Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
God's covenant with his people
4 Israel's people, listen to the rules and laws that I will now teach you. If you obey them, you will live. You will go into the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving to you. The land will belong to you, for you to live in. 2 Do not add anything to these rules. Do not remove anything from them. You must obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving to you.
6 Obey them carefully. That will show people of other nations that you are wise. They will hear about all your laws. Then they will say, ‘The people of this great nation are very wise and clever!’
7 No other nation has a god who is near to them like the Lord our God. Even great nations have no god like that. But when we pray to the Lord our God, he listens! 8 And no other great nation has rules and laws that are as fair as ours. That is God's Law that I am giving to you today.
9 But be very careful! Never forget the things that you yourselves have seen. Remember these things for as long as you live. Tell your children and your grandchildren about all the things that God has done.
David wrote this song.
How may we worship God?
15 Lord, who may stay with you,
in your own home?
Who may live there,
on your holy hill?[a]
2 It is the person who does only things that are right.
It is the person who lives in a completely good way,
and who speaks only what he knows is true.
3 He says nothing bad against other people.
He does nothing that will hurt his friends,
nor does he insult them.
4 He does not respect wicked people,
but he does respect people who serve the Lord.
When he promises to do something,
he always does it.
5 He lends his money to help other people,
and he does not ask for more money in return.
He does not accept a bribe,
to speak against people who have done nothing wrong.
People who live in this way will always be safe.
17 Remember that every good gift comes to us from God. He only does what will help us. He is our Father in heaven. He made everything in the sky that gives us light. Those things do not give us the same light all the time. They change, but God does not change. 18 He chose to make us his children. He used his true message to do that. Because of that, we are like the first special gift that belongs to him from among everything that he has made.
Listen and do what God wants
19 Understand this, my Christian friends: We must all be careful to listen. We should not be too quick to speak. We should not get angry quickly. 20 God wants us to do what is right. But when someone is angry, they do not do those right things. 21 So stop doing disgusting things. Stay away from the wicked things that are all around you. God has put his message deep inside you, and it can save you. So be careful to accept that message.
22 But be careful to do what God says in his message. Do not only listen to it. Do not make that mistake! 23 You must obey God's message. Do not be like a man who quickly looks at his face in a mirror. 24 That man looks at himself, but then he goes away. He immediately forgets what he is really like. 25 So do not just listen to God's message and then forget it. It is a completely good message that makes people free. Look at it carefully and keep it in your mind. Do what it tells you to do. God will bless anyone who lives in that way.
26 Maybe some of you think that you are serving God well. But if you also say bad things about people, you do not serve God well at all. You are doing something bad even when you think you are doing good things. 27 If you want to serve God in a completely good way, do things like this: Help children who have no parents and women who are widows. Help them in their troubles. If you serve God our Father like that, he will be pleased with you. Do not let the bad people in this world make you bad too.
Jesus speaks to Pharisees and to some teachers of God's Law
7 A group of Pharisees and some teachers of God's Law came from Jerusalem to talk with Jesus. 2 They had been watching Jesus' disciples. Some of the disciples did not wash their hands before they ate a meal. That is to say, they did not wash them in the right way. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat food until they have washed their hands carefully. They do this because of what their leaders taught them. 4 When they come from the market place, they always wash themselves carefully. Unless they do this, they do not eat anything. Their leaders also gave them rules about how they should wash cups, pots and metal bowls.)
5 The Pharisees and the teachers of God's Law said to Jesus, ‘Your disciples do not obey the things that our leaders taught many years ago. Your disciples have not washed their hands in the right way. They are eating their food with unclean hands. That is not right.’
6 Jesus said to them, ‘You are hypocrites! What God's prophet Isaiah wrote about you long ago is true:
God says, “These people say good things about me,
but they do not really want to obey me.
7 They say that I am great.
But what they say has no purpose.
They teach their own rules, which I did not give to them.” ’[a]
8 Jesus then said, ‘You have stopped obeying God. Instead you obey the ideas that men teach.’
14 Jesus asked the crowd of people to come to him again. He said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, so that you can understand these things. 15 People do not become unclean because of things that go into their bodies from outside. They become unclean because of the things that come out from their minds.
21 Evil thoughts come out from people's minds. As a result they do wrong things. They have sex in wrong ways. They rob people. They murder people. 22 They have sex with another man's wife. They are greedy. They are cruel to other people. They deceive people. They live like wild animals. They are jealous of other people. They say bad things about other people. They are proud and foolish.
23 All these wrong things begin inside people's minds and then they come out. That is what makes them unclean.’
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