Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Tav

The Joy of God’s Word

An Old Prophet Rebukes the Man of God

¹¹ Now there was an old prophet who lived in Bethel, and his sons went to him and told him everything that the man of God had accomplished that day in Bethel, including the message that he had delivered to the king. ¹² “Which way did he go?” their father asked him, since his sons had observed the way that the man of God had taken to return to Judah from Bethel. ¹³ “Saddle my donkey for me!” he ordered.^[a] So they saddled the donkey for him ¹⁴ and he rode off after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak tree.^[b] “You’re the man of God who came from Judah, aren’t you?” the old prophet^[c] asked him.

“I am,” he replied.

¹⁵ “Come home with me and have a meal,” he told him.

¹⁶ But he replied, “I can’t go back with you to your home, be in your company, or even eat food or drink water with you in this place, ¹⁷ because I’ve been given a command in the form of this message from the Lord: ‘You are to eat no food, drink no water, and do not return to Judah^[d] by traveling the way by which you go there.’”

¹⁸ “I’m a prophet like you,” the old man replied, “and an angel spoke to me and delivered this message from the Lord: ‘Bring him back with you to your house and give him food and water.’” But he was lying, ¹⁹ and the man of God^[e] accompanied the old prophet^[f] back to his house, ate some food, and drank some water.

²⁰ Later, while they were sitting down at the table, a message from the Lord was delivered to the prophet who had brought him back, ²¹ so he cried out to the man of God from Judah: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Because you disobeyed a command from the Lord and haven’t done what the Lord your God commanded you to do, ²² but instead you returned to eat and drink in the very place that he told you “Eat no food and drink no water,” your body will not be buried in the same grave as your ancestors.’”

A Lion Kills the Man of God

²³ After the meal was over, and the man had eaten food and had drunk water, the old prophet saddled the donkey for him—that is, for the man of God whom he had brought back. ²⁴ Not long after the man of God^[g] had left, a lion met him along the road and killed him. His body was left lying in the middle of the road with the donkey standing beside it and with the lion also standing next to the body. ²⁵ When some men passed by and noticed the body lying in the middle of the road and the lion standing beside the body, they went straight to the city and told what had happened in the city where the old prophet lived.

Keep Focusing on the Messiah

3 Therefore, if you have been raised with the Messiah,^[a] keep focusing on the things that are above, where the Messiah^[b] is seated at the right hand of God. ² Keep your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. ³ For you have died, and your life has been safely guarded by the Messiah^[c] in God. ⁴ When the Messiah,^[d] who is^[e] your^[f] life, is revealed, then you, too, will be revealed with him in glory.

⁵ So put to death your worldly impulses:^[g] sexual sin, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). ⁶ It is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.^{[h] 7} You used to behave like them as you lived among them. ⁸ But now you must also get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene speech, and all such sins. ⁹ Do not lie to one another, for you have stripped off the old nature with its practices ¹⁰ and have clothed yourselves with the new nature, which is being renewed in full knowledge, consistent with the image of the one who created it. ¹¹ In him^[i] there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,^[j] slave, or free person. Instead, the Messiah^[k] is all and in all.