Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

WAW

¹⁰ I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and nights, as I did the first time. The Lord listened to my prayer. He decided that he would not destroy you. ¹¹ Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go now! Lead the people on their journey. Then they can go into the land and take it for themselves. It is the land that I promised to their ancestors that I would give to them.’

Love the Lord and serve him

¹² So, people of Israel, this is what the Lord your God wants you to do: You should respect him with fear. You should live in a way that pleases him. Love him and serve him in everything that you think and in everything that you do. ¹³ Obey the Lord's commands and rules that I am giving to you today. If you do these things, you will have a happy life.

¹⁴ The whole sky and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God. The earth and everything that is in it also belong to him. ¹⁵ But the Lord chose to love your ancestors with a faithful love. You are their descendants. He has chosen you from among all the people of the world. You can see that this is true today!

¹⁶ So remember that you belong to the Lord. Live to please him! Do not refuse to obey him. ¹⁷ For the Lord your God rules all other gods. He is the Lord over all other lords. He is great and powerful. We should respect him and obey him. He is fair to everyone. He will not accept any bribes! ¹⁸ He brings justice to widows and to children who have no family. He loves the foreign people who live among you. He gives them food to eat and clothes to wear. ¹⁹ You too must love the foreign people who live among you. Remember that you also lived as foreigners in Egypt at one time.

²⁰ Respect and obey the Lord your God. Serve him faithfully. If you make a promise, only use his name to do that. ²¹ He is the one that you should praise. He is the God that you worship. He has done great and powerful things to help you, and you saw him do them. ²² When your ancestors went to Egypt, they were only 70 people. Now the Lord your God has caused you to become very many people. You are as many as the stars in the sky!^[a]

Believe God and do good things

¹⁴ My Christian brothers, you say that you believe in God. Then you must show this in the things that you do. If not, your faith will not help you. It will not save you. ¹⁵ For example, maybe a believer does not have enough clothes to wear or enough food to eat. ¹⁶ Then one of you may say to them, ‘Go with God's peace! I pray that you will be warm. I pray that you will eat well.’ But if you do not give to them what they need, that does not help them at all. ¹⁷ How we believe in God is also like that. If our faith does not lead us to do good things, then it is not worth anything. It is dead!

¹⁸ Someone may say, ‘You believe in God, but I do good things to help people.’ Then I would say, ‘You cannot show me that you believe in God if you do not do good things. I do good things, and that shows that I really believe in God.’ ¹⁹ You believe that there is only one God. That is good! But even the demons believe that! And it makes them very afraid.

²⁰ You fool! If someone's faith does not lead them to do good things, it is not worth anything. You should know that! ²¹ Think about our ancestor Abraham. He offered his son Isaac on the altar as a gift to God.^[a] Because he did that good thing, God accepted him as right with himself. ²² Abraham believed in God, and he did what God asked him to do. So you can see that both of these were necessary. When he did this good thing, he showed that he believed in God completely. ²³ The Bible tells us what happened. It says, ‘Abraham believed God. As a result, God accepted Abraham as right with him.’^[b] God also called Abraham his friend.

²⁴ So you see how God accepts someone as right with himself. That person must not only believe in God. He must also do good things to show that he has faith.

²⁵ It was the same with Rahab, long ago. She was a prostitute. She helped some of God's people who came to her house. She kept them safe from their enemies and she sent them away again by a different road.^[c] Because she did those good things, God accepted her as right with himself. ²⁶ If our bodies have no spirit, they are dead. In the same way, if our faith does not lead us to do good things, it is dead.