Quotes About Commitment

“If you will return, O Israel, return to Me,” declares the LORD. “If you will remove your detestable idols from My sight and no longer waver,

Although they say, ëAs surely as the LORD lives,í they are swearing falsely.”

and then come and stand before Me in this house, which bears My Name, and say, ëWe are delivered, so we can continue with all these abominationsí?

O LORD of Hosts, who judges righteously, who examines the heart and mind, let me see Your vengeance upon them, for to You I have committed my cause.

You planted them, and they have taken root. They have grown and produced fruit. You are ever on their lips, but far from their hearts.

And if they will diligently learn the ways of My people and swear by My name, saying, ëAs surely as the LORD livesí—just as they once taught My people to swear by Baal—then they will be established among My people.

Therefore this is what the LORD says: “If you return, I will restore you; you will stand in My presence. And if you speak words that are noble instead of worthless, you will be My spokesman. It is they who must turn to you, but you must not turn to them.

“You must not marry or have sons or daughters in this place.”

But I have not run away from being Your shepherd; I have not desired the day of despair. You know that the utterance of my lips was spoken in Your presence.

O LORD of Hosts, who examines the righteous, who sees the heart and mind, let me see Your vengeance upon them, for to You I have committed my cause.

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

I signed and sealed the deed, called in witnesses, and weighed out the silver on the scales.

I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put My fear in their hearts, so that they will never turn away from Me.

So all the officials and all the people who entered into this covenant agreed that they would free their menservants and maidservants and no longer hold them in bondage. They obeyed and released them,

but later they changed their minds and took back the menservants and maidservants they had freed, and they forced them to become slaves again.

Recently you repented and did what pleased Me; each of you proclaimed freedom for his neighbor. You made a covenant before Me in the house that bears My Name.

But now you have changed your minds and profaned My name. Each of you has taken back the menservants and maidservants whom you had set at liberty to go wherever they wanted, and you have again forced them to be your slaves.

And those who have transgressed My covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before Me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two in order to pass between its pieces.

Then I set pitchers full of wine and some cups before the men of the house of the Rechabites, and I said to them, “Drink some wine.”

Nor are you ever to build a house or sow seed or plant a vineyard. Those things are not for you. Instead, you must live in tents all your lives, so that you may live a long time in the land where you wander.í

And we have obeyed the voice of our forefather Jonadab son of Rechab in all he commanded us. So we have not drunk wine all our lives—neither we nor our wives nor our sons and daughters.

Nor have we built houses in which to live, and we have not owned any vineyards or fields or crops.

But we have lived in tents and have obeyed and done exactly as our forefather Jonadab commanded us.

Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act upon every word that the LORD your God sends you to tell us.