‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. Yet you ask, ‘How have you loved us? ’ ‘Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother? ’ This is the Lord’s declaration. ‘Even so, I loved Jacob,
He continued, ‘I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strictness of our ancestral law. I was zealous for God, just as all of you are today.
Then people went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man the demons had departed from, sitting at Jesus’s feet, dressed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
‘I will make a permanent covenant with them: I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put fear of me in their hearts so that they will never again turn away from me.
for you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.
and you yourselves became imitators of us and of the Lord when, in spite of severe persecution, you welcomed the message with joy from the Holy Spirit.
‘This is the command #– #the statutes and ordinances #– #the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may follow them in the land you are about to enter and possess.
Indeed, I took all this to heart and explained it all: The righteous, the wise, and their works are in God’s hands. People don’t know whether to expect love or hate. Everything lies ahead of them.
‘Go and announce directly to Jerusalem that this is what the Lord says: I remember the loyalty of your youth, your love as a bride – how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.