Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
32 1-2 What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! What joys when sins are covered over! What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record.
3 There was a time when I wouldn’t admit what a sinner I was.[a] But my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration. 4 All day and all night your hand was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day 5 until I finally admitted all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, “I will confess them to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.
6 Now I say that each believer should confess his sins to God when he is aware of them, while there is time to be forgiven. Judgment will not touch him[b] if he does.
7 You are my hiding place from every storm of life; you even keep me from getting into trouble! You surround me with songs of victory. 8 I will instruct you (says the Lord) and guide you along the best pathway for your life; I will advise you and watch your progress. 9 Don’t be like a senseless horse or mule that has to have a bit in its mouth to keep it in line!
10 Many sorrows come to the wicked, but abiding love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. 11 So rejoice in him, all those who are his,[c] and shout for joy, all those who try to obey him.
34 The Lord told Moses, “Prepare two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write upon them the same commands that were on the tablets you broke. 2 Be ready in the morning to come up into Mount Sinai and present yourself to me on the top of the mountain. 3 No one shall come with you and no one must be anywhere on the mountain. Do not let the flocks or herds feed close to the mountain.”
4 So Moses took two tablets of stone like the first ones, and was up early and climbed Mount Sinai, as the Lord had told him to, taking the two stone tablets in his hands.
5-6 Then the Lord descended in the form of a pillar of cloud and stood there with him, and passed in front of him and announced the meaning of his name.[a] “I am Jehovah, the merciful and gracious God,” he said, “slow to anger and rich in steadfast love and truth. 7 I, Jehovah, show this steadfast love to many thousands by forgiving their sins;[b] or else I refuse to clear the guilty, and require that a father’s sins be punished in the sons and grandsons, and even later generations.”
8 Moses fell down before the Lord and worshiped. 9 And he said, “If it is true that I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, then please go with us to the Promised Land; yes, it is an unruly, stubborn people, but pardon our iniquity and our sins, and accept us as your own.”
27 And the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these laws[a] that I have given you, for they represent the terms of my covenant with you and with Israel.”
28 Moses was up on the mountain with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, and in all that time he neither ate nor drank. At that time God[b] wrote out the Covenant—the Ten Commandments—on the stone tablets.
10 “Beware that you don’t look down upon a single one of these little children. For I tell you that in heaven their angels have constant access[a] to my Father. 11 And I, the Messiah,[b] came to save the lost.
12 “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one wanders away and is lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others and go out into the hills to search for the lost one? 13 And if he finds it, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine others safe at home! 14 Just so, it is not my Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.