Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
What the Lord Demands
A psalm of David.
15 Lord, who may enter your Holy Tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain?
2 Only those who are innocent
and who do what is right.
Such people speak the truth from their hearts
3 and do not tell lies about others.
They do no wrong to their neighbors
and do not gossip.
4 They do not respect hateful people
but honor those who honor the Lord.
They keep their promises to their neighbors,
even when it hurts.
5 They do not charge interest on money they lend
and do not take money to hurt innocent people.
Whoever does all these things will never be destroyed.
8 Then Moses quickly bowed to the ground and worshiped. 9 He said, “Lord, if you are pleased with me, please go with us. I know that these are stubborn people, but forgive our evil and our sin. Take us as your own people.”
10 Then the Lord said, “I am making this agreement with you. I will do miracles in front of all your people—things that have never before been done for any other nation on earth—and the people with you will see my work. I, the Lord, will do wonderful things for you. 11 Obey the things I command you today, and I will force out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites ahead of you. 12 Be careful that you don’t make an agreement with the people who live in the land where you are going, because it will bring you trouble. 13 Destroy their altars, break their stone pillars, and cut down their Asherah idols. 14 Don’t worship any other god, because I, the Lord, the Jealous One, am a jealous God.
15 “Be careful that you don’t make an agreement with the people who live in that land. When they worship their gods, they will invite you to join them. Then you will eat their sacrifices. 16 If you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters worship gods, they will lead your sons to do the same thing.
17 “Do not make gods of melted metal.
18 “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days you must eat bread made without yeast as I commanded you. Do this during the month I have chosen, the month of Abib, because in that month you came out of Egypt.
19 “The firstborn of every mother belongs to me, including every firstborn male animal that is born in your flocks and herds. 20 You may buy back a donkey by paying for it with a lamb, but if you don’t want to buy back a donkey, you must break its neck. You must buy back all your firstborn sons.
“No one is to come before me without a gift.
21 “You must work for six days, but on the seventh day you must rest—even during the planting season and the harvest season.
22 “Celebrate the Feast of Weeks when you gather the first grain of the wheat harvest. And celebrate the Feast of Shelters in the fall.
23 “Three times each year all your males must come before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24 I will force out nations ahead of you and expand the borders of your land. You will go before the Lord your God three times each year, and at that time no one will try to take your land from you.
25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me with anything containing yeast, and do not leave any of the sacrifice of the Feast of Passover until the next morning.
26 “Bring the best first crops that you harvest from your ground to the Tent of the Lord your God.
“You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, because with these words I have made an agreement with you and Israel.”
28 Moses stayed there with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and during that time he did not eat food or drink water. And Moses wrote the words of the Agreement—the Ten Commandments—on the stone tablets.
Jesus Is Brought Before Pilate
28 Early in the morning they led Jesus from Caiaphas’s house to the Roman governor’s palace. They would not go inside the palace, because they did not want to make themselves unclean;[a] they wanted to eat the Passover meal. 29 So Pilate went outside to them and asked, “What charges do you bring against this man?”
30 They answered, “If he were not a criminal, we wouldn’t have brought him to you.”
31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.”
“But we are not allowed to put anyone to death,” the Jews answered. 32 (This happened so that what Jesus said about how he would die would come true.)
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.