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Lectionary Theme: Reorganisation of life to experience the Kingdom of God
February 23 2025
24. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land.
25. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
26. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
27. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.
28. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
29. I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.
30. I will make the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field abundant, so that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations.
31. Then you shall remember your evil ways, and your dealings that were not good; and you shall loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominable deeds.
17. Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer walk as the gentiles walk, in the futility of their minds;
18. they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.
19. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
20. That is not the way you learned Christ!
21. For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus,
22. to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,
23. and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24. and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
1. Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.
2. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—
3. if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4. Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and
5. like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
6. For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
7. To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner,”
8. and “A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
10. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Live as Servants of God
1. He entered Jericho and was passing through it.
2. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.
3. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.
4. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.
5. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”
6. So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
7. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”
8. Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”
9. Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.
10. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” The Parable of the Ten Pounds