Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

This is a song that David wrote.

Tell the music leader, ‘Use harps when you sing this song.’

David prays for health^[a]

How the war finished

³ At this time, there were four men who had leprosy. They were at Samaria's gate where people went in to the city. They said to each other, ‘We should not stay here. If we wait here we will die. ⁴ There is no food in the city. If we go in there we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So we will go out to the camp of the Syrian army. We will ask them to be kind to us. They may let us stay alive, or they may kill us. But we would have died anyway.’

⁵ At evening time, the men went towards the Syrian army's camp. When they reached the edge of the camp, they saw that there was nobody there! ⁶ The Lord God had caused the Syrian soldiers to hear the sound of horses, chariots and a very big army. So they said among themselves, ‘Listen! The king of Israel has paid the king of the Hittites and the king of Egypt to come here and attack us!’

⁷ So, that evening, the Syrian soldiers all ran away. They left their tents, their horses and their donkeys. They did not take anything with them. They ran away to save their lives. ⁸ When the four men reached the edge of the camp, they went into one of the tents. They ate and they drank what was there. They carried away silver and gold and clothes. They went away and they hid those things. Then they came back and they went into another tent. They took the valuable things from there too and they hid them.

⁹ Then they said to each other, ‘We should not be doing this. It is not right! This is a day of good news and we have not told anyone. If we wait until the morning, we will be in trouble. We must go now and tell the king's officers what has happened.’ ¹⁰ So they went back to the city's gate and they called out to the guards. They said to them, ‘We went out to the camp of the Syrian army. There was nobody there! We did not hear anyone at all. The horses and donkeys are still there, where the soldiers had tied them. The tents are still there, as they were before.’

¹⁴ So, my friends, keep away from idols. Do not worship them. ¹⁵ You are people who think carefully about things. So think about what I am saying to you. ¹⁶ When we eat the Lord's Supper together, we remember that Christ died on our behalf. We thank God for the wine that we drink from the cup. In that way, we remember that we all belong to Christ because of his blood. We also break the bread and we eat it together. In that way, we remember that we all belong to Christ because of his body that died on the cross. ¹⁷ We are many people, but all of us eat part of the same loaf of bread. That shows that we are one group of people. We belong together because Christ died on our behalf.

¹⁸ Think about Israel's people. They eat part of the animals that the priests offer on the altar as a sacrifice. This shows that they share together in the sacrifice. ¹⁹ So think about food that people offer to idols as a sacrifice. I am not saying that the idols are real gods. The food that people offer to them is not special food. ²⁰ But the people who offer food to idols are worshipping demons. They are not worshipping God when they do that. I do not want you to share in what they do to worship demons. ²¹ If you drink anything from the cup of demons, you can not then drink wine from the Lord's cup. If you share a meal with demons, you can not also share in the Lord's meal.

²² If we do things like that, we will cause the Lord to be angry. We should worship only him. You know that we are not stronger than he is!

²³ Some of you may say, ‘We are free to do anything that we want to do!’ But not everything is good for you to do. You may say, ‘We are free to do anything!’ But not everything helps you to be strong as a believer. ²⁴ Do not think about the things that will help you. Instead, each of you should think about what will help other people.

²⁵ You can eat any meat that people sell in the market. Do not ask questions about the meat. Do not cause your thoughts to have trouble. ²⁶ The Bible says this: ‘The earth, and everything in it, belongs to the Lord.’^[a]

²⁷ People who do not believe in Christ may ask you to eat a meal with them. Agree to go to his home, if you want to. Then you should eat whatever food they give to you. Do not ask questions about the food. Do not cause your thoughts to have trouble. ²⁸ But someone there may say to you, ‘They offered this food to an idol.’ If someone tells you that, do not eat the food. It might cause trouble to the thoughts of the person who told you. ²⁹ It may not cause your own thoughts to have trouble. But the other person may not be sure if it is right to eat that kind of food.

Perhaps you will say, ‘Why should another person's thoughts decide what is right for me? I am free to do what I want. ³⁰ I thank God for my food before I eat it. If I do that, nobody should say that it is wrong for me to eat it.’

³¹ Whatever you are doing, show that God is great. When you eat anything, or you drink anything, do it all in a way that praises God. ³² Do not cause problems for other people. Whether they are Jews or Gentiles, or people who belong to God's church, live in a way that does not cause problems for them. ³³ Copy my example. Whatever I do, I try to make other people happy. I do not try to do what will help me. Instead, I want to help other people. I live in that way so that God will save many people.

11 Copy my example, in the same way that I copy Christ's example.