Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
A prayer for help[a]
10 Must you stand so far away, Lord?
Why do you hide when there is trouble?
2 Wicked people are cruel to poor people.
They use their evil ideas
to take hold of weak people.
3 Not only do wicked people boast
because they get the things that they want.
They also praise robbers,
and they curse the Lord.
4 Wicked people are too proud to worry about God.
They think, ‘God will not give me any trouble.’
5 Often the wicked person seems to have success.
He does not respect your commands, God.
He laughs at all his enemies.
6 He says to himself, ‘There will be no trouble for me.
Nothing bad will ever happen to me or to my children.’
7 Plenty of lies come from his mouth,
and he curses people.
The bad words that he speaks are very cruel,
and they hurt people.
8 He hides near the villages,
so that he can jump out and catch people.
He watches in secret to find a weak person that he can kill.
He murders people who have done nothing wrong.
9 Quietly, he hides like a lion among some bushes.
He waits there to catch a poor, weak person.
Like a hunter, he catches poor people in his net.
10 He stamps on the people that he catches,
and he knocks them down to the ground.
The weak person falls down,
because the wicked person is too strong.
11 The wicked person says to himself,
‘God will give me no trouble!
He does not even see what I do.’
12 Rise up, Lord!
Do something, God,
and knock down the wicked person!
Do not forget to help weak people.
13 Why do wicked people insult God?
They say to themselves,
‘God will not give me any trouble.’
14 Surely, God, you see what is happening.
You see how wicked people bring pain and trouble.
You decide what to do about it.
The weak person trusts that you will help him.
You take care of children who have no father.
15 Take hold of the arm of the wicked, evil man!
Break it and take away his strength!
Punish him for the bad things that he has done,
so that he has to stop.
16 The Lord will rule as king for ever!
The nations who do not serve him
will not remain in his land.
17 You, Lord, hear the prayers
of people who are suffering.
When they ask you to help them,
you make them feel strong.
18 You stand beside those who have no father,
and those who are poor and weak.
As a result, they will no longer be afraid.
No human on the earth can frighten them.
Jeremiah speaks in the Temple
7 The Lord gave this message to Jeremiah: 2 ‘Stand at the gate of the Lord's temple and speak this message. Say, “Listen to the Lord's message, all you people of Judah. You come through this gate to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says: Change the way that you live. Do things that are right. If you change, I will let you continue to live here. 4 People may say, ‘We are safe here! This is the temple of the Lord. It is the temple of the Lord!’ But the people who say that are deceiving you. Do not trust them. 5 You must change the way that you have been living. You must do what is right. Be fair to each other. 6 Do not be cruel to foreigners who are living among you. Do not be cruel to widows, or to children who have no family. You must stop murdering people. You must stop worshipping other gods. If you live like that, it will destroy you. 7 If you change how you live, I will let you live in this place. It is the land that I gave to your ancestors, to be their home for ever.
8 But look at how you live now! You believe in lies that cannot save you. 9 You rob people. You murder people. You have sex with someone else's wife or husband. You tell lies in court when you have promised to tell the truth. You offer sacrifices to the false god, Baal. You serve other gods that you never knew before. 10 You do that and then you come to meet me here, in my own house! You say, ‘We are safe!’ 11 This is my temple! It is not a place where robbers can hide and be safe. Listen to me! I have seen the things that you have done.” That is what the Lord says.
12 “Go to Shiloh, and see what I did there. It was the first place that I chose where people would worship me. But I destroyed it because of the wicked things that my people, the Israelites, did. 13 You have done the same wicked things. I have warned you many times, but you have not listened to me. I called out to you, but you refused to answer.” That is what the Lord says.
14 “So now I will destroy this temple that I chose to be my home. I gave this temple to you and to your ancestors. You think that it will keep you safe. But I will destroy it, as I destroyed Shiloh. 15 I will send you far away from me. I already did that to the other Israelites, the people of Ephraim's tribe.” [a]
A place where God's people can rest
7 God's Holy Spirit says this:
‘You must listen when you hear God speak today.
8 Do not refuse to obey him.
Do not be like God's people many years ago.
When they travelled in the wilderness, they turned against me.
They wanted to see if I would punish them.
9 For 40 years your ancestors saw the great things that I did.
But still they did not obey me.
10 That is why I became angry with them.
I said, “They always want to do what is wrong.
They refuse to understand my message.”
11 Because of that, I promised to punish them.
Because I was angry with them, I said,
“They will never arrive in my special place of rest.” ’[a]
12 So be careful, my Christian friends. Do not refuse to trust God. That would be a very bad thing to do. Do not turn away from the God who lives for ever. 13 Instead, help each other to be strong every day. Today, you can still hear God's message. While that is still true, do not refuse to obey God. Do not think that sin will not hurt you. That is a lie. 14 We must continue to trust Christ very well, as we did when we first believed in him. We must continue to trust him until the end of our lives. Then we will share in everything that is his. 15 We have seen what the Bible says:
‘You must listen when you hear God speak today.
Do not refuse to obey him.
Do not be like God's people many years ago,
when they turned against God.’
16 Who were those people who heard God speak? All of them were the people that Moses led away from Egypt. They heard God's message, but they refused to obey him. 17 Who was God angry with for 40 years? He was angry with those same people. They did what was wrong. So they died and their bodies remained in the wilderness. 18 God promised to punish them, because they refused to obey him. He said, ‘They will never arrive in my special place of rest.’
19 So we must be careful ourselves! Those people did not trust God. As a result, they never arrived in God's special place.
God's special place of rest
4 God promised his people that they could go to his special place of rest. That promise is still true for us today. So we must be very careful. Do not fail to arrive in that place. We certainly do not want that to happen. 2 We have heard God's good news, just like God's people in the wilderness heard his message. But that message did not help them, because they did not believe it. They did not trust God, like those who obeyed him. 3 But those of us who trust God do enjoy his special place of rest. This is what God said:
‘Because I was very angry with them, I promised this:
“They will never arrive in my special place of rest.” ’[b]
God said that, even though he had finished his work when he made the world. 4 In the Bible God has spoken about the seventh day like this:
‘God rested from all his work on the seventh day.’[c]
5 As we have already seen, God said something later about his rest:
‘They will never arrive in my special place of rest.’
6 So we see that there is still a chance for people to go to God's place of rest. But those people who first heard God's message in the wilderness refused to obey him. As a result, they did not arrive in his special place of rest. 7 So God chose another time for people to go to his place of rest. He called it ‘Today’. A long time after Moses, David spoke God's message. As we have already seen, he said:
‘You must listen when you hear God speak today.
Do not refuse to obey him.’
8 This shows that Joshua did not bring God's people to the place where they could rest. Later, God had to speak again about another day of rest. 9 So we see this: God still has a place ready for his people, where they can rest. They will rest as God rested on the seventh day. 10 When God made the world and everything, he rested after he had finished his work. It is the same for everyone who goes to God's place of rest. They too will rest. They will no longer need to work.[d]
11 So we must do everything possible to arrive in God's special place of rest. God's people in the wilderness did not obey him. We must not be like them. If we do not obey God, we also will fail to arrive in that place.
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