July 27, 2026

1The LORD said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth; wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water. 2I bought the loincloth, as the LORD commanded, and put it on. 3A second time the word of the LORD came to me thus: 4Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing, and go at once to the Perath; hide it there in a cleft of the rock. 5Obedient to the LORD’s command, I went to the Perath and buried the loincloth. 6After a long time, the LORD said to me: Go now to the Perath and fetch the loincloth which I told you to hide there. 7So I went to the Perath, looked for the loincloth and took it from the place I had hidden it. But it was rotted, good for nothing! 8Then the word came to me from the LORD: 9Thus says the LORD: So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. 10This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and follow other gods, serving and worshiping them, will be like this loincloth, good for nothing. 11For, as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me—oracle of the LORD—to be my people, my fame, my praise, my glory. But they did not listen.

18You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, you forgot the God who gave you birth. 19The LORD saw and was filled with loathing, provoked by his sons and daughters. 20He said, I will hide my face from them, and see what becomes of them. For they are a fickle generation, children with no loyalty in them! 21Since they have incited me with a “no-god,” and provoked me with their empty idols, I will incite them with a “no-people”; with a foolish nation I will provoke them.

18He willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

31He proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. 32It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’” 33The Parable of the Yeast. He spoke to them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” 34The Use of Parables. All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, 35to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation [of the world].”