Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
God and His People(A)
105 Give thanks to the Lord,
proclaim his greatness;
tell the nations what he has done.
2 Sing praise to the Lord;
tell the wonderful things he has done.
3 Be glad that we belong to him;
let all who worship him rejoice.
4 Go to the Lord for help;
and worship him continually.
5-6 You descendants of Abraham, his servant;
you descendants of Jacob, the man he chose:
remember the miracles that God performed
and the judgments that he gave.
7 The Lord is our God;
his commands are for all the world.
8 He will keep his covenant forever,
his promises for a thousand generations.
9 (B)He will keep the agreement he made with Abraham
and his promise to Isaac.
10 (C)The Lord made a covenant with Jacob,
one that will last forever.
11 “I will give you the land of Canaan,” he said.
“It will be your own possession.”
12 God's people were few in number,
strangers in the land of Canaan.
13 They wandered from country to country,
from one kingdom to another.
14 (D)But God let no one oppress them;
to protect them, he warned the kings:
15 “Don't harm my chosen servants;
do not touch my prophets.”
16 (A)The Lord sent famine to their country
and took away all their food.
17 (B)But he sent a man ahead of them,
Joseph, who had been sold as a slave.
18 (C)His feet were kept in chains,
and an iron collar was around his neck,
19 until what he had predicted came true.
The word of the Lord proved him right.
20 (D)Then the king of Egypt had him released;
the ruler of nations set him free.
21 (E)He put him in charge of his government
and made him ruler over all the land,
22 with power over the king's officials
and authority to instruct his advisers.
23 (F)Then Jacob went to Egypt
and settled in that country.
24 (G)The Lord gave many children to his people
and made them stronger than their enemies.
25 He made the Egyptians hate his people
and treat his servants with deceit.
26 (H)Then he sent his servant Moses,
and Aaron, whom he had chosen.
27 They did God's mighty acts
and performed miracles in Egypt.
28 (I)God sent darkness on the country,
but the Egyptians did not obey[a] his command.
29 (J)He turned their rivers into blood
and killed all their fish.
30 (K)Their country was overrun with frogs;
even the palace was filled with them.
31 (L)God commanded, and flies and gnats
swarmed throughout the whole country.
32 (M)He sent hail and lightning on their land
instead of rain;
33 he destroyed their grapevines and fig trees
and broke down all the trees.
34 (N)He commanded, and the locusts came,
countless millions of them;
35 they ate all the plants in the land;
they ate all the crops.
36 (O)He killed the first-born sons
of all the families of Egypt.
37 (P)Then he led the Israelites out;
they carried silver and gold,
and all of them were healthy and strong.
38 The Egyptians were afraid of them
and were glad when they left.
39 (Q)God put a cloud over his people
and a fire at night to give them light.
40 (R)They[b] asked, and he sent quails;
he gave them food from heaven to satisfy them.
41 (S)He opened a rock, and water gushed out,
flowing through the desert like a river.
42 He remembered his sacred promise
to Abraham his servant.
The Lord Orders Israel to Leave Mount Sinai
33 (A)The Lord said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought out of Egypt, and go to the land that I promised to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to their descendants. 2 I will send an angel to guide you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 3 You are going to a rich and fertile land. But I will not go with you myself, because you are a stubborn people, and I might destroy you on the way.”
4 When the people heard this, they began to mourn and did not wear jewelry any more. 5 For the Lord had commanded Moses to tell them, “You are a stubborn people. If I were to go with you even for a moment, I would completely destroy you. Now take off your jewelry, and I will decide what to do with you.” 6 So after they left Mount Sinai, the people of Israel no longer wore jewelry.
The Example of Abraham
4 What shall we say, then, of Abraham, the father of our race? What was his experience? 2 If he was put right with God by the things he did, he would have something to boast about—but not in God's sight. 3 (A)The scripture says, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” 4 A person who works is paid wages, but they are not regarded as a gift; they are something that has been earned. 5 But those who depend on faith, not on deeds, and who believe in the God who declares the guilty to be innocent, it is this faith that God takes into account in order to put them right with himself. 6 This is what David meant when he spoke of the happiness of the person whom God accepts as righteous, apart from anything that person does:
7 (B)“Happy are those whose wrongs are forgiven,
whose sins are pardoned!
8 Happy is the person whose sins the Lord will not keep account of!”
9 Does this happiness that David spoke of belong only to those who are circumcised? No indeed! It belongs also to those who are not circumcised. For we have quoted the scripture, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” 10 When did this take place? Was it before or after Abraham was circumcised? It was before, not after. 11 (C)He was circumcised later, and his circumcision was a sign to show that because of his faith God had accepted him as righteous before he had been circumcised. And so Abraham is the spiritual father of all who believe in God and are accepted as righteous by him, even though they are not circumcised. 12 He is also the father of those who are circumcised, that is, of those who, in addition to being circumcised, also live the same life of faith that our father Abraham lived before he was circumcised.
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.