Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ Then the Lord told Moses, “Quick! Go on down, for your people that you brought from Egypt have defiled themselves, ⁸ and have quickly abandoned all my laws. They have molded themselves a calf, and worshiped it, and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.’”

⁹ Then the Lord said, “I have seen what a stubborn, rebellious lot these people are. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone and my anger shall blaze out against them and destroy them all; and I will make you, Moses, into a great nation instead of them.”

¹¹ But Moses begged God not to do it. “Lord,” he pleaded, “why is your anger so hot against your own people whom you brought from the land of Egypt with such great power and mighty miracles? ¹² Do you want the Egyptians to say, ‘God tricked them into coming to the mountains so that he could slay them, destroying them from off the face of the earth’? Turn back from your fierce wrath. Turn away from this terrible evil you are planning against your people! ¹³ Remember your promise to your servants—to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. For you swore by your own self, ‘I will multiply your posterity as the stars of heaven, and I will give them all of this land I have promised to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”

¹⁴ So the Lord changed his mind and spared them.

51 Written after Nathan the prophet had come to inform David of God’s judgment against him because of his adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of Uriah, her husband.

O loving and kind God, have mercy. Have pity upon me and take away the awful stain of my transgressions. ² Oh, wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. ³ For I admit my shameful deed—it haunts me day and night. ⁴ It is against you and you alone I sinned and did this terrible thing. You saw it all, and your sentence against me is just. ⁵ But I was born a sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. ⁶ You deserve honesty from the heart; yes, utter sincerity and truthfulness. Oh, give me this wisdom.

⁷ Sprinkle me with the cleansing blood^[a] and I shall be clean again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. ⁸ And after you have punished me, give me back my joy again. ⁹ Don’t keep looking at my sins—erase them from your sight. ¹⁰ Create in me a new, clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires.

¹² How thankful I am to Christ Jesus our Lord for choosing me as one of his messengers, and giving me the strength to be faithful to him, ¹³ even though I used to scoff at the name of Christ. I hunted down his people, harming them in every way I could. But God had mercy on me because I didn’t know what I was doing, for I didn’t know Christ at that time. ¹⁴ Oh, how kind our Lord was, for he showed me how to trust him and become full of the love of Christ Jesus.

¹⁵ How true it is, and how I long that everyone should know it, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—and I was the greatest of them all. ¹⁶ But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as an example to show everyone how patient he is with even the worst sinners, so that others will realize that they, too, can have everlasting life. ¹⁷ Glory and honor to God forever and ever. He is the King of the ages, the unseen one who never dies; he alone is God, and full of wisdom. Amen.

15 Dishonest tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus’ sermons; ² but this caused complaints from the Jewish religious leaders and the experts on Jewish law because he was associating with such despicable people—even eating with them!

^3-4 So Jesus used this illustration: “If you had a hundred sheep and one of them strayed away and was lost in the wilderness, wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine others to go and search for the lost one until you found it? ⁵ And then you would joyfully carry it home on your shoulders. ⁶ When you arrived you would call together your friends and neighbors to rejoice with you because your lost sheep was found.

⁷ “Well, in the same way heaven will be happier over one lost sinner who returns to God than over ninety-nine others who haven’t strayed away!

⁸ “Or take another illustration: A woman has ten valuable silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and look in every corner of the house and sweep every nook and cranny until she finds it? ⁹ And then won’t she call in her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her? ¹⁰ In the same way there is joy in the presence of the angels of God when one sinner repents.”