Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Moses Tells Israel to Obey

4 Now, Israel, listen to the laws and commands I will teach you. Obey them so that you will live and so that you will go over and take the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving to you. ² Don’t add to these commands, and don’t leave anything out, but obey the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.

⁶ Obey these laws carefully, in order to show the other nations that you have wisdom and understanding. When they hear about these laws, they will say, “This great nation of Israel is wise and understanding.” ⁷ No other nation is as great as we are. Their gods do not come near them, but the Lord our God comes near when we pray to him. ⁸ And no other nation has such good teachings and commands as those I am giving to you today.

⁹ But be careful! Watch out and don’t forget the things you have seen. Don’t forget them as long as you live, but teach them to your children and grandchildren.

What the Lord Demands

A psalm of David.

¹⁷ Every good action and every perfect gift is from God. These good gifts come down from the Creator of the sun, moon, and stars, who does not change like their shifting shadows. ¹⁸ God decided to give us life through the word of truth so we might be the most important of all the things he made.

Listening and Obeying

¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, always be willing to listen and slow to speak. Do not become angry easily, ²⁰ because anger will not help you live the right kind of life God wants. ²¹ So put out of your life every evil thing and every kind of wrong. Then in gentleness accept God’s teaching that is planted in your hearts, which can save you.

²² Do what God’s teaching says; when you only listen and do nothing, you are fooling yourselves. ²³ Those who hear God’s teaching and do nothing are like people who look at themselves in a mirror. ²⁴ They see their faces and then go away and quickly forget what they looked like. ²⁵ But the truly happy people are those who carefully study God’s perfect law that makes people free, and they continue to study it. They do not forget what they heard, but they obey what God’s teaching says. Those who do this will be made happy.

The True Way to Worship God

²⁶ People who think they are religious but say things they should not say are just fooling themselves. Their “religion” is worth nothing. ²⁷ Religion that God accepts as pure and without fault is this: caring for orphans or widows who need help, and keeping yourself free from the world’s evil influence.

Obey God’s Law

7 When some Pharisees and some teachers of the law came from Jerusalem, they gathered around Jesus. ² They saw that some of Jesus’ followers ate food with hands that were not clean, that is, they hadn’t washed them. ³ (The Pharisees and all the Jews never eat before washing their hands in the way required by their unwritten laws. ⁴ And when they buy something in the market, they never eat it until they wash themselves in a special way. They also follow many other unwritten laws, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and pots.^[a])

⁵ The Pharisees and the teachers of the law said to Jesus, “Why don’t your followers obey the unwritten laws which have been handed down to us? Why do your followers eat their food with hands that are not clean?”

⁶ Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right when he spoke about you hypocrites. He wrote,

⁸ You have stopped following the commands of God, and you follow only human teachings.”^[b]

¹⁴ After Jesus called the crowd to him again, he said, “Every person should listen to me and understand what I am saying. ¹⁵ There is nothing people put into their bodies that makes them unclean. People are made unclean by the things that come out of them. [

²¹ All these evil things begin inside people, in the mind: evil thoughts, sexual sins, stealing, murder, adultery, ²² greed, evil actions, lying, doing sinful things, jealousy, speaking evil of others, pride, and foolish living. ²³ All these evil things come from inside and make people unclean.”