What God Requires^[a]

Moses Urges Israel to Be Obedient

4 Then Moses said to the people, “Obey all the laws that I am teaching you, and you will live and occupy the land which the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. ^2 (A)Do not add anything to what I command you, and do not take anything away. Obey the commands of the Lord your God that I have given you.

⁶ Obey them faithfully, and this will show the people of other nations how wise you are. When they hear of all these laws, they will say, ‘What wisdom and understanding this great nation has!’

⁷ “No other nation, no matter how great, has a god who is so near when they need him as the Lord our God is to us. He answers us whenever we call for help. ⁸ No other nation, no matter how great, has laws so just as those that I have taught you today. ⁹ Be on your guard! Make certain that you do not forget, as long as you live, what you have seen with your own eyes. Tell your children and your grandchildren

¹⁷ Every good gift and every perfect present comes from heaven; it comes down from God, the Creator of the heavenly lights, who does not change or cause darkness by turning. ¹⁸ By his own will he brought us into being through the word of truth, so that we should have first place among all his creatures.

Hearing and Doing

^19 (A)Remember this, my dear friends! Everyone must be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry. ²⁰ Human anger does not achieve God's righteous purpose. ²¹ So get rid of every filthy habit and all wicked conduct. Submit to God and accept the word that he plants in your hearts, which is able to save you.

²² Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word; instead, put it into practice. ²³ If you listen to the word, but do not put it into practice you are like people who look in a mirror and see themselves as they are. ²⁴ They take a good look at themselves and then go away and at once forget what they look like. ²⁵ But if you look closely into the perfect law that sets people free, and keep on paying attention to it and do not simply listen and then forget it, but put it into practice—you will be blessed by God in what you do.

²⁶ Do any of you think you are religious? If you do not control your tongue, your religion is worthless and you deceive yourself. ²⁷ What God the Father considers to be pure and genuine religion is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world.

The Teaching of the Ancestors^(A)

7 Some Pharisees and teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus. ² They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands that were ritually unclean—that is, they had not washed them in the way the Pharisees said people should.

(³ For the Pharisees, as well as the rest of the Jews, follow the teaching they received from their ancestors: they do not eat unless they wash their hands in the proper way; ⁴ nor do they eat anything that comes from the market unless they wash it first.^[a] And they follow many other rules which they have received, such as the proper way to wash cups, pots, copper bowls, and beds.^[b])

⁵ So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law asked Jesus, “Why is it that your disciples do not follow the teaching handed down by our ancestors, but instead eat with ritually unclean hands?”

^6 (B)Jesus answered them, “How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you! You are hypocrites, just as he wrote:

⁸ “You put aside God's command and obey human teachings.”

The Things That Make a Person Unclean^(A)

¹⁴ Then Jesus called the crowd to him once more and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. ¹⁵ There is nothing that goes into you from the outside which can make you ritually unclean. Rather, it is what comes out of you that makes you unclean.”

²¹ For from the inside, from your heart, come the evil ideas which lead you to do immoral things, to rob, kill, ²² commit adultery, be greedy, and do all sorts of evil things; deceit, indecency, jealousy, slander, pride, and folly— ²³ all these evil things come from inside you and make you unclean.”