Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

146 Praise the Lord! Yes, really praise him! ² I will praise him as long as I live, yes, even with my dying breath.

³ Don’t look to men for help; their greatest leaders fail; ⁴ for every man must die. His breathing stops, life ends, and in a moment all he planned for himself is ended. ⁵ But happy is the man who has the God of Jacob as his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God— ⁶ the God who made both earth and heaven, the seas and everything in them. He is the God who keeps every promise, ⁷ who gives justice to the poor and oppressed and food to the hungry. He frees the prisoners ⁸ and opens the eyes of the blind; he lifts the burdens from those bent down beneath their loads. For the Lord loves good men. ⁹ He protects the immigrants and cares for the orphans and widows. But he turns topsy-turvy the plans of the wicked.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever. O Jerusalem,^[a] your God is King in every generation! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

15 “At the end of every seventh year there is to be a canceling of all debts! ² Every creditor shall write ‘Paid in full’ on any promissory note he holds against a fellow Israelite, for the Lord has released everyone from his obligation. ³ (This release does not apply to foreigners.) ^4-5 No one will become poor because of this, for the Lord will greatly bless you in the land he is giving you if you obey this command. The only prerequisite for his blessing is that you carefully heed all the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today. ⁶ He will bless you as he has promised. You shall lend money to many nations but will never need to borrow! You shall rule many nations, but they shall not rule over you!

⁷ “But if, when you arrive in the land the Lord will give you, there are any among you who are poor, you must not shut your heart or hand against them; ⁸ you must lend them as much as they need. ⁹ Beware! Don’t refuse a loan because the year of debt cancellation is close at hand! If you refuse to make the loan and the needy man cries out to the Lord, it will be counted against you as a sin. ¹⁰ You must lend him what he needs, and don’t moan about it either! For the Lord will prosper you in everything you do because of this! ¹¹ There will always be some among you who are poor; that is why this commandment is necessary. You must lend to them liberally.

¹⁵ Christ came with this new agreement so that all who are invited may come and have forever all the wonders God has promised them. For Christ died to rescue them from the penalty of the sins they had committed while still under that old system.

¹⁶ Now, if someone dies and leaves a will—a list of things to be given away to certain people when he dies—no one gets anything until it is proved that the person who wrote the will is dead. ¹⁷ The will goes into effect only after the death of the person who wrote it. While he is still alive no one can use it to get any of those things he has promised them.

¹⁸ That is why blood was sprinkled as proof of Christ’s death^[a] before even the first agreement could go into effect. ¹⁹ For after Moses had given the people all of God’s laws, he took the blood of calves and goats, along with water, and sprinkled the blood over the book of God’s laws and over all the people, using branches of hyssop bushes and scarlet wool to sprinkle with. ²⁰ Then he said, “This is the blood that marks the beginning of the agreement between you and God, the agreement God commanded me to make with you.” ²¹ And in the same way he sprinkled blood on the sacred tent and on whatever instruments were used for worship. ²² In fact we can say that under the old agreement almost everything was cleansed by sprinkling it with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

²³ That is why the sacred tent down here on earth and everything in it—all copied from things in heaven—all had to be made pure by Moses in this way, by being sprinkled with the blood of animals. But the real things in heaven, of which these down here are copies, were made pure with far more precious offerings.

²⁴ For Christ has entered into heaven itself to appear now before God as our Friend. It was not in the earthly place of worship that he did this, for that was merely a copy of the real temple in heaven.