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"Honor the LORD your God by celebrating Passover in the month of Abib; it was on a night in that month that he rescued you from Egypt.
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Go to the one place of worship and slaughter there one of your sheep or cattle for the Passover meal to honor the LORD your God.
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When you eat this meal, do not eat bread prepared with yeast. For seven days you are to eat bread prepared without yeast, as you did when you had to leave Egypt in such a hurry. Eat this bread---it will be called the bread of suffering---so that as long as you live you will remember the day you came out of Egypt, that place of suffering.
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For seven days no one in your land is to have any yeast in the house; and the meat of the animal killed on the evening of the first day must be eaten that same night.
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"Slaughter the Passover animals at the one place of worship---and nowhere else in the land that the LORD your God will give you. Do it at sunset, the time of day when you left Egypt.
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Boil the meat and eat it at the one place of worship; and the next morning return home.
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For the next six days you are to eat bread prepared without yeast, and on the seventh day assemble to worship the LORD your God, and do no work on that day.
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"Count seven weeks from the time that you begin to harvest the grain,
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and then celebrate the Harvest Festival, to honor the LORD your God, by bringing him a freewill offering in proportion to the blessing he has given you.
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Be joyful in the LORD's presence, together with your children, your servants, and the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows who live in your towns. Do this at the one place of worship.
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Be sure that you obey these commands; do not forget that you were slaves in Egypt.
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"After you have threshed all your grain and pressed all your grapes, celebrate the Festival of Shelters for seven days.
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Enjoy it with your children, your servants, and the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows who live in your towns.
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Honor the LORD your God by celebrating this festival for seven days at the one place of worship. Be joyful, because the LORD has blessed your harvest and your work.
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"All the men of your nation are to come to worship the LORD three times a year at the one place of worship: at Passover, Harvest Festival, and the Festival of Shelters. Each man is to bring a gift
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as he is able, in proportion to the blessings that the LORD your God has given him.
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"Appoint judges and other officials in every town that the LORD your God gives you. These men are to judge the people impartially.
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They are not to be unjust or show partiality in their judgments; and they are not to accept bribes, for gifts blind the eyes even of wise and honest men, and cause them to give wrong decisions.
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Always be fair and just, so that you will occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you and so that you will continue to live there.
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"When you make an altar for the LORD your God, do not put beside it a wooden symbol of the goddess Asherah.
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And do not set up any stone pillar for idol worship; the LORD hates them.
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"Do not sacrifice to the LORD your God cattle or sheep that have any defects; the LORD hates this.
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"Suppose you hear that in one of your towns some men or women have sinned against the LORD and broken his covenant
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by worshiping and serving other gods or the sun or the moon or the stars, contrary to the LORD's command.
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If you hear such a report, then investigate it thoroughly. If it is true that this evil thing has happened in Israel,
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then take them outside the town and stone them to death.
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However, they may be put to death only if two or more witnesses testify against them; they are not to be put to death if there is only one witness.
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The witnesses are to throw the first stones, and then the rest of the people are to stone them; in this way you will get rid of this evil.
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"It may be that some cases will be too difficult for the local judges to decide, such as certain cases of property rights or of bodily injury or those cases that involve a distinction between murder and manslaughter. When this happens, go to the one place of worship chosen by the LORD your God,
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and present your case to the levitical priests and to the judge who is in office at that time, and let them decide the case.
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They will give their decision, and you are to do exactly as they tell you.
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Accept their verdict and follow their instructions in every detail.
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Anyone who dares to disobey either the judge or the priest on duty is to be put to death; in this way you will remove this evil from Israel.
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Then everyone will hear of it and be afraid, and no one else will dare to act in such a way.
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"After you have taken possession of the land that the LORD your God is going to give you and have settled there, then you will decide you need a king like all the nations around you.
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Be sure that the man you choose to be king is the one whom the LORD has chosen. He must be one of your own people; do not make a foreigner your king.
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The king is not to have a large number of horses for his army, and he is not to send people to Egypt to buy horses, because the LORD has said that his people are never to return there.
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The king is not to have many wives, because this would make him turn away from the LORD; and he is not to make himself rich with silver and gold.
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When he becomes king, he is to have a copy of the book of God's laws and teachings made from the original copy kept by the levitical priests.
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He is to keep this book near him and read from it all his life, so that he will learn to honor the LORD and to obey faithfully everything that is commanded in it.
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This will keep him from thinking that he is better than other Israelites and from disobeying the LORD's commands in any way. Then he will reign for many years, and his descendants will rule Israel for many generations.
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"The priestly tribe of Levi is not to receive any share of land in Israel; instead, they are to live on the offerings and other sacrifices given to the LORD.
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They are to own no land, as the other tribes do; their share is the privilege of being the LORD's priests, as the LORD has promised.
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"Whenever cattle or sheep are sacrificed, the priests are to be given the shoulder, the jaw, and the stomach.
