Jer. 12:1–4

12:1 Lord, you have always been fair

whenever I have complained to you.

However, I would like to speak with you about the disposition of justice.

Why are wicked people successful?

Why do all dishonest people have such easy lives?

2You plant them like trees, and they put down their roots.

They grow prosperous and are very fruitful.

They always talk about you,

but they really care nothing about you.

3But you, Lord, know all about me.

You watch me and test my devotion to you.

Drag these wicked men away like sheep to be slaughtered!

Appoint a time when they will be killed!

4How long must the land be parched

and the grass in every field be withered?

How long must the animals and the birds die

because of the wickedness of the people who live in this land?

For these people boast,

“God will not see what happens to us.”

Ps. 128

128:1 A song of ascents.

How blessed is every one of the Lord’s loyal followers,

each one who keeps his commands.

2You will eat what you worked so hard to grow.

You will be blessed and secure.

3Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

in the inner rooms of your house;

your children will be like olive branches,

as they sit all around your table.

4Yes indeed, the man who fears the Lord

will be blessed in this way.

5May the Lord bless you from Zion

that you might see Jerusalem prosper

all the days of your life

6and that you might see your grandchildren.

May Israel experience peace.

Acts 7:35–53

7:35 This same Moses they had rejected, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge?’ God sent as both ruler and deliverer through the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36This man led them out, performing wonders and miraculous signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. 37This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers.’ 38This is the man who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors, and he received living oracles to give to you. 39Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him, but pushed him aside and turned back to Egypt in their hearts, 40saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go in front of us, for this Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt —we do not know what has happened to him!’ 41At that time they made an idol in the form of a calf, brought a sacrifice to the idol, and began rejoicing in the works of their hands. 42But God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, was it, house of Israel? 43 But you took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the images you made to worship, but I will deport you beyond Babylon.’ 44Our ancestors had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as God who spoke to Moses ordered him to make it according to the design he had seen. 45Our ancestors received possession of it and brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors, until the time of David. 46He found favor with God and asked that he could find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob. 47But Solomon built a house for him. 48Yet the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says,

49‘Heaven is my throne,

and earth is the footstool for my feet.

What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,

or what is my resting place?

50Did my hand not make all these things?’

51“You stubborn people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, like your ancestors did! 52Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold long ago the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become! 53You received the law by decrees given by angels, but you did not obey it.”