Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

This is a song that David wrote for the music leader.

Lord, please help me!

God repeats his covenant

24 Then God said to Moses, ‘Come up to me, the Lord. Come with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and 70 of the leaders of Israel. Worship me, but do not come near. ² Only Moses can come near to me, but not the others. The people must not come up the mountain with him.’

³ Moses went and he told the people all the Lord's commands and his teaching. The people answered together, ‘We will do everything that the Lord has told us.’ ⁴ Then Moses wrote down everything that the Lord had said.

Early the next morning, Moses built an altar at the bottom of the mountain. Then he put up 12 stone pillars. Each pillar stood there for one of Israel's 12 tribes. ⁵ Moses sent young Israelite men to burn animals there, as offerings to the Lord. They also killed young bulls as friendship offerings to the Lord.

⁶ Moses took half of the blood of these animals and he put it into some bowls. He splashed the other half of the blood over the altar. ⁷ Then he took the Book of God's Covenant and he read it to the people. They replied, ‘We will do everything that the Lord has told us. We will obey his commands.’

⁸ Then Moses used the blood in the bowls to splash on the people. He said, ‘This blood shows that you accept the covenant that the Lord has made with you. You agree to obey the rules of his covenant.’

The Jews and God's Law

¹⁷ Do you say that you are a Jew? Maybe you trust in the Law that God gave to Moses. You are proud that you belong to God. ¹⁸ You know what God wants people to do. His Law teaches you what is good and right. ¹⁹ You are sure that you yourself can teach other people about God. You think that you can be like a guide to blind people. You think that you can be like a light to people who are in the dark. ²⁰ You are sure that you can teach fools and people who do not know very much. You know that God's Law tells you everything about what is true. Because it helps you to know so much, you think that you can be a great teacher!

²¹ So you teach other people, do you? But do you teach yourself? You tell other people, ‘Do not rob anyone.’ But maybe you yourself rob other people. ²² You say, ‘People must not have sex with anyone who is not their wife or their husband.’ But maybe you yourself have sex in a wrong way. You say that you hate idols. But do you rob places where people worship idols? ²³ You are proud that you know God's Law. But you do not obey that Law. As a result, you cause other people to speak against God. ²⁴ This is written in the Bible:

²⁵ As a Jewish man, you are proud that someone has circumcised you.^[a] That is a help to you, if you obey God's Law in your life. But if you do not obey God's Law, then it is worth nothing. You have become like a Gentile that nobody has ever circumcised. ²⁶ But a Gentile may obey what God's Law teaches. Then he has shown that he belongs to God even though nobody has circumcised him. ²⁷ In that way, even Gentiles will show that you who are Jews are wrong. God's Law was written to help you Jews. They circumcised you to show that you belong to God. But if you refuse to obey God's Law, then God will punish you. The Gentiles who do obey God's Law will show that God is right to punish you.

²⁸ Not everyone who seems to be a Jew is really a Jew who belongs to God. God does not accept a man just because someone has circumcised that man's body. ²⁹ No! A true Jew is someone who belongs to God in his spirit. He belongs to God because God's Spirit has changed his life. It is like God has circumcised him in his spirit, not in his body. The rules in God's Law cannot do that work in a person. Other people may not praise a person like that, but God will praise him.