Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁶⁹ O Lord, listen to my prayers; give me the common sense you promised. ¹⁷⁰ Hear my prayers; rescue me as you said you would. ¹⁷¹ I praise you for letting me learn your laws. ¹⁷² I will sing about their wonder, for each of them is just. ¹⁷³ Stand ready to help me because I have chosen to follow your will. ¹⁷⁴ O Lord, I have longed for your salvation, and your law is my delight. ¹⁷⁵ If you will let me live, I will praise you; let your laws assist me.

¹⁷⁶ I have wandered away like a lost sheep; come and find me, for I have not turned away from your commandments.

¹¹ As it happened, there was an old prophet living in Bethel, and his sons went home and told him what the prophet from Judah had done and what he had said to the king.

¹² “Which way did he go?” the old prophet asked. So they told him.

¹³ “Quick, saddle the donkey,” the old man said. And when they had saddled the donkey for him, ¹⁴ he rode after the prophet and found him sitting under an oak tree.

“Are you the prophet who came from Judah?” he asked him.

“Yes,” he replied, “I am.”

¹⁵ Then the old man said to the prophet, “Come home with me and eat.”

^16-17 “No,” he replied, “I can’t; for I am not allowed to eat anything or to drink any water at Bethel. The Lord strictly warned me against it; and he also told me not to return home by the same road I came on.”

¹⁸ But the old man said, “I am a prophet too, just as you are; and an angel gave me a message from the Lord. I am to take you home with me and give you food and water.”

But the old man was lying to him. ¹⁹ So they went back together, and the prophet ate some food and drank some water at the old man’s home.

²⁰ Then, suddenly, while they were sitting at the table, a message from the Lord came to the old man, ^21-22 and he shouted at the prophet from Judah, “The Lord says that because you have been disobedient to his clear command and have come here, and have eaten and drunk water in the place he told you not to, therefore your body shall not be buried in the grave of your fathers.”

²³ After finishing the meal, the old man saddled the prophet’s donkey, ^24-25 and the prophet started off again. But as he was traveling along, a lion came out and killed him. His body lay there on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it. Those who came by and saw the body lying in the road and the lion standing quietly beside it, reported it in Bethel where the old prophet lived.

3 Since you became alive again, so to speak, when Christ arose from the dead, now set your sights on the rich treasures and joys of heaven where he sits beside God in the place of honor and power. ² Let heaven fill your thoughts; don’t spend your time worrying about things down here. ³ You should have as little desire for this world as a dead person does. Your real life is in heaven with Christ and God. ⁴ And when Christ who is our real life comes back again, you will shine with him and share in all his glories.

⁵ Away then with sinful, earthly things; deaden the evil desires lurking within you; have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, and shameful desires; don’t worship the good things of life, for that is idolatry. ⁶ God’s terrible anger is upon those who do such things. ⁷ You used to do them when your life was still part of this world; ⁸ but now is the time to cast off and throw away all these rotten garments of anger, hatred, cursing, and dirty language.

⁹ Don’t tell lies to each other; it was your old life with all its wickedness that did that sort of thing; now it is dead and gone. ¹⁰ You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. ¹¹ In this new life one’s nationality or race or education or social position is unimportant; such things mean nothing. Whether a person has Christ is what matters, and he is equally available to all.