The LORD your God will give you and your descendants obedient hearts, so that you will love him with all your heart, and you will continue to live in that land.

Keep your covenant with me, your LORD, and dedicate yourselves to me, you people of Judah and Jerusalem. If you don't, my anger will burn like fire because of the evil things you have done. It will burn, and there will be no one to put it out."

I answered, "Who would listen to me if I spoke to them and warned them? They are stubborn and refuse to listen to your message; they laugh at what you tell me to say.

The LORD says, "The time is coming when I will punish the people of Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and the desert people, who have their hair cut short. All these people are circumcised, but have not kept the covenant it symbolizes. None of these people and none of the people of Israel have kept my covenant."

(SEE 9:25)

They have profaned my Temple by letting uncircumcised foreigners, people who do not obey me, enter the Temple when the fat and the blood of the sacrifices are being offered to me. So my people have broken my covenant by all the disgusting things they have done.

"How stubborn you are!" Stephen went on to say. "How heathen your hearts, how deaf you are to God's message! You are just like your ancestors: you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit!

After all, who is a real Jew, truly circumcised? It is not the man who is a Jew on the outside, whose circumcision is a physical thing.

Rather, the real Jew is the person who is a Jew on the inside, that is, whose heart has been circumcised, and this is the work of God's Spirit, not of the written Law. Such a person receives praise from God, not from human beings.

For when we are in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the lack of it makes any difference at all; what matters is faith that works through love.

It is we, not they, who have received the true circumcision, for we worship God by means of his Spirit and rejoice in our life in union with Christ Jesus. We do not put any trust in external ceremonies.

In union with Christ you were circumcised, not with the circumcision that is made by human beings, but with the circumcision made by Christ, which consists of being freed from the power of this sinful self.

So Moses and Aaron went to the king and said to him, "The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says, 'How much longer will you refuse to submit to me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me.

"Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Since he has done this, I will not bring disaster on him during his lifetime; it will be during his son's lifetime that I will bring disaster on Ahab's family."

The king and the leaders admitted that they had sinned, and they said, "What the LORD is doing is just."

When the LORD saw this, he spoke again to Shemaiah and said to him, "Because they admit their sin, I will not destroy them. But when Shishak attacks, they will barely survive. Jerusalem will not feel the full force of my anger,

Because he submitted to the LORD, the LORD's anger did not completely destroy him, and things went well for Judah.

Finally, however, Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem humbled themselves, and so the LORD did not punish the people until after Hezekiah's death.

In his suffering he became humble, turned to the LORD his God, and begged him for help.

God accepted Manasseh's prayer and answered it by letting him go back to Jerusalem and rule again. This convinced Manasseh that the LORD was God.

The king's prayer and God's answer to it, and an account of the sins he committed before he repented---the evil he did, the pagan places of worship and the symbols of the goddess Asherah that he made and the idols that he worshiped---are all recorded in The History of the Prophets.

But unlike his father, he did not become humble and turn to the LORD; he was even more sinful than his father had been.

where they will live in exile. There they will remember me and know that I have punished them and disgraced them, because their faithless hearts deserted me and they preferred idols to me. And they will be disgusted with themselves because of the evil and degrading things they have done.

Then you will remember all the disgraceful things you did and how you defiled yourselves. You will be disgusted with yourselves because of all the evil things you did.

Whoever makes himself great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be made great.

For those who make themselves great will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be made great."

I tell you," said Jesus, "the tax collector, and not the Pharisee, was in the right with God when he went home. For those who make themselves great will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be made great."

But the grace that God gives is even stronger. As the scripture says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you hypocrites!

In the same way you younger people must submit yourselves to your elders. And all of you must put on the apron of humility, to serve one another; for the scripture says, "God resists the proud, but shows favor to the humble."

Humble yourselves, then, under God's mighty hand, so that he will lift you up in his own good time.

Even after everything that has happened to us in punishment for our sins and wrongs, we know that you, our God, have punished us less than we deserve and have allowed us to survive.

LORD God of Israel, you are just, but you have let us survive. We confess our guilt to you; we have no right to come into your presence."

You have done right to punish us; you have been faithful, even though we have sinned.

I will keep quiet, I will not say a word, for you are the one who made me suffer like this.

I recognize my faults; I am always conscious of my sins.

I have sinned against you---only against you--- and done what you consider evil. So you are right in judging me; you are justified in condemning me.

You, Lord, always do what is right, but we have always brought disgrace on ourselves. This is true of all of us who live in Judea and in Jerusalem and of all the Israelites whom you scattered in countries near and far because they were unfaithful to you.

You are merciful and forgiving, although we have rebelled against you.

All Israel broke your laws and refused to listen to what you said. We sinned against you, and so you brought on us the curses that are written in the Law of Moses, your servant.

giving us all the punishment described in the Law of Moses. But even now, O LORD our God, we have not tried to please you by turning from our sins or by following your truth.