Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Worship God and obey him[a]
95 Come now! Let us sing together to worship the Lord!
We will shout aloud
to praise God, the strong Rock who makes us safe!
2 Let us come near to God
and thank him![b]
Let us sing songs to praise him,
because we are so happy!
3 Yes, the Lord is the great God.
He is the great king who rules over all gods.
4 The deepest places of the earth are in his hand.
The highest mountains belong to him.
5 The seas are his,
because he made them.
He also made the dry land,
with his own hands.
6 Come now! Let us bend down to worship him!
Let us bend our knees in front of the Lord.
He is the one who made us.
7 He is our God.
He takes care of us,
like a shepherd takes care of his sheep.[c]
As his sheep, he gives us what we need.
Today, you must listen to him
and obey him.
8 He says, ‘Do not refuse to obey me,
like my people did at Meribah.
They also did that one day at Massah,
in the desert.
9 Your ancestors tested me there,
to see if I would punish them.
But they had already seen the great things
that I had done for them!
10 So I was angry with those people
all the time for 40 years.
I said, “These people love to go the wrong way.
They refuse to follow my ways.”
11 I was very angry and I promised,
“They will never come into my place of rest.” ’[d]
God sends special food
16 Then all the Israelites left Elim and they went into the desert called Sin. This is between Elim and Sinai. They arrived in the desert on the 15th day of the second month after they had left Egypt. 2 When they were in the desert, all the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, ‘It would have been better if the Lord had killed us in Egypt! There, we sat round pots with plenty of meat. We ate all the food that we wanted. But now you have brought us into this desert. We are so hungry that we will soon die!’
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will cause bread to fall down from the sky for you like rain. Each day, the people must go out and pick up enough bread for that day. In this way I will test them. I will discover whether they will obey my rules. 5 On the sixth day, they must pick up and prepare twice as much bread.’
6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, ‘In the evening, you will know who brought you out of Egypt. It was the Lord! 7 Then, in the morning, you will see how great the Lord is. The Lord has heard the bad things that you have said against him. We, Moses and Aaron, are the Lord's servants. So you are complaining against him, not against us!’
8 Moses said to them, ‘The Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening. And in the morning, he will give you all the bread that you want. He will do this because he has heard you when you complained against him. We are only his servants. You have said bad things against the Lord, not against us.’
Who God's Son, Jesus Christ, is
15 We cannot see God. But Jesus Christ shows us completely who God is. Even before God made anything, Jesus was already there as God's Son who rules everything. 16 When God created everything, it was his Son who did it. His Son made everything that is on earth and in heaven. He created everything that we can see, as well as the things that we cannot see. He made rulers and leaders. He made everything that has power and authority. God gave his Son the authority to create everything, so that his Son would receive praise. 17 God's Son was there before anything else was there. And now he causes everything to continue in its proper place. 18 The church is like Christ's body and he is its head.[a] He is where it all begins. As God's special Son, he was the first person who became alive again after death.[b] As a result, Christ is first and most important in all things.
19 God chose to put his nature in Christ completely. 20 He decided that Christ would die on the cross as a sacrifice. In that way, God would bring all things back to himself. Then everything could live in peace with God. That includes everything on the earth and everything in heaven.
21 As for you, you were far away from God at one time. You thought bad things and you did bad things. As a result, you were God's enemies. 22 But now you have become God's friends. This happened because Christ's human body died on the cross. As a result, God has brought you to himself. As you stand in front of him, you are completely good and clean inside. He sees nothing in you that is bad.
23 But you must continue to believe God's true message. Do not turn away from it. Continue to trust God, as you did when you first heard the good news. People have told this good news to everyone all over the world. And God has chosen me, Paul, as his servant to tell this good news.
EasyEnglish Bible Copyright © MissionAssist 2019 - Charitable Incorporated Organisation 1162807. Used by permission. All rights reserved.