Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁸ And I said to their children in the wilderness: Walk not in the statutes of your fathers, and observe not their judgments, nor be ye defiled with their idols:

¹⁹ I am the Lord your God: walk ye in my statutes, and observe my judgments, and do them.

²⁰ And sanctify my sabbaths, that they may be a sign between me and you: and that you may know that I am the Lord your God.

²¹ But their children provoked me, they walked not in my commandments, nor observed my judgments to do them: which if a man do, he shall live in them: and they violated my sabbaths: and I threatened to pour out my indignation upon them, and to accomplish my wrath in them in the desert.

²² But I turned away my hand, and wrought for my name's sake, that it might not be violated before the nations, out of which I brought them forth in their sight.

²³ Again I lifted up my hand upon them in the wilderness, to disperse them among the nations, and scatter them through the countries:

²⁴ Because they had not done my judgments, and had cast off my statutes, and had violated my sabbaths, and their eyes had been after the idols of their fathers.

²⁵ Therefore I also gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments, in which they shall not live.

²⁶ And I polluted them in their own gifts, when they offered all that opened the womb, for their offences: and they shall know that I am the Lord.

²⁷ Wherefore speak to the house of Israel, O son of man, and say to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Moreover in this also your fathers blasphemed me, when they had despised and contemned me;

²⁸ And I had brought them into the land, for which I lifted up my hand to give it them: they saw every high hill, and every shady tree, and there they sacrificed their victims: and there they presented the provocation of their offerings, and there they set their sweet odours, and poured forth their libations.

²⁹ And I said to them: What meaneth the high place to which you go? and the name thereof was called High-place even to this day.

³⁰ Wherefore say to the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord God: Verily, you are defiled in the way of your fathers, and you commit fornication with their abominations.

³¹ And you defile yourselves with all your: idols unto this day, in the offering of your gifts, when you make your children pass through the fire: and shall I answer you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not answer you.

³² Neither shall the thought of your mind come to pass, by which you say: We will be as the Gentiles, and as the families of the earth, to worship stocks and stones.

⁷ And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia, write: These things saith the Holy One and the true one, he that hath the key of David; he that openeth, and no man shutteth; shutteth, and no man openeth:

⁸ I know thy works. Behold, I have given before thee a door opened, which no man can shut: because thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

⁹ Behold, I will bring of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie. Behold, I will make them to come and adore before thy feet. And they shall know that I have loved thee.

¹⁰ Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of the temptation, which shall come upon the whole world to try them that dwell upon the earth.

¹¹ Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.

¹² He that shall overcome, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go out no more; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and my new name.

¹³ He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.