Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The Lord is King!^[a]

Love and obey the Lord

11 Love the Lord your God. Do what he tells you to do. Always obey his rules, his laws and his commands. ² Remember that today I am speaking to you who have seen his powerful acts! Your children did not see the great things that the Lord your God did to teach you. You saw for yourselves how great, strong and powerful he is. ³ But your children did not see the great miracles that he did in Egypt. He punished Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and all his people. ⁴ You saw how God destroyed Egypt's army, with all their horses and chariots. They were chasing after you to catch you. But God caused the water of the Red Sea to cover them, so that they drowned. ⁵ Your children did not see all the things that the Lord did in the desert as he brought you here. ⁶ They did not see how he punished Dathan and Abiram, Eliab's sons, from Reuben's tribe. God caused the earth to open up in the middle of the Israelites' camp. These men fell down into the hole and they disappeared. Their families, their tents and everything that they had all disappeared in the hole. ⁷ Remember that I am speaking to you, the people who have seen the Lord's powerful acts.

God's blessings in Canaan

⁸ So you must obey all the commands that I am giving to you today. If you do that, you will be able to go across the Jordan River into Canaan. You will be strong enough to take the land for yourselves and live there. ⁹ Then you will enjoy a long life in that land. It is the land that the Lord promised to give to your ancestors and to their descendants. It is a land where there is plenty of food and drink, enough for everyone.

¹⁰ The land that you are going into is not like the land of Egypt, where you lived before. There, when you planted seeds, you had to take water to them. It was like a garden where you grow vegetables. ¹¹ But now you are going across the Jordan River into a different kind of land. It has hills and valleys. Rain falls from the sky and makes the ground wet. ¹² The Lord your God takes care of the land there. He watches over it every day, through the whole year.

¹³ So listen carefully to the commands that I am giving to you today. Love the Lord your God and serve him in everything that you think and in everything that you do. ¹⁴ If you do that, he makes this promise to you: ‘I will send rain on your land at the right time each year. There will be rain in autumn and rain in spring.^[a] Then your crops will give you food. You will also have grapes to make wine and olives to make oil. ¹⁵ I will make grass grow in your fields for your animals to eat. You will have as much food as you want to eat.’

¹⁶ But be careful! Do not turn away from the Lord so that you worship other gods. Do not let those things deceive you. ¹⁷ If you do that, the Lord will be very angry with you. He will not send rain down from the sky. The land will no longer give you food to eat. Then you will soon die. You will no longer be able to live in the good land that the Lord is giving to you.

¹³ Christ Jesus himself spoke God's true message clearly when he stood in front of Pontius Pilate.^[a] I now say this to you, in front of God who causes all things to be alive, and in front of Jesus. ¹⁴ You must obey the commands that you have received. Obey them completely without any mistake until our Lord Jesus Christ returns. ¹⁵ God will cause Christ to appear at the proper time. God is great, and he alone rules with all authority. He is the greatest King and the most powerful Lord. ¹⁶ God alone lives for ever. He lives in very bright light that nobody can come near. Nobody has ever seen God. Nobody is able to see him. So we praise him! He will rule for ever with great authority! Amen! This is true.