It is the same for you. If you do not speak clearly with your tongue, how will anyone know what is being said? For you will be speaking into the air.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His plea ¹  through us. We plead with you ²  on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!”

I am not saying this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love by comparison with the eagerness of others. ¹ 

I wish I could be with you now and change my tone of voice, ¹  because I am perplexed about you.

So then you are no longer foreigners and noncitizens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household,

and in all of this, ¹  by taking up the shield ²  of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

and he entered once for all into the most holy place not by the blood of goats and calves but by his own blood, and so he himself secured ¹  eternal redemption.

By his sovereign plan he gave us birth ¹  through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

Give a shepherd’s care to ¹  God’s flock among you, exercising oversight ²  not merely as a duty ³  but willingly under God’s direction, ⁴  not for shameful profit but eagerly.

These people are grumblers and ¹  fault-finders who go ²  wherever their desires lead them, ³  and they give bombastic speeches, ⁴  enchanting folks ⁵  for their own gain. ⁶ 

(Now ¹  the name of the star is ²  Wormwood.) ³  So ⁴  a third of the waters became wormwood, ⁵  and many people died from these waters because they were poisoned. ⁶ 

Isaac reopened ¹  the wells that had been dug ²  back in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up ³  after Abraham died. Isaac ⁴  gave these wells ⁵  the same names his father had given them. ⁶ 

King Asa ordered all the men of Judah (no exemptions were granted) to carry away the stones and wood that Baasha had used to build Ramah. ¹  King Asa used the materials to build up ²  Geba (in Benjamin) and Mizpah.

Elisha ¹  went back and took his pair of oxen and slaughtered them. He cooked the meat over a fire that he made by burning the harness and yoke. ²  He gave the people meat and they ate. Then he got up and followed Elijah and became his assistant.

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

I will multiply your descendants so they will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give them ¹  all these lands. All the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants. ² 

They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast – because they were thrust out ¹  of Egypt and were not able to delay, they ²  could not prepare ³  food for themselves either.

“You shall not take ¹  the name of the Lord your God in vain, ²  for the Lord will not hold guiltless ³  anyone who takes his name in vain.

and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Early in the morning he built ¹  an altar at the foot ²  of the mountain and arranged ³  twelve standing stones ⁴  – according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

¹ “They are to make an ark ²  of acacia wood – its length is to be three feet nine inches, its width two feet three inches, and its height two feet three inches. ³