Study Desk

Praised be God, Father of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, who, in keeping with his great mercy, has caused us, through the resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah from the dead, to be born again to a living hope,

As people who obey God, do not let yourselves be shaped by the evil desires you used to have when you were still ignorant.

God knew him before the founding of the universe, but revealed him in the acharit-hayamim for your sakes.

Through him you trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory; so that your trust and hope are in God.

You have been born again not from some seed that will decay, but from one that cannot decay, through the living Word of God that lasts forever .

As you come to him, the living stone , rejected by people but chosen by God and precious to him,

you yourselves, as living stone s, are being built into a spiritual house to be cohanim set apart for God to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to him through Yeshua the Messiah.

But you are a chosen people, the King's cohanim , a holy nation , a people for God to possess! Why? In order for you to declare the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

but to live such good lives among the pagans that even though they now speak against you as evil-doers, they will, as a result of seeing your good actions, give glory to God on the Day of his coming.

Be respectful to all — keep loving the brotherhood, fearing God and honoring the emperor.

For it is a grace when someone, because he is mindful of God, bears up under the pain of undeserved punishment.

For what credit is there in bearing up under a beating you deserve for doing something wrong? But if you bear up under punishment, even though you have done what is right, God looks on it with favor.

This is how the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves and submit to their husbands,

For if God has in fact willed that you should suffer, it is better that you suffer for doing what is good than for doing what is evil.

For the Messiah himself died for sins, once and for all, a righteous person on behalf of unrighteous people, so that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but brought to life by the Spirit;

to those who were disobedient long ago, in the days of Noach, when God waited patiently during the building of the ark, in which a few people — to be specific, eight — were delivered by means of water.

This also prefigures what delivers us now, the water of immersion, which is not the removal of dirt from the body, but one's pledge to keep a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah.

He has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God , with angels, authorities and powers subject to him.

This is why he was proclaimed to those who have died; it was so that, although physically they would receive the judgment common to all humanity, they might live by the Spirit in the way that God has provided.

if someone speaks, let him speak God's words; if someone serves, let him do so out of strength that God supplies; so that in everything God may be glorified through Yeshua the Messiah — to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.