25. As the Scripture says in Hosea:“I will say, ‘You are my people’to those I had called ‘not my people.’And I will show my loveto those people I did not love.” Hosea 2:1, 23
26. “Now it is said to Israel,‘You are not my people.’But later they will be called‘children of the living God.’” Hosea 1:10
27. And Isaiah cries out about Israel:“There are so many people of Israel.They are like the grains of sand by the sea.But only a few of them will be saved.
28. For the Lord will quickly and completely punish the people on the earth.” Isaiah 10:22-23
29. It is as Isaiah said:“The Lord of heaven’s armiesallowed a few of our descendants to live.Otherwise we would have been completely destroyedlike the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.” Isaiah 1:9
30. So what does all this mean? It means this: the non-Jews were not trying to make themselves right with God. But they were made right with God because of their faith.
31. And the people of Israel tried to follow a law to make themselves right with God. But they did not succeed,
32. because they tried to make themselves right by the things they did. They did not trust in God to make them right. They fell over the stone that causes people to fall.
33. As it is written in the Scripture:“I will put in Jerusalem a stone that causes people to stumble.It is a rock that makes them fall.Anyone who trusts in him will not be disappointed.” Isaiah 8:14; 28:16