Ezekiel 16:47
16:47 Have you not copied their behavior
and practiced their abominable deeds? In a short time
you became even more depraved in all your conduct than they were!
Deuteronomy 32:15-21
Israel’s Rebellion
32:15 But Jeshurun became fat and kicked,
you got fat, thick, and stuffed!
Then he deserted the God who made him,
and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt.
32:16 They made him jealous with other gods,
they enraged him with abhorrent idols.
32:17 They sacrificed to demons, not God,
to gods they had not known;
to new gods who had recently come along,
gods your ancestors had not known about.
32:18 You have forgotten the Rock who fathered you,
and put out of mind the God who gave you birth.
A Word of Judgment
32:19 But the Lord took note and despised them
because his sons and daughters enraged him.
32:20 He said, “I will reject them,
I will see what will happen to them;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who show no loyalty.
32:21 They have made me jealous with false gods,
enraging me with their worthless gods;
so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize,
with a nation slow to learn I will enrage them.
Deuteronomy 32:2
32:2 My teaching will drop like the rain,
my sayings will drip like the dew,
as rain drops upon the grass,
and showers upon new growth.
Deuteronomy 17:8-20
Appeal to a Higher Court
17:8 If a matter is too difficult for you to judge – bloodshed, legal claim, or assault – matters of controversy in your villages – you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses.
17:9 You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict.
17:10 You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught.
17:11 You must do what you are instructed, and the verdict they pronounce to you, without fail. Do not deviate right or left from what they tell you.
17:12 The person who pays no attention to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.
17:13 Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and not be so presumptuous again.
Provision for Kingship
17:14 When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,”
17:15 you must select without fail a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king – you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites.
17:16 Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way.
17:17 Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold.
17:18 When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this law on a scroll given to him by the Levitical priests.
17:19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this law and these statutes and carry them out.
17:20 Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel.
Psalms 106:20
106:20 They traded their majestic God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
Romans 1:23-25
1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings
or birds or four-footed animals
or reptiles.
1:24 Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.
1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Romans 1:1
Salutation
1:1 From Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
Colossians 1:1
Salutation
1:1 From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
Jude 1:4
1:4 For certain men
have secretly slipped in among you
– men who long ago
were marked out
for the condemnation I am about to describe
– ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil
and who deny our only Master
and Lord,
Jesus Christ.