Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Two Ways to Live
1 Happy are those who don’t listen to the wicked,
who don’t go where sinners go,
who don’t do what evil people do.
2 They love the Lord’s teachings,
and they think about those teachings day and night.
3 They are strong, like a tree planted by a river.
The tree produces fruit in season,
and its leaves don’t die.
Everything they do will succeed.
4 But wicked people are not like that.
They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 So the wicked will not escape God’s punishment.
Sinners will not worship with God’s people.
6 This is because the Lord takes care of his people,
but the wicked will be destroyed.
25 The Lord had said he would destroy you, so I threw myself down in front of him for those forty days and forty nights. 26 I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your own people, whom you freed and brought out of Egypt by your great power and strength. 27 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don’t look at how stubborn these people are, and don’t look at their sin and evil. 28 Otherwise, Egypt will say, ‘It was because the Lord was not able to take his people into the land he promised them, and it was because he hated them that he took them into the desert to kill them.’ 29 But they are your people, Lord, your own people, whom you brought out of Egypt with your great power and strength.”
New Stone Tablets
10 At that time the Lord said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain. Also make a wooden Ark. 2 I will write on the tablets the same words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you will put the new tablets in the Ark.”
3 So I made the Ark out of acacia wood, and I cut out two stone tablets like the first ones. Then I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. 4 The Lord wrote the same things on these tablets he had written before —the Ten Commandments that he had told you on the mountain from the fire, on the day you were gathered there. And the Lord gave them to me. 5 Then I turned and came down the mountain; I put the tablets in the Ark I had made, as the Lord had commanded, and they are still there.
7 In every way be an example of doing good deeds. When you teach, do it with honesty and seriousness. 8 Speak the truth so that you cannot be criticized. Then those who are against you will be ashamed because there is nothing bad to say about us.
11 That is the way we should live, because God’s grace that can save everyone has come. 12 It teaches us not to live against God nor to do the evil things the world wants to do. Instead, that grace teaches us to live in the present age in a wise and right way and in a way that shows we serve God. 13 We should live like that while we wait for our great hope and the coming of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. 14 He gave himself for us so he might pay the price to free us from all evil and to make us pure people who belong only to him—people who are always wanting to do good deeds.
15 Say these things and encourage the people and tell them what is wrong in their lives, with all authority. Do not let anyone treat you as if you were unimportant.
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.