. ¹² If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. ¹³ Will I eat the meat of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? ¹⁴ Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Pay your vows to the Most High. ¹⁵ Call on me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

¹³ For the promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he should be heir of the world wasn’t through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of no effect. ¹⁵ For the law produces wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience. ¹⁶ For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace, to the end that the promise may be sure to all the offspring, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. ¹⁷ As it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This is in the presence of him whom he believed: God, who gives life to the dead, and calls the things that are not, as though they were. ¹⁸ Besides hope, Abraham in hope believed, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, “So will your offspring be.” ¹⁹ Without being weakened in faith, he didn’t consider his own body, already having been worn out, (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ Yet, looking to the promise of God, he didn’t waver through unbelief, but grew strong through faith, giving glory to God, ²¹ and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. ²² Therefore it also was “credited to him for righteousness.” ²³ Now it was not written that it was accounted to him for his sake alone, ²⁴ but for our sake also, to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead, ²⁵ who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.