Old/New Testament

²⁹ More and more people were coming. He started to talk. He said, `People today are bad. They want a sign. No sign will be given them but the sign of Jonah the prophet of God.

³⁰ Jonah was a sign to the men in the city of Nineveh. In the same way the Son of Man will be a sign to the people today.

³¹ When the people are judged, the Queen from the South will stand up and speak against men who live today. She came a long way to hear the wise words of Solomon. The one who is here is greater than Solomon.

³² When people are judged, the men of Nineveh will stand up and speak against the people of today. They stopped their wrong ways when Jonah told them God's word. And the one who is here is greater than Jonah.'

³³ `No person lights a lamp and hides it in a hole or puts it under a basket. But he puts it on a place for a lamp. Then people who come in can see the light.

³⁴ Your body gets its light through your eyes. When you have good eyes, all your body has light. But when your eyes are bad, your body is in darkness.

³⁵ So be sure that it is not dark in you where it should be light.

³⁶ If no part of your body is dark, it will all be light. It will be like a lamp that shines to give you light.'

³⁷ While Jesus was saying these things, a Pharisee asked him to come to eat at his house. So Jesus went in and sat at the table.

³⁸ The Pharisee saw that Jesus did not wash his hands before he ate. He was surprised.

³⁹ The Lord said to him, `You Pharisees wash the outside of a cup and a dish clean. But inside you are full of greed and wrong ways.

⁴⁰ You are fools! Did not God make the outside and inside also?

⁴¹ Do good, and do it from your heart. Then everything is clean for you.

⁴² `You Pharisees will have trouble! You give to God a tenth part of small garden plants. But you do not judge in the right way. And you do not love God. You should do these things and the other things too.

⁴³ `You Pharisees will have trouble! In the meeting houses you want to sit in the front seats. And in the market you want people to greet you.

⁴⁴ You will have trouble! You are not true to yourselves! You are like graves that are not marked. Men walk over them and do not know it.'

⁴⁵ Then one of the men who taught God's law said to Jesus, `Teacher, when you say these things, you talk against us too.'

⁴⁶ Jesus said, `You men will have trouble also! You put heavy loads on people's backs. But you yourselves will not put up one finger to help carry the loads.

⁴⁷ You will have trouble! You build places to bury the prophets of God that your fathers killed.

⁴⁸ In this way you show you agree to the things your fathers did. They killed the prophets, and you build places to bury them.

⁴⁹ That is why God, who is wise, said, "I will send prophets and messengers to them. They will kill some of them. And they will trouble some of them."

⁵⁰ So the people who are living now will be punished for all the blood of the prophets of God that is on the ground since the world was made.

⁵¹ I mean all the blood from the time of Abel to the time of Zechariah. (He was killed between the holy table and the temple.) Yes, I tell you. The people who are living now will be punished for all of it.

⁵² `You teachers of God's law will have trouble! You have taken away the key of the door where people can go in and know what is true. You yourselves did not go in, and you stopped those who were going in.'

⁵³ When Jesus left the house, the scribes and Pharisees began to be very angry with him. They asked him questions about many things.

⁵⁴ They wanted him to say something that was wrong so they could make trouble for him.