Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The 1st Hallelujah Psalm^[a]

¹⁷ The Lord said to Moses, ¹⁸ ‘Tell the Israelites this. I am bringing them into the land of Canaan. After they have gone into it, they must obey my rules. ¹⁹ When they first eat the food from that land, they must give a special offering to the Lord. ²⁰ You must give a cake as a special offering from the first of your flour. You must do it as you give your special gift from your threshing floor. ²¹ From the first of your flour, you must give to the Lord a special offering. And your descendants must continue to do that.

²² The people might not obey a rule that the Lord told Moses about. But they might not know that they are not obeying a rule. ²³ It might be any rule that the Lord gave to you by Moses. ²⁴ Perhaps somebody does not know that they are not obeying one of my rules. When that happens, they must sacrifice a young bull as a burnt offering. The smell of the smoke from this sacrifice will please the Lord. Also, they must give a grain offering, a drink offering and a male goat as a sin offering. ²⁵ Then the priest will make things right with God for all the Israelites. The Lord will forgive them. That is because their sin was a mistake. They have brought their offering, an offering by fire to the Lord. And they have brought their sin offering to the Lord, for their mistake. ²⁶ God will forgive all the Israelites and the foreign people who live among you. That is because your sin was a mistake. And also you offered the proper sacrifices to me.

Paul speaks to Agrippa

26 King Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You may now say what you think about this problem.’

Paul raised his hand so that people would listen to him. ² He said, ‘King Agrippa, I am happy that you are here. I ask you to listen to me today. These Jews say that I have done some bad things. I will explain to you what is really true about all these things. ³ You yourself know all about the Jews. You know about how we live. You also know the things that we argue about with each other. So please be patient and listen to me.

⁴ The Jewish people have known me since I was born. They all know how I have lived among them. They knew me in the region where I was born. When I came to Jerusalem, they also know how I lived there. ⁵ So they have known me for a long time. They could tell you that I always obeyed our Jewish laws. They know that I was a Pharisee. I carefully obeyed God's Law, as a Pharisee does. But maybe they do not want to tell you all that. ⁶ So what is the reason that I stand here today for you to judge me? It is because I believe in God's promise to our ancestors. ⁷ He promised a great thing to our 12 Israelite families. We all expect to receive what God has promised to us. That is why we Jews always worship God, in the day and in the night. Like these Jews here, I believe in God's great promise. But that is the reason that they speak against me. ⁸ Is it impossible for God to cause dead people to become alive again? You should surely believe me when I say that.

⁹ I myself wanted to work against Jesus, the man from Nazareth, and against his message. ¹⁰ That is what I was doing in Jerusalem. The leaders of the priests gave me authority to put many of the believers in prison. I agreed with our leaders when they said, “These people must die.”

¹¹ I went to our Jewish meeting places to take hold of believers. I told my men to punish them. I tried to make the believers say bad things against God. I was very angry with them. So I even travelled to cities in other countries to punish them.