Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Prayer of Trust in God^[a]

The Covenant Is Sealed

24 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up the mountain to me, you and Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the leaders of Israel; and while you are still some distance away, bow down in worship. ² You alone, and none of the others, are to come near me. The people are not even to come up the mountain.”

³ Moses went and told the people all the Lord's commands and all the ordinances, and all the people answered together, “We will do everything that the Lord has said.” ⁴ Moses wrote down all the Lord's commands. Early the next morning he built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. ⁵ Then he sent young men, and they burned sacrifices to the Lord and sacrificed some cattle as fellowship offerings. ⁶ Moses took half of the blood of the animals and put it in bowls; and the other half he threw against the altar. ⁷ Then he took the book of the Covenant, in which the Lord's commands were written, and read it aloud to the people. They said, “We will obey the Lord and do everything that he has commanded.”

^8 (A)Then Moses took the blood in the bowls and threw it on the people. He said, “This is the blood that seals the covenant which the Lord made with you when he gave all these commands.”

The Jews and the Law

¹⁷ What about you? You call yourself a Jew; you depend on the Law and boast about God; ¹⁸ you know what God wants you to do, and you have learned from the Law to choose what is right; ¹⁹ you are sure that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in darkness, ²⁰ an instructor for the foolish, and a teacher for the ignorant. You are certain that in the Law you have the full content of knowledge and of truth. ²¹ You teach others—why don't you teach yourself? You preach, “Do not steal”—but do you yourself steal? ²² You say, “Do not commit adultery”—but do you commit adultery? You detest idols—but do you rob temples? ²³ You boast about having God's law—but do you bring shame on God by breaking his law? ^24 (A)The scripture says, “Because of you Jews, the Gentiles speak evil of God.”

²⁵ If you obey the Law, your circumcision is of value; but if you disobey the Law, you might as well never have been circumcised. ²⁶ If the Gentile, who is not circumcised, obeys the commands of the Law, will not God regard him as though he were circumcised? ²⁷ And so you Jews will be condemned by the Gentiles because you break the Law, even though you have it written down and are circumcised; but they obey the Law, even though they are not physically circumcised. ²⁸ After all, who is a real Jew, truly circumcised? It is not the man who is a Jew on the outside, whose circumcision is a physical thing. ^29 (B)Rather, the real Jew is the person who is a Jew on the inside, that is, whose heart has been circumcised, and this is the work of God's Spirit, not of the written Law. Such a person receives praise from God, not from human beings.