Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁵ “Adonai will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves, from your own kinsmen. You are to pay attention to him, ¹⁶ just as when you were assembled at Horev and requested Adonai your God, ‘Don’t let me hear the voice of Adonai my God any more, or let me see this great fire ever again; if I do, I will die!’ ¹⁷ On that occasion Adonai said to me, ‘They are right in what they are saying. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I order him. ¹⁹ Whoever doesn’t listen to my words, which he will speak in my name, will have to account for himself to me.

²⁰ “‘But if a prophet presumptuously speaks a word in my name which I didn’t order him to say, or if he speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet must die.’

8 Now about food sacrificed to idols: we know that, as you say, “We all have knowledge.” Yes, that is so, but “knowledge” puffs a person up with pride; whereas love builds up. ² The person who thinks he “knows” something doesn’t yet know in the way he ought to know. ³ However, if someone loves God, God knows him.

⁴ So, as for eating food sacrificed to idols, we “know” that, as you say, “An idol has no real existence in the world, and there is only one God.” ⁵ For even if there are so-called “gods,” either in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are “gods” and “lords” galore — ⁶ yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist; and one Lord, Yeshua the Messiah, through whom were created all things and through whom we have our being.

⁷ But not everyone has this knowledge. Moreover, some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat food which has been sacrificed to them, they think of it as really affected by the idol; and their consciences, being weak, are thus defiled. ⁸ Now food will not improve our relationship with God — we will be neither poorer if we abstain nor richer if we eat. ⁹ However watch out that your mastery of the situation does not become a stumbling block to the weak. ¹⁰ You have this “knowledge”; but suppose someone with a weak conscience sees you sitting, eating a meal in the temple of an idol. Won’t he be built up wrongly to eat this food which has been sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ Thus by your “knowledge” this weak person is destroyed, this brother for whom the Messiah died; ¹² and so, when you sin against the brothers by wounding their conscience when it is weak, you are sinning against the Messiah!

¹³ To sum up, if food will be a snare for my brother, I will never eat meat again, lest I cause my brother to sin.

²¹ They entered K’far-Nachum, and on Shabbat Yeshua went into the synagogue and began teaching. ²² They were amazed at the way he taught, for he did not instruct them like the Torah-teachers but as one who had authority himself.

²³ In their synagogue just then was a man with an unclean spirit in him, who shouted, ²⁴ “What do you want with us, Yeshua from Natzeret? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” ²⁵ But Yeshua rebuked the unclean spirit, “Be quiet and come out of him!” ²⁶ Throwing the man into a convulsion, it gave a loud shriek and came out of him. ²⁷ They were all so astounded that they began asking each other, “What is this? A new teaching, one with authority behind it! He gives orders even to the unclean spirits, and they obey him!” ²⁸ And the news about him spread quickly through the whole region of the Galil.