Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

90 A prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! ² Before the mountains were created, before the earth was formed, you are God without beginning or end.

³ You speak, and man turns back to dust. ⁴ A thousand years are but as yesterday to you! They are like a single hour!^{[a] 5-6} We glide along the tides of time as swiftly as a racing river and vanish as quickly as a dream. We are like grass that is green in the morning but mowed down and withered before the evening shadows fall.

¹³ O Jehovah, come and bless us! How long will you delay? Turn away your anger from us. ¹⁴ Satisfy us in our earliest^[a] youth with your loving-kindness, giving us constant joy to the end of our lives. ¹⁵ Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good. ¹⁶ Let us see your miracles again; let our children see glorious things, the kind you used to do, ¹⁷ and let the Lord our God favor us and give us success. May he give permanence to all we do.

¹⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “The time has come when you must die. Summon Joshua and come into the Tabernacle where I can give him his instructions.” So Moses and Joshua came and stood before the Lord.

¹⁵ He appeared to them in a great cloud at the Tabernacle entrance, ¹⁶ and said to Moses, “You shall die and join your ancestors. After you are gone, these people will begin worshiping foreign gods in the Promised Land. They will forget about me and break the contract I have made with them. ¹⁷ Then my anger will flame out against them and I will abandon them, hiding my face from them, and they shall be destroyed. Terrible trouble will come upon them, so that they will say, ‘God is no longer among us!’ ¹⁸ I will turn away from them because of their sins in worshiping other gods.

¹⁹ “Now write down the words of this song, and teach it to the people of Israel as my warning to them. ²⁰ When I have brought them into the land I promised their ancestors—a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’—and when they have become fat and prosperous, and worship other gods and despise me and break my contract, ²¹ and great disasters come upon them, then this song will remind them of the reason for their woes. (For this song will live from generation to generation.) I know now, even before they enter the land, what these people are like.”

²² So, on that very day, Moses wrote down the words of the song and taught it to the Israelites.

⁵ I left you there on the island of Crete so that you could do whatever was needed to help strengthen each of its churches, and I asked you to appoint pastors^[a] in every city who would follow the instructions I gave you. ⁶ The men you choose must be well thought of for their good lives; they must have only one wife and their children must love the Lord and not have a reputation for being wild or disobedient to their parents.

⁷ These pastors must be men of blameless lives because they are God’s ministers. They must not be proud or impatient; they must not be drunkards or fighters or greedy for money. ⁸ They must enjoy having guests in their homes and must love all that is good. They must be sensible men, and fair. They must be clean minded and level headed. ⁹ Their belief in the truth that they have been taught must be strong and steadfast so that they will be able to teach it to others and show those who disagree with them where they are wrong.

¹⁰ For there are many who refuse to obey; this is especially true among those who say that all Christians must obey the Jewish laws. But this is foolish talk; it blinds people to the truth, ¹¹ and it must be stopped. Already whole families have been turned away from the grace of God. Such teachers are only after your money. ¹² One of their own men, a prophet from Crete, has said about them, “These men of Crete are all liars; they are like lazy animals, living only to satisfy their stomachs.” ¹³ And this is true. So speak to the Christians there as sternly as necessary to make them strong in the faith ¹⁴ and to stop them from listening to Jewish folk tales and the demands of men who have turned their backs on the truth.

¹⁵ A person who is pure of heart sees goodness and purity in everything; but a person whose own heart is evil and untrusting finds evil in everything, for his dirty mind and rebellious heart color all he sees and hears. ¹⁶ Such persons claim they know God, but from seeing the way they act, one knows they don’t. They are rotten and disobedient, worthless so far as doing anything good is concerned.