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They are to receive the first share of the grain, wine, olive oil, and wool.
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The LORD chose from all your tribes the tribe of Levi to serve him as priests forever.
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"Any Levite who wants to may come from any town in Israel to the one place of worship
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and may serve there as a priest of the LORD his God, like the other Levites who are serving there.
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He is to receive the same amount of food as the other priests, and he may keep whatever his family sends him.
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"When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, don't follow the disgusting practices of the nations that are there.
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Don't sacrifice your children in the fires on your altars; and don't let your people practice divination or look for omens or use spells
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or charms, and don't let them consult the spirits of the dead.
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The LORD your God hates people who do these disgusting things, and that is why he is driving those nations out of the land as you advance.
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Be completely faithful to the LORD."
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Then Moses said, "In the land you are about to occupy, people follow the advice of those who practice divination and look for omens, but the LORD your God does not allow you to do this.
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Instead, he will send you a prophet like me from among your own people, and you are to obey him.
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"On the day that you were gathered at Mount Sinai, you begged not to hear the LORD speak again or to see his fiery presence any more, because you were afraid you would die.
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So the LORD said to me, 'They have made a wise request.
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I will send them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will tell him what to say, and he will tell the people everything I command.
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He will speak in my name, and I will punish anyone who refuses to obey him.
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But if any prophet dares to speak a message in my name when I did not command him to do so, he must die for it, and so must any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods.'
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"You may wonder how you can tell when a prophet's message does not come from the LORD.
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If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and what he says does not come true, then it is not the LORD's message. That prophet has spoken on his own authority, and you are not to fear him.
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O LORD, don't punish me in your anger!
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You have wounded me with your arrows; you have struck me down.
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Because of your anger, I am in great pain; my whole body is diseased because of my sins.
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I am drowning in the flood of my sins; they are a burden too heavy to bear.
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Because I have been foolish, my sores stink and rot.
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I am bent over, I am crushed; I mourn all day long.
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I am burning with fever and I am near death.
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I am worn out and utterly crushed; my heart is troubled, and I groan with pain.
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O Lord, you know what I long for; you hear all my groans.
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My heart is pounding, my strength is gone, and my eyes have lost their brightness.
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My friends and neighbors will not come near me, because of my sores; even my family keeps away from me.
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Those who want to kill me lay traps for me, and those who want to hurt me threaten to ruin me; they never stop plotting against me.
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I am like the deaf and cannot hear, like the dumb and cannot speak.
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I am like those who do not answer, because they cannot hear.
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But I trust in you, O LORD; and you, O Lord my God, will answer me.
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Don't let my enemies gloat over my distress; don't let them boast about my downfall!
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I am about to fall and am in constant pain.
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I confess my sins; they fill me with anxiety.
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My enemies are healthy and strong; there are many who hate me for no reason.
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Those who pay back evil for good are against me because I try to do right.
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Do not abandon me, O LORD; do not stay away, my God!
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Help me now, O Lord my savior!
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Fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.
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I went because God revealed to me that I should go. In a private meeting with the leaders I explained the gospel message that I preach to the Gentiles. I did not want my work in the past or in the present to be a failure.
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My companion Titus, even though he is Greek, was not forced to be circumcised,
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although some wanted it done. Pretending to be believers, these men slipped into our group as spies, in order to find out about the freedom we have through our union with Christ Jesus. They wanted to make slaves of us,
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but in order to keep the truth of the gospel safe for you, we did not give in to them for a minute.
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But those who seemed to be the leaders---I say this because it makes no difference to me what they were; God does not judge by outward appearances---those leaders, I say, made no new suggestions to me.
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On the contrary, they saw that God had given me the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the task of preaching the gospel to the Jews.
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For by God's power I was made an apostle to the Gentiles, just as Peter was made an apostle to the Jews.
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James, Peter, and John, who seemed to be the leaders, recognized that God had given me this special task; so they shook hands with Barnabas and me, as a sign that we were all partners. We agreed that Barnabas and I would work among the Gentiles and they among the Jews.
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All they asked was that we should remember the needy in their group, which is the very thing I have been eager to do.
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But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong.
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Before some men who had been sent by James arrived there, Peter had been eating with the Gentile believers. But after these men arrived, he drew back and would not eat with the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who were in favor of circumcising them.
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The other Jewish believers also started acting like cowards along with Peter; and even Barnabas was swept along by their cowardly action.
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When I saw that they were not walking a straight path in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you have been living like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How, then, can you try to force Gentiles to live like Jews?"
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Indeed, we are Jews by birth and not "Gentile sinners," as they are called.
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Yet we know that a person is put right with God only through faith in Jesus Christ, never by doing what the Law requires. We, too, have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be put right with God through our faith in Christ, and not by doing what the Law requires. For no one is put right with God by doing what the Law requires