Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

This is a song that David wrote.

I trust God to keep me safe

Abram and Lot go different ways

13 Abram left Egypt and he travelled north to the Negev. He took his wife and everything that belonged to him. Lot also went with him. ² Abram had many valuable things. He had many cows, and much silver and gold.

³ Then Abram left the Negev and he went to different places. He arrived at Bethel. He returned to the place where he had put up his tent before. That place was between Bethel and Ai. ⁴ It was where Abram had first built an altar to worship the Lord.

⁵ Lot was travelling with Abram. Lot also had many cows, sheep and tents. ⁶ But the land could not grow enough food for all of them to eat. They could not all live together in the same place, because they had so many animals and people with them. ⁷ Abram's shepherds and Lot's shepherds began to quarrel with each other. (At that time, Canaanites and Perizzites also lived in the land.)^[a]

¹⁴ After Lot had gone away, the Lord said to Abram, ‘Stand where you are and look all around! Look to the north, the south, the east and the west. ¹⁵ I will give you all the land that you can see. I will give it to you and your descendants. It will belong to them for ever. ¹⁶ I will make your descendants become very many. Like the dust of the ground, people will not be able to count them all. ¹⁷ Go and travel round all this land. Look at it, because I am giving it to you!’

¹⁸ So Abram moved his tents. He went to live near the special oak trees of Mamre. That place is at Hebron. Abram built an altar to worship the Lord there.

² Be very careful! Some people are teaching bad things. They say that you must cut your bodies. They are like dangerous dogs. Do not believe them! ³ But we are truly God's people. And it is not because someone has circumcised us. It is God's own Spirit that leads us to worship God. We thank God because of what Christ Jesus has done for us. We know that it is not human ideas that can save us.^[a]

⁴ For myself, I could have trusted those human ideas. Perhaps somebody may think that they could trust in those things to save them. Then I would have an even better reason to trust in them. ⁵ I belong to Israel's people, to Benjamin's tribe. I am a true Jew. They circumcised me when I was eight days old. I was a Pharisee, and I obeyed the Jewish rules very carefully. ⁶ I tried very much to please God. So I caused a lot of trouble and pain for the Christians. I obeyed the rules of God's Law, and nobody could say that I did anything wrong.

⁷ All those ideas seemed very important to me then. But now they are worth nothing to me, because I trust in Christ. ⁸ Yes, now that I know Christ Jesus as my Lord, that is the most valuable thing. Nothing else is important at all. I have thrown everything else away, so that I can serve Christ. All those other things are like dirt to me. I think about them like that, so that I can have Christ. ⁹ I want to be united with him. Because I believe in Christ, God accepts me as right with him. I know that I cannot become right in any other way, even if I obey all of God's Law. When I trust in Christ, God accepts me as right because of my faith.

¹⁰ Yes, I want to know Christ better and better. I want to know the power which God showed when Christ rose from death. I want to have the same kind of troubles that he did. I want to obey God like he did in his death. ¹¹ Then I hope that I also will become alive again after death.

Christians do not belong to this world

¹² I am not saying that I have already reached that place in my life. I have not yet completely become the person that God wants me to be. But I am trying very hard to reach that place. That was Christ's purpose when he first made me his own.