Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A Song for a Festival[a]
81 Shout for joy to God our defender;
sing praise to the God of Jacob!
2 Start the music and beat the tambourines;
play pleasant music on the harps and the lyres.
3 (A)Blow the trumpet for the festival,
when the moon is new and when the moon is full.
4 This is the law in Israel,
an order from the God of Jacob.
5 He gave it to the people of Israel
when he attacked the land of Egypt.
I hear an unknown voice saying,
6 “I took the burdens off your backs;
I let you put down your loads of bricks.
7 (B)When you were in trouble, you called to me, and I saved you.
From my hiding place in the storm, I answered you.
I put you to the test at the springs of Meribah.
8 Listen, my people, to my warning;
Israel, how I wish you would listen to me!
9 (C)You must never worship another god.
10 I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of Egypt.
Open your mouth, and I will feed you.
Sabbath, the Day of Rest
12 The Lord commanded Moses 13 to tell the people of Israel, “Keep the Sabbath, my day of rest, because it is a sign between you and me for all time to come, to show that I, the Lord, have made you my own people. 14 You must keep the day of rest, because it is sacred. Whoever does not keep it, but works on that day, is to be put to death. 15 (A)You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a solemn day of rest dedicated to me. Whoever does any work on that day is to be put to death. 16 The people of Israel are to keep this day as a sign of the covenant. 17 (B)It is a permanent sign between the people of Israel and me, because I, the Lord, made heaven and earth in six days, and on the seventh day I stopped working and rested.”
18 When God had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two stone tablets on which God himself had written the commandments.
Paul Appeals to the Emperor
25 Three days after Festus arrived in the province, he went from Caesarea to Jerusalem, 2 where the chief priests and the Jewish leaders brought their charges against Paul. They begged Festus 3 to do them the favor of having Paul come to Jerusalem, for they had made a plot to kill him on the way. 4 Festus answered, “Paul is being kept a prisoner in Caesarea, and I myself will be going back there soon. 5 Let your leaders go to Caesarea with me and accuse the man if he has done anything wrong.”
6 Festus spent another eight or ten days with them and then went to Caesarea. On the next day he sat down in the judgment court and ordered Paul to be brought in. 7 When Paul arrived, the Jews who had come from Jerusalem stood around him and started making many serious charges against him, which they were not able to prove. 8 But Paul defended himself: “I have done nothing wrong against the Law of the Jews or against the Temple or against the Roman Emperor.”
9 But Festus wanted to gain favor with the Jews, so he asked Paul, “Would you be willing to go to Jerusalem and be tried on these charges before me there?”
10 Paul said, “I am standing before the Emperor's own judgment court, where I should be tried. I have done no wrong to the Jews, as you yourself well know. 11 If I have broken the law and done something for which I deserve the death penalty, I do not ask to escape it. But if there is no truth in the charges they bring against me, no one can hand me over to them. I appeal to the Emperor.”
12 Then Festus, after conferring with his advisers, answered, “You have appealed to the Emperor, so to the Emperor you will go.”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.