Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁴ Then the people of Israel returned to Mount Hor, and from there continued southward along the road to the Red Sea in order to go around the land of Edom. The people were very discouraged; ⁵ they began to murmur against God and to complain against Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they whined. “There is nothing to eat here, and nothing to drink, and we hate this insipid manna.”

⁶ So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among them to punish them, and many of them were bitten and died.

⁷ Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against Jehovah and against you. Pray to him to take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people.

⁸ Then the Lord told him, “Make a bronze replica^[a] of one of these snakes and attach it to the top of a pole; anyone who is bitten shall live if he simply looks at it!”

⁹ So Moses made the replica, and whenever anyone who had been bitten looked at the bronze snake, he recovered!

107 Say thank you to the Lord for being so good, for always being so loving and kind. ² Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has saved you from your enemies.

³ He brought the exiles back from the farthest corners of the earth.

¹⁷ Others, the fools, were ill because of their sinful ways. ¹⁸ Their appetites were gone, and death was near. ¹⁹ Then they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he helped them and delivered them. ²⁰ He spoke, and they were healed—snatched from the door of death. ²¹ Oh, that these men would praise the Lord for his loving-kindness and for all of his wonderful deeds! ²² Let them tell him thank you as their sacrifice and sing about his glorious deeds.

2 Once you were under God’s curse, doomed forever for your sins. ² You went along with the crowd and were just like all the others, full of sin, obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air, who is at work right now in the hearts of those who are against the Lord. ³ All of us used to be just as they are, our lives expressing the evil within us, doing every wicked thing that our passions or our evil thoughts might lead us into. We started out bad, being born with evil natures, and were under God’s anger just like everyone else.

⁴ But God is so rich in mercy; he loved us so much ⁵ that even though we were spiritually dead and doomed by our sins, he gave us back our lives again^[a] when he raised Christ from the dead—only by his undeserved favor have we ever been saved— ⁶ and lifted us up from the grave into glory along with Christ, where we sit with him in the heavenly realms—all because of what Christ Jesus did. ⁷ And now God can always point to us as examples of how very, very rich his kindness is, as shown in all he has done for us through Jesus Christ.

⁸ Because of his kindness, you have been saved through trusting Christ. And even trusting is not of yourselves;^[b] it too is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good we have done, so none of us can take any credit for it. ¹⁰ It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others.

¹⁴ And as Moses in the wilderness lifted up the bronze image of a serpent on a pole, even so I must be lifted up upon a pole, ¹⁵ so that anyone who believes in me will have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son^[a] so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.

¹⁸ “There is no eternal doom awaiting those who trust him to save them. But those who don’t trust him have already been tried and condemned for not believing in the only Son of God. ¹⁹ Their sentence is based on this fact: that the Light from heaven came into the world, but they loved the darkness more than the Light, for their deeds were evil. ²⁰ They hated the heavenly Light because they wanted to sin in the darkness. They stayed away from that Light for fear their sins would be exposed and they would be punished. ²¹ But those doing right come gladly to the Light to let everyone see that they are doing what God wants them to.”