Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

32 ^1-2 What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! What joys when sins are covered over! What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record.

³ There was a time when I wouldn’t admit what a sinner I was.^[a] But my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration. ⁴ All day and all night your hand was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day ⁵ until I finally admitted all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, “I will confess them to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

⁶ Now I say that each believer should confess his sins to God when he is aware of them, while there is time to be forgiven. Judgment will not touch him^[b] if he does.

⁷ You are my hiding place from every storm of life; you even keep me from getting into trouble! You surround me with songs of victory. ⁸ I will instruct you (says the Lord) and guide you along the best pathway for your life; I will advise you and watch your progress. ⁹ Don’t be like a senseless horse or mule that has to have a bit in its mouth to keep it in line!

¹⁰ Many sorrows come to the wicked, but abiding love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. ¹¹ So rejoice in him, all those who are his,^[c] and shout for joy, all those who try to obey him.

⁷ Then the Lord told Moses, “Quick! Go on down, for your people that you brought from Egypt have defiled themselves, ⁸ and have quickly abandoned all my laws. They have molded themselves a calf, and worshiped it, and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.’”

⁹ Then the Lord said, “I have seen what a stubborn, rebellious lot these people are. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone and my anger shall blaze out against them and destroy them all; and I will make you, Moses, into a great nation instead of them.”

¹¹ But Moses begged God not to do it. “Lord,” he pleaded, “why is your anger so hot against your own people whom you brought from the land of Egypt with such great power and mighty miracles? ¹² Do you want the Egyptians to say, ‘God tricked them into coming to the mountains so that he could slay them, destroying them from off the face of the earth’? Turn back from your fierce wrath. Turn away from this terrible evil you are planning against your people! ¹³ Remember your promise to your servants—to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. For you swore by your own self, ‘I will multiply your posterity as the stars of heaven, and I will give them all of this land I have promised to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”

¹⁴ So the Lord changed his mind and spared them.

15 Dishonest tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus’ sermons; ² but this caused complaints from the Jewish religious leaders and the experts on Jewish law because he was associating with such despicable people—even eating with them!

^3-4 So Jesus used this illustration: “If you had a hundred sheep and one of them strayed away and was lost in the wilderness, wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine others to go and search for the lost one until you found it? ⁵ And then you would joyfully carry it home on your shoulders. ⁶ When you arrived you would call together your friends and neighbors to rejoice with you because your lost sheep was found.

⁷ “Well, in the same way heaven will be happier over one lost sinner who returns to God than over ninety-nine others who haven’t strayed away!

⁸ “Or take another illustration: A woman has ten valuable silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and look in every corner of the house and sweep every nook and cranny until she finds it? ⁹ And then won’t she call in her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her? ¹⁰ In the same way there is joy in the presence of the angels of God when one sinner repents.”