For we are not like so many others, hucksters who peddle the word of God for profit, but we are speaking in Christ before God as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God.

Are God’s consolations too trivial for you; or a word spoken in gentleness to you?

Acknowledge God’s power, his sovereignty over Israel, and the power he reveals in the skies!

I will sing praises to God’s name! I will magnify him as I give him thanks!

Now we know that God’s judgment is in accordance with truth against those who practice such things.

so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.

For you need endurance in order to do God’s will and so receive what is promised.

You must not go after other gods, those of the surrounding peoples,

Surely all the wealth that God snatched away from our father belongs to us and to our children. So now do everything God has told you.”

I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan – to be your God.

In fact, what other great nation has a god so near to them like the Lord our God whenever we call on him?

so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God.

You saw everything the Lord your God did to all these nations on your behalf, for the Lord your God fights for you.

The Lord your God will drive them out from before you and remove them, so you can occupy their land as the Lord your God promised you.

The God of Israel spoke, the protector of Israel spoke to me. The one who rules fairly among men, the one who rules in the fear of God,

Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power, so that all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you, Lord, are the only God.”

In every city throughout Judah he set up high places to offer sacrifices to other gods. He angered the Lord God of his ancestors.

They talked about the God of Jerusalem as if he were one of the man-made gods of the nations of the earth.

Then I said, “Please, O LORD God of heaven, great and awesome God, who keeps his loving covenant with those who love him and obey his commandments,

Why are you depressed, O my soul? Why are you upset? Wait for God! For I will again give thanks to my God for his saving intervention.