Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

God the Supreme King^(A)

Micah's Idols

17 There was once a man named Micah, who lived in the hill country of Ephraim. ² He told his mother, “When someone stole those eleven hundred pieces of silver from you, you put a curse on the robber. I heard you do it. Look, I have the money. I am the one who took it.”

His mother said, “May the Lord bless you, my son!” ³ He gave the money back to his mother, and she said, “To keep the curse from falling on my son, I myself am solemnly dedicating the silver to the Lord. It will be used to make a wooden idol covered with silver. So now I will give the pieces of silver back to you.” ⁴ Then he gave them back to his mother. She took two hundred of the pieces of silver and gave them to a metalworker, who made an idol, carving it from wood and covering it with the silver. It was placed in Micah's house.

⁵ This man Micah had his own place of worship. He made some idols and an ephod,^[a] and appointed one of his sons as his priest. ^6 (A)There was no king in Israel at that time; everyone did whatever they wanted.

Diotrephes and Demetrius

⁹ I wrote a short letter to the church; but Diotrephes, who likes to be their leader, will not pay any attention to what I say. ¹⁰ When I come, then, I will bring up everything he has done: the terrible things he says about us and the lies he tells! But that is not enough for him; he will not receive the Christians when they come, and even stops those who want to receive them and tries to drive them out of the church!

¹¹ My dear friend, do not imitate what is bad, but imitate what is good. Whoever does good belongs to God; whoever does what is bad has not seen God.

¹² Everyone speaks well of Demetrius; truth itself speaks well of him. And we add our testimony, and you know that what we say is true.