Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Moses’ Warning to Obey God’s Laws

4 “Now, Israel, listen to the laws and to the commands that I teach you. Obey them and you will live. Then you can go in and take the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. ² You must not add to what I command you. And you must not take anything away. You must obey the commands of the Lord your God that I have given you.

⁶ Obey these laws carefully. This will show the people of the other nations that you are wise and sensible. They will hear about these laws and say, ‘Truly, the people of this great nation are wise and sensible.’

⁷ “The Lord our God is near when we ask him to help us. No other nation has a god like that! ⁸ And no other nation is great enough to have laws and rules as good as the teachings I give you today. ⁹ But you must be careful! Be sure that as long as you live you never forget what you have seen. You must teach these things to your children and grandchildren.

A song of David.

¹⁷ Everything good comes from God. Every perfect gift is from him. These good gifts come down from the Father who made all the lights in the sky. But God never changes like the shadows from those lights. He is always the same. ¹⁸ God decided to give us life through the true message he sent to us. He wanted us to be the most important of all that he created.

Listening and Obeying

¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, always be more willing to listen than to speak. Keep control of your anger. ²⁰ Anger does not help you live the way God wants. ²¹ So get rid of everything evil in your lives—every kind of wrong you do. Be humble and accept God’s teaching that is planted in your hearts. This teaching can save you.

²² Do what God’s teaching says; don’t just listen and do nothing. When you only sit and listen, you are fooling yourselves. ²³ Hearing God’s teaching and doing nothing is like looking at your face in the mirror ²⁴ and doing nothing about what you saw. You go away and immediately forget how bad you looked. ²⁵ But when you look into God’s perfect law that sets people free, pay attention to it. If you do what it says, you will have God’s blessing. Never just listen to his teaching and forget what you heard.

The True Way to Worship God

²⁶ You might think you are a very religious person. But if your tongue is out of control, you are fooling yourself. Your careless talk makes your offerings to God worthless. ²⁷ The worship that God wants is this: caring for orphans or widows who need help and keeping yourself free from the world’s evil influence. This is the kind of worship that God accepts as pure and good.

God’s Law and Human Traditions^(A)

7 Some Pharisees and some teachers of the law came from Jerusalem and gathered around Jesus. ² They saw that some of his followers ate food with hands that were not clean, meaning that they did not wash their hands in a special way. ³ The Pharisees and all the other Jews never eat before washing their hands in this special way. They do this to follow the traditions they have from their great leaders who lived long ago. ⁴ And when these Jews buy something in the market, they never eat it until they wash it in a special way. They also follow other rules from their people who lived before them. They follow rules like the washing of cups, pitchers, and pots.^[a]

⁵ The Pharisees and teachers of the law said to Jesus, “Your followers don’t follow the traditions we have from our great leaders who lived long ago. They eat their food with hands that are not clean. Why do they do this?”

⁶ Jesus answered, “You are all hypocrites. Isaiah was right when he wrote these words from God about you:

⁸ You have stopped following God’s commands, preferring instead the man-made rules you got from others.”

¹⁴ Jesus called the people to him again. He said, “Everyone should listen to me and understand what I am saying. ¹⁵ There is nothing people can put in their mouth that will make them wrong.^[a] People are made wrong by what comes from inside them.”

²¹ All these bad things begin inside a person, in the mind: bad thoughts, sexual sins, stealing, murder, ²² adultery, greed, doing bad things to people, lying, doing things that are morally wrong, jealousy, insulting people, proud talking, and foolish living. ²³ These evil things come from inside a person. And these are the things that make people unacceptable to God.”