Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Jeremiah's Message in the Temple

(Jeremiah 7.1-15)

26 ^(A) Soon after Jehoiakim^[a] became king of Judah, the Lord said:

² Jeremiah, I have a message for everyone who comes from the towns of Judah to worship in my temple. Go to the temple courtyard and speak every word that I tell you. ³ Maybe the people will listen this time. And if they stop doing wrong, I will change my mind and not punish them for their sins. ⁴ Tell them that I have said:

You have refused to listen to me and to obey my laws and teachings. ⁵ Again and again I have sent my servants the prophets to preach to you, but you ignored them as well. Now I am warning you that if you don't start obeying me at once, ^6 (B) I will destroy this temple, just as I destroyed the town of Shiloh.^[b] Then everyone on earth will use the name “Jerusalem” as a curse word.

Jeremiah on Trial

⁷ The priests, the prophets, and everyone else in the temple heard what I said, ^8-9 and as soon as I finished, they all crowded around me and started shouting, “Why did you preach that the Lord will destroy this temple, just as he destroyed Shiloh? Why did you say that Jerusalem will be empty and lie in ruins? You ought to be put to death for saying such things in the Lord's name!” Then they had me arrested.

¹⁰ The royal officers heard what had happened, and they came from the palace to the new gate of the temple to be the judges at my trial.^{[c] 11} While they listened, the priests and the prophets said to the crowd, “All of you have heard Jeremiah prophesy that Jerusalem will be destroyed. He deserves the death penalty.”

^12-13 Then I told the judges and everyone else:

The Lord himself sent me to tell you about the terrible things he will do to you, to Jerusalem, and to the temple. But if you change your ways and start obeying the Lord, he will change his mind.

¹⁴ You must decide what to do with me. Just do whatever you think is right. ¹⁵ But if you put me to death, you and everyone else in Jerusalem will be guilty of murdering an innocent man, because everything I preached came from the Lord.

²² So Paul stood up in front of the council and said:

People of Athens, I see that you are very religious. ^23 (A) As I was going through your city and looking at the things you worship, I found an altar with the words, “To an Unknown God.” You worship this God, but you don't really know him. So I want to tell you about him. ^24 (B) This God made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth, and he doesn't live in temples built by human hands. ^25 (C) He doesn't need help from anyone. He gives life, breath, and everything else to all people. ^26 (D) From one person God made all nations who live on earth, and he decided when and where every nation would be.

^27 (E) God has done all this, so that we will look for him and reach out and find him. He isn't far from any of us, ²⁸ and he gives us the power to live, to move, and to be who we are. “We are his children,” just as some of your poets have said.

²⁹ Since we are God's children, we must not think that he is like an idol made out of gold or silver or stone. He isn't like anything that humans have thought up and made. ³⁰ In the past, God forgave all this because people did not know what they were doing. But now he says that everyone everywhere must turn to him. ³¹ He has set a day when he will judge the world's people with fairness. And he has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death.

³² As soon as the people heard Paul say a man had been raised from death, some of them started laughing. Others said, “We will hear you talk about this some other time.” ³³ When Paul left the council meeting, ³⁴ some of the men put their faith in the Lord and went with Paul. One of them was a council member named Dionysius. A woman named Damaris and several others also put their faith in the Lord.