Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 146

¹⁷ Then the Lord said to Moses, ¹⁸ “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel.

“When you arrive in the land where I am taking you, ¹⁹ and you eat the crops that grow there, you must set some aside as a sacred offering to the Lord. ²⁰ Present a cake from the first of the flour you grind, and set it aside as a sacred offering, as you do with the first grain from the threshing floor. ²¹ Throughout the generations to come, you are to present a sacred offering to the Lord each year from the first of your ground flour.

²² “But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses. ²³ And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the Lord has commanded through Moses. ²⁴ If the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering. ²⁵ With it the priest will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the Lord,^[a] and they will be forgiven. For it was an unintentional sin, and they have corrected it with their offerings to the Lord—the special gift and the sin offering. ²⁶ The whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners living among you, for all the people were involved in the sin.

26 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You may speak in your defense.”

So Paul, gesturing with his hand, started his defense: ² “I am fortunate, King Agrippa, that you are the one hearing my defense today against all these accusations made by the Jewish leaders, ³ for I know you are an expert on all Jewish customs and controversies. Now please listen to me patiently!

⁴ “As the Jewish leaders are well aware, I was given a thorough Jewish training from my earliest childhood among my own people and in Jerusalem. ⁵ If they would admit it, they know that I have been a member of the Pharisees, the strictest sect of our religion. ⁶ Now I am on trial because of my hope in the fulfillment of God’s promise made to our ancestors. ⁷ In fact, that is why the twelve tribes of Israel zealously worship God night and day, and they share the same hope I have. Yet, Your Majesty, they accuse me for having this hope! ⁸ Why does it seem incredible to any of you that God can raise the dead?

⁹ “I used to believe that I ought to do everything I could to oppose the very name of Jesus the Nazarene.^{[a] 10} Indeed, I did just that in Jerusalem. Authorized by the leading priests, I caused many believers^[b] there to be sent to prison. And I cast my vote against them when they were condemned to death. ¹¹ Many times I had them punished in the synagogues to get them to curse Jesus.^[c] I was so violently opposed to them that I even chased them down in foreign cities.