Then I thought, "These are only the poor and ignorant. They behave foolishly; they don't know what their God requires, what the LORD wants them to do.

I will go to the people in power and talk with them. Surely they know what their God requires, what the LORD wants them to do." But all of them have rejected the LORD's authority and refuse to obey him.

They complain about me. They say, "Who does that man think he's teaching? Who needs his message? It's only good for babies that have just stopped nursing!

If you won't listen to me, then God will use foreigners speaking some strange-sounding language to teach you a lesson.

That is why the LORD is going to teach you letter by letter, line by line, lesson by lesson. Then you will stumble with every step you take. You will be wounded, trapped, and taken prisoner.

The people reply, "Who would have believed what we now report? Who could have seen the LORD's hand in this?

If I announce that someone evil is going to die but you do not warn him to change his ways so that he can save his life, he will die, still a sinner, but I will hold you responsible for his death.

"If someone truly good starts doing evil and I put him in a dangerous situation, he will die if you do not warn him. He will die because of his sins---I will not remember the good he did---and I will hold you responsible for his death.

When he sees the enemy approaching, he sounds the alarm to warn everyone.

If you do warn an evil person and he doesn't stop sinning, he will die, still a sinner, but your life will be spared."

When John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him to be baptized, he said to them, "You snakes---who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send?

So we preach Christ to everyone. With all possible wisdom we warn and teach them in order to bring each one into God's presence as a mature individual in union with Christ.

It was faith that made Noah hear God's warnings about things in the future that he could not see. He obeyed God and built a boat in which he and his family were saved. As a result, the world was condemned, and Noah received from God the righteousness that comes by faith.

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."

Yet no one listened or paid any attention. Instead, you became more stubborn and rebellious than your ancestors.

But Moses replied, "Even the Israelites will not listen to me, so why should the king? I am such a poor speaker."

But to this very day he has not let you understand what you have experienced.

So he told me to go and give the people this message: "No matter how much you listen, you will not understand. No matter how much you look, you will not know what is happening."

Then he said to me, "Make the minds of these people dull, their ears deaf, and their eyes blind, so that they cannot see or hear or understand. If they did, they might turn to me and be healed."

Will any of you listen to this? From now on will you listen with care?

So he made us feel the force of his anger and suffer the violence of war. Like fire his anger burned throughout Israel, but we never knew what was happening; we learned nothing at all from it.

"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!

He knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord! Do not remember this sin against them!" He said this and died.

Whenever I speak, I have to cry out and shout, "Violence! Destruction!" LORD, I am ridiculed and scorned all the time because I proclaim your message.

But when I say, "I will forget the LORD and no longer speak in his name," then your message is like a fire burning deep within me. I try my best to hold it in, but can no longer keep it back.

The LORD, the God of their ancestors, had continued to send prophets to warn his people, because he wanted to spare them and the Temple.

But they made fun of God's messengers, ignoring his words and laughing at his prophets, until at last the LORD's anger against his people was so great that there was no escape.

Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, then sent a report to King Jeroboam of Israel: "Amos is plotting against you among the people. His speeches will destroy the country.

One of the teachers of the Law said to him, "Teacher, when you say this, you insult us too!"

The teachers of the Law and the chief priests tried to arrest Jesus on the spot, because they knew that he had told this parable against them; but they were afraid of the people.

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I keep telling it that its ways are bad.

Some Pharisees who were there with him heard him say this and asked him, "Surely you don't mean that we are blind, too?"

The time will come when people will not listen to sound doctrine, but will follow their own desires and will collect for themselves more and more teachers who will tell them what they are itching to hear.

Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the LORD, and they study it day and night.

How I love to do your will, my God! I keep your teaching in my heart."

I take pleasure in your laws; your commands I will not forget.

Your instructions give me pleasure; they are my advisers.

Keep me obedient to your commandments, because in them I find happiness.

They have no understanding, but I find pleasure in your law.

Have mercy on me, and I will live because I take pleasure in your law.

How I long for your saving help, O LORD! I find happiness in your law.

My inner being delights in the law of God.