Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Praise God Who Helps the Weak
146 Praise the Lord!
My whole being, praise the Lord.
2 I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praises to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes
or other people, who cannot save you.
4 When people die, they are buried.
Then all of their plans come to an end.
5 Happy are those who are helped by the God of Jacob.
Their hope is in the Lord their God.
6 He made heaven and earth,
the sea and everything in it.
He remains loyal forever.
7 He does what is fair for those who have been wronged.
He gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free.
8 The Lord gives sight to the blind.
The Lord lifts up people who are in trouble.
The Lord loves those who do right.
9 The Lord protects the foreigners.
He defends the orphans and widows,
but he blocks the way of the wicked.
10 The Lord will be King forever.
Jerusalem, your God is everlasting.
Praise the Lord!
The Special Seventh Year
15 At the end of every seven years, you must tell those who owe you anything that they do not have to pay you back. 2 This is how you must do it: Everyone who has loaned money must cancel the loan and not make a neighbor or relative pay it back. This is the Lord’s time for canceling what people owe. 3 You may make a foreigner pay what is owed to you, but you must not collect what another Israelite owes you. 4 But there should be no poor people among you, because the Lord your God will richly bless you in the land he is giving you as your own. 5 He will bless you if you obey the Lord your God completely, but you must be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today. 6 The Lord your God will bless you as he promised, and you will lend to other nations, but you will not need to borrow from them. You will rule over many nations, but none will rule over you.
7 If there are poor among you, in one of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be selfish or greedy toward them. 8 But give freely to them, and freely lend them whatever they need. 9 Beware of evil thoughts. Don’t think, “The seventh year is near, the year to cancel what people owe.” You might be mean to the needy and not give them anything. Then they will complain to the Lord about you, and he will find you guilty of sin. 10 Give freely to the poor person, and do not wish that you didn’t have to give. The Lord your God will bless your work and everything you touch. 11 There will always be poor people in the land, so I command you to give freely to your neighbors and to the poor and needy in your land.
15 For this reason Christ brings a new agreement from God to his people. Those who are called by God can now receive the blessings he has promised, blessings that will last forever. They can have those things because Christ died so that the people who lived under the first agreement could be set free from sin.
16 When there is a will,[a] it must be proven that the one who wrote that will is dead. 17 A will means nothing while the person is alive; it can be used only after the person dies. 18 This is why even the first agreement could not begin without blood to show death. 19 First, Moses told all the people every command in the law. Next he took the blood of calves and mixed it with water. Then he used red wool and a branch of the hyssop plant to sprinkle it on the book of the law and on all the people. 20 He said, “This is the blood that begins the Agreement that God commanded you to obey.”[b] 21 In the same way, Moses sprinkled the blood on the Holy Tent and over all the things used in worship. 22 The law says that almost everything must be made clean by blood, and sins cannot be forgiven without blood to show death.
Christ’s Death Takes Away Sins
23 So the copies of the real things in heaven had to be made clean by animal sacrifices. But the real things in heaven need much better sacrifices. 24 Christ did not go into the Most Holy Place made by humans, which is only a copy of the real one. He went into heaven itself and is there now before God to help us.
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.