Ritual and Moral Holiness

19 And the Lord said to Moses, ² “Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy. ³ Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. ⁴ Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods: I am the Lord your God.

⁵ “When you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. ⁶ It shall be eaten the same day you offer it, or on the morrow; and anything left over until the third day shall be burned with fire. ⁷ If it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination; it will not be accepted, ⁸ and every one who eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned a holy thing of the Lord; and that person shall be cut off from his people.

⁹ “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. ¹⁰ And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

¹¹ “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. ¹² And you shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

¹³ “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. ¹⁴ You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

¹⁵ “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. ¹⁶ You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand forth against the life^[a] of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

¹⁷ “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. ¹⁸ You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

¹⁹ “You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall there come upon you a garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff.

²⁰ “If a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave, betrothed to another man and not yet ransomed or given her freedom, an inquiry shall be held. They shall not be put to death, because she was not free; ²¹ but he shall bring a guilt offering for himself to the Lord, to the door of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering. ²² And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin which he has committed; and the sin which he has committed shall be forgiven him.

²³ “When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden;^[b] three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. ²⁴ And in the fourth year all their fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. ²⁵ But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that they may yield more richly for you: I am the Lord your God.

²⁶ “You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not practice augury or witchcraft. ²⁷ You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard. ²⁸ You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.

²⁹ “Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry and the land become full of wickedness. ³⁰ You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

³¹ “Do not turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.

³² “You shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

³³ “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. ³⁴ The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

³⁵ “You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. ³⁶ You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. ³⁷ And you shall observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them: I am the Lord.”

Jesus the Good Shepherd

10 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; ² but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ To him the gatekeeper opens; the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. ⁵ A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” ⁶ This figure Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

⁷ So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. ⁸ All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them. ⁹ I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. ¹¹ I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³ He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father.”

¹⁹ There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. ²⁰ Many of them said, “He has a demon, and he is mad; why listen to him?” ²¹ Others said, “These are not the sayings of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

The Sabbatical Year

25 The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai, ² “Say to the people of Israel, When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to the Lord. ³ Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits; ⁴ but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. ⁵ What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your undressed vine you shall not gather; it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. ⁶ The sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you; ⁷ for your cattle also and for the beasts that are in your land all its yield shall be for food.

The Year of Jubilee

⁸ “And you shall count seven weeks^[a] of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall be to you forty-nine years. ⁹ Then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. ¹⁰ And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. ¹¹ A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. ¹² For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat what it yields out of the field.

¹³ “In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. ¹⁴ And if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. ¹⁵ According to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years for crops he shall sell to you. ¹⁶ If the years are many you shall increase the price, and if the years are few you shall diminish the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. ¹⁷ You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord your God.

¹⁸ “Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely. ¹⁹ The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill, and dwell in it securely. ²⁰ And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ ²¹ I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years. ²² When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating old produce; until the ninth year, when its produce comes in, you shall eat the old. ²³ The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me. ²⁴ And in all the country you possess, you shall grant a redemption of the land.

6 Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. ² Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved.

False Teaching and True Riches

Teach and urge these duties. ³ If any one teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, ⁴ he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, ⁵ and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. ⁶ There is great gain in godliness with contentment; ⁷ for we brought nothing into the world, and^[a] we cannot take anything out of the world; ⁸ but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. ⁹ But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.

The Good Fight of Faith

¹¹ But as for you, man of God, shun all this; aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³ In the presence of God who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, ¹⁴ I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ; ¹⁵ and this will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, ¹⁶ who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

¹⁷ As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. ¹⁸ They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, ¹⁹ thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed.

Personal Instructions and Benediction

²⁰ O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, ²¹ for by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith.

Grace be with you.