Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
20 Then God began to speak directly to all the people.
Until now God has dealt only with Moses on behalf of His people; at Mount Sinai, He turns to address them directly in order to express the core of His covenant obligations. He begins by reminding them of all He has done for them. His miraculous deeds in liberating the Hebrew slaves and providing for them in the desert become the basis of this new relationship. He then proceeds to lay out the Ten Directives that will define and shape their lives together. The first four Directives concern their duties to know and worship the one True God. The last six pertain to how Israel is to live with one another in a covenant-based society. Properly understood, all the other teachings, prescriptions, and directives that come in later chapters derive from these Ten Directives.
Eternal One: 2 I am the Eternal your God. I led you out of Egypt and liberated you from lives of slavery and oppression.
3 You are not to serve any other gods before Me.
4 You are not to make any idol or image of other gods. In fact, you are not to make an image of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.
7 You are not to use My name for your own idle purposes, for the Eternal will punish anyone who treats His name as anything less than sacred.
8 You and your family are to remember the Sabbath Day; set it apart, and keep it holy. 9 You have six days to do all your work,
12 You are to honor your father and mother. If you do, you and your children will live long and well in the land the Eternal your God has promised to give you.
13 You are not to murder.
14 You are not to commit adultery.
15 You are not to take what is not yours.
16 You are not to give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 You are not to covet what your neighbor has or set your heart on getting his house, his wife, his male or female servants, his ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.
18 As all the people witnessed the signs of God’s presence—the blast of the ram’s horn, the roaring thunder, the flashing lightning, and the smoke-covered mountain—they shook with fear and astonishment and wisely kept their distance.
Israelites (to Moses): 19 We are afraid to have God speak directly to us; we are certain that we will die. You speak to us instead; we promise to listen.
Moses: 20 Don’t be afraid. These powerful manifestations are God’s way of instilling awe and fear in you so that you will not sin; He is testing you for your own good.
Psalm 19
For the worship leader. A song of David.
1 The celestial realms announce God’s glory;
the skies testify of His hands’ great work.
2 Each day pours out more of their sayings;
each night, more to hear and more to learn.
3 Inaudible words are their manner of speech,
and silence, their means to convey.
4 Yet from here to the ends of the earth, their voices[a] have gone out;
the whole world can hear what they say.[b]
God stretched out in these heavens a tent for the sun,
5 And the sun is like a groom
who, after leaving his room, arrives at the wedding in splendor;
He is the strong runner
who, favored to win in his race, is eager to face his challenge.
6 He rises at one end of the skies
and runs in an arc overhead;
nothing can hide from his heat, from the swelter of his daily tread.
7 The Eternal’s law is perfect,
turning lives around.
His words are reliable and true,
instilling wisdom to open minds.
8 The Eternal’s directions are correct,
giving satisfaction to the heart.
God’s commandments are clear,
lending clarity to the eyes.
9 The awe of the Eternal is clean,
sustaining for all of eternity.
The Eternal’s decisions are sound;
they are right through and through.
10 They are worth more than gold—
even more than abundant, pure gold.
They are sweeter to the tongue than honey
or the drippings of the honeycomb.
11 In addition to all that has been said,
Your servant will find, hidden in Your commandments, both a strong warning
and a great reward for keeping them.
12 Who could possibly know all that he has done wrong?
Forgive my hidden and unknown faults.
13 As I am Your servant, protect me from my bent toward pride,
and keep sin from ruling my life.
If You do this, I will be without blame,
innocent of the great breach.
14 May the words that come out of my mouth and the musings of my heart
meet with Your gracious approval,
O Eternal, my Rock,
O Eternal, my Redeemer.
4 If any try to throw around their pedigrees to you, remember my résumé—which is more impressive than theirs. 5 I was circumcised on the eighth day—as the law prescribes—born of the nation of Israel, descended from the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew born of Hebrews; I have observed the law according to the strict piety of the Pharisees, separate from those embracing a less rigorous kind of Judaism. 6 Zealous? Yes. I ruthlessly pursued and persecuted the church. And when it comes to the righteousness required by the law, my record is spotless.
7 But whatever I used to count as my greatest accomplishments, I’ve written them off as a loss because of the Anointed One. 8 And more so, I now realize that all I gained and thought was important was nothing but yesterday’s garbage compared to knowing the Anointed Jesus my Lord. For Him I have thrown everything aside—it’s nothing but a pile of waste—so that I may gain Him. 9 When it counts, I want to be found belonging to Him, not clinging to my own righteousness based on law, but actively relying on the faithfulness of the Anointed One. This is true righteousness, supplied by God, acquired by faith. 10 I want to know Him inside and out. I want to experience the power of His resurrection and join in His suffering, shaped by His death, 11 so that I may arrive safely at the resurrection from the dead.
The crucified and risen Jesus is the model that Paul desires to embody by walking deep in His pathway of death and life—suffering and resurrection.
12 I’m not there yet, nor have I become perfect; but I am charging on to gain anything and everything the Anointed One, Jesus, has in store for me—and nothing will stand in my way because He has grabbed me and won’t let me go. 13 Brothers and sisters, as I said, I know I have not arrived; but there’s one thing I am doing: I’m leaving my old life behind, putting everything on the line for this mission. 14 I am sprinting toward the only goal that counts: to cross the line, to win the prize, and to hear God’s call to resurrection life found exclusively in Jesus the Anointed.
33 Here is another story: A landowner planted a vineyard, put a wall around it, fitted it with a winepress, and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard and left town. 34 When harvesttime came, the landowner sent his servants to collect rent—in the form of grapes—from his tenants. 35 The tenants attacked these rent-collecting servants. They killed one, stoned another, and beat a third. 36 The dismayed landowner sent another band of servants to try to collect his due, a larger group of servants this time, but the tenants did the same thing—capturing, beating, killing. 37 Finally the landowner sent his son to the tenants, thinking, “They will at least respect my son.” 38 But the tenants knew the son was the best way to get to the landowner, so when they saw the son approaching they said,
Tenants: This is the landowner’s heir apparent! Let’s kill him and take his inheritance.
39 And so they did; they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 What do you think the landowner will do when he comes and sees those tenants?
Chief Priests and Elders: 41 He will eviscerate them, to be sure! Then he will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will pay him at harvesttime.
Jesus: 42 I wonder if any of you has ever opened your own psalter:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very stone that holds together the entire foundation.
This is the work of the Eternal One,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.[a]
43 Therefore, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who will tend its sweet fruit and who will give the Creator His due. [44 He who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces, and he on whom the stone falls will be crushed.][b]
Jesus has just confronted the spiritual leaders of the land with hard reality. They have two choices: they can believe Him and repent, or they can disbelieve Him and call His stories rabble-rousing and craziness. In their minds, the cost of believing is just too high. Everything they have—their positions and standings in the community, their worldviews, their own images of themselves—is at stake. But they can’t openly condemn this popular teacher of the people.
45 And so the chief priests and the Pharisees, the teachers and the elders, knew that when Jesus told these stories He was speaking about them. 46 Not believing, they looked for a way to arrest Him—a stealthy way, though. They were afraid to make too bold a move against Him because all the people believed He was a prophet.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.