Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

6 No, Lord! Don’t punish me in the heat of your anger. ² Pity me, O Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, for my body is sick, ³ and I am upset and disturbed. My mind is filled with apprehension and with gloom. Oh, restore me soon.

⁴ Come, O Lord, and make me well. In your kindness save me. ⁵ For if I die, I cannot give you glory by praising you before my friends.^{[a] 6} I am worn out with pain; every night my pillow is wet with tears. ⁷ My eyes are growing old and dim with grief because of all my enemies.

⁸ Go, leave me now, you men of evil deeds, for the Lord has heard my weeping ⁹ and my pleading. He will answer all my prayers. ¹⁰ All my enemies shall be suddenly dishonored, terror-stricken, and disgraced. God will turn them back in shame.

³ Now there were four lepers sitting outside the city gates. “Why sit here until we die?” they asked each other. ⁴ “We will starve if we stay here and we will starve if we go back into the city; so we might as well go out and surrender to the Syrian army. If they let us live, so much the better; but if they kill us, we would have died anyway.”

⁵ So that evening they went out to the camp of the Syrians, but there was no one there! ⁶ (For the Lord had made the whole Syrian army hear the clatter of speeding chariots and a loud galloping of horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. “The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians to attack us,” they cried out. ⁷ So they panicked and fled into the night, abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else.)

⁸ When the lepers arrived at the edge of the camp they went into one tent after another, eating, drinking wine, and carrying out silver and gold and clothing and hiding it. ⁹ Finally they said to each other, “This isn’t right. This is wonderful news, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone! Even if we wait until morning, some terrible calamity will certainly fall upon us; come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace.”

¹⁰ So they went back to the city and told the watchmen what had happened—they had gone out to the Syrian camp and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there was not a soul around.

¹⁴ So, dear friends, carefully avoid idol worship of every kind.

¹⁵ You are intelligent people. Look now and see for yourselves whether what I am about to say is true. ¹⁶ When we ask the Lord’s blessing upon our drinking from the cup of wine at the Lord’s Table, this means, doesn’t it, that all who drink it are sharing together the blessing of Christ’s blood? And when we break off pieces of the bread from the loaf to eat there together, this shows that we are sharing together in the benefits of his body. ¹⁷ No matter how many of us there are, we all eat from the same loaf, showing that we are all parts of the one body of Christ. ¹⁸ And the Jewish people, all who eat the sacrifices, are united by that act.

¹⁹ What am I trying to say? Am I saying that the idols to whom the heathen bring sacrifices are really alive and are real gods, and that these sacrifices are of some value? No, not at all. ²⁰ What I am saying is that those who offer food to these idols are united together in sacrificing to demons, certainly not to God. And I don’t want any of you to be partners with demons when you eat the same food, along with the heathen, that has been offered to these idols. ²¹ You cannot drink from the cup at the Lord’s Table and at Satan’s table, too. You cannot eat bread both at the Lord’s Table and at Satan’s table.

²² What? Are you tempting the Lord to be angry with you? Are you stronger than he is?

²³ You are certainly free to eat food offered to idols if you want to; it’s not against God’s laws to eat such meat, but that doesn’t mean that you should go ahead and do it. It may be perfectly legal, but it may not be best and helpful. ²⁴ Don’t think only of yourself. Try to think of the other fellow, too, and what is best for him.

²⁵ Here’s what you should do. Take any meat you want that is sold at the market. Don’t ask whether or not it was offered to idols, lest the answer hurt your conscience. ²⁶ For the earth and every good thing in it belongs to the Lord and is yours to enjoy.

²⁷ If someone who isn’t a Christian asks you out to dinner, go ahead; accept the invitation if you want to. Eat whatever is on the table and don’t ask any questions about it. Then you won’t know whether or not it has been used as a sacrifice to idols, and you won’t risk having a bad conscience over eating it. ²⁸ But if someone warns you that this meat has been offered to idols, then don’t eat it for the sake of the man who told you, and of his conscience. ²⁹ In this case his feeling about it is the important thing, not yours.

But why, you may ask, must I be guided and limited by what someone else thinks? ³⁰ If I can thank God for the food and enjoy it, why let someone spoil everything just because he thinks I am wrong? ³¹ Well, I’ll tell you why. It is because you must do everything for the glory of God, even your eating and drinking. ³² So don’t be a stumbling block to anyone, whether they are Jews or Gentiles or Christians. ³³ That is the plan I follow, too. I try to please everyone in everything I do, not doing what I like or what is best for me but what is best for them, so that they may be saved.

11 And you should follow my example, just as I follow Christ’s.