Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
The Lord is good![a]
106 Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Thank the Lord, because he is good.
His faithful love will always be with us.
2 The great things that the Lord has done
are too many to tell!
Nobody can praise him enough.
3 God has blessed the people who obey his commands.
They always do what is right.
4 Lord, when you help your people,
please remember me!
Do not forget to help me,
when you come to rescue them.
5 I want to enjoy the good things
that you give to the people that you have chosen.
I want to be happy together with them.
I want to join with the people who belong to you,
and praise you as you deserve.
6 We have done bad things,
as our ancestors also did.
We have done things that are wicked and evil.
13 But they soon forgot
what the Lord had done to help them.
They did not wait for him to tell them what to do.
14 In the wilderness they wanted better food.
They tested God to see what he would do.
15 He gave them the food that they asked for,
but he also sent a bad disease on them.[a]
16 The people became jealous of Moses,
and Aaron, the Lord's special priest.
17 So God made the earth break open,
so that Dathan fell into it.
It also destroyed Abiram and his people.
18 Fire burned all their group,
and it killed those wicked people.[b]
19 At Horeb, the Israelites used gold to make a cow,
and they worshipped it.
20 They turned away from their great God.
Instead, they worshipped the statue of a cow,
an animal that eats grass![c]
21 They forgot the God who had saved them,
when he did great miracles in Egypt.
22 He had done powerful things in the land of Ham's descendants,
and at the shore of the Red Sea.
His people forgot about all that!
23 So God said that he would destroy them.
But God's servant, Moses, spoke on their behalf.
He asked God not to be angry with his people,
and God agreed.
47 Lord, our God, please save us!
Bring us safely home from among the other nations.[a]
Then we will thank you!
We will shout aloud to praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, Israel's God,
as he deserves!
Praise him now and for ever!
Let everybody say, ‘Amen! We agree!’
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord![b]
21 The Lord your God became angry with me, because of you. He told me very strongly that I would not go across the Jordan River. He said that I would not go into the good land that he is now giving to you. 22 So I will die here. I will not cross the Jordan River. But you will soon cross over. That good land will belong to you as your home. 23 Be careful! Do not forget the covenant that the Lord your God has made with you. Do not make for yourselves any kind of image as your idol. That is the command that he has given to you. 24 That is because the Lord your God wants you to belong to him alone. He is like a fire that destroys all bad things.
25 One day, you will have lived in the land for a long time. You will have children and grandchildren. Remember that you still must not make any kind of image as your idol. That would be a sin. Do not do any evil things that will cause the Lord your God to become angry. 26 I am warning you today, as everyone on earth and everyone in heaven hears what I say. If you do not obey this command, you will soon die. You will not live long in the land that is your home on the other side of the Jordan River. You will die very soon. 27 The Lord will send you out of that land to live among other nations. Only a few of you will continue to be alive. 28 Among those nations, you will worship gods that men have made from wood and stone. Those gods cannot see or hear or eat or smell anything.
29 But even in those places, if you look for the Lord your God, you will find him. If you want to serve him with everything that you think and with everything that you do, you will find him. 30 When trouble happens to you in the future, you will turn back to him. When all these bad things happen to you, you will obey God again. 31 That is because the Lord your God is very kind. So he will not leave you alone. He will never destroy you. He will never forget the covenant that he made with your ancestors. That was a serious promise that he made to them.
The Lord is God
32 Find out what happened many years ago. Think about everything that has happened since God created people to live on the earth. Go to anyone in the world and ask them. You will realize that nothing as great as this has ever happened before. People have never heard of anything like this. 33 Only you, the nation of Israel, have heard the voice of God that spoke to you from the middle of the fire. Only you have heard God speak and you still live! 34 No other god has tried to rescue a nation from the power of another nation. The Lord your God did this for you when you were in Egypt. You saw how he used his great authority and strength to punish the Egyptians. He did powerful miracles. He brought war and disease that made them very afraid.
35 The Lord has shown you all these things. So you know that he is the only true God. There is no other God. 36 God spoke to you from heaven so that he could teach you. Here on earth he let you see his great fire. He spoke from that fire and you heard him. 37 He chose you as his special people because he loved your ancestors. You are their descendants so he rescued you out of Egypt. He himself showed you his great power. 38 Now he is chasing out other nations so that you can take their land to live in. They are greater and stronger nations than you are, but he has given their land to you.
39 Remember today that the Lord is God. He rules in heaven above and on the earth below. Think about that! There is no other God. 40 Obey his commands and his rules that I am giving you today. If you do that, everything will be well for you and for your descendants. You will continue to live for a long time in the land that the Lord your God is giving to you. It will belong to you for ever.
9 He said to them, ‘You refuse to obey God's rules, because then you can keep your own ideas! 10 For example, Moses wrote, “You must love your father and your mother. You must obey them.” He also said, “You must kill anyone who curses his father or his mother.”[a] 11 But you teach that a person may say to his father or to his mother, “I would have given gifts to help you. But I cannot do that, because I have given them to God instead.” 12 If he says that, you let him do nothing to help his father or his mother. 13 This shows that you have not obeyed what God says is right. Instead, you have obeyed the ideas that you received from your leaders many years ago. And you do many other things like that.’
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. 16 [You have heard my words. So do what I say.’][b]
Jesus explains to his disciples what he had taught
17 Jesus left the crowd of people and he went into a house. Then his disciples asked him to explain what he had taught.
18 Jesus said, ‘I am surprised that you too do not understand what I am saying. You should understand that food will not make people unclean. Food goes into people's bodies from outside. 19 But food does not go into people's minds. It goes into their stomachs and then it passes out of their bodies.’
When Jesus said this, he was teaching that all foods are clean.
20 Jesus then said, ‘People become unclean because of what comes out from them, not because of what goes in. 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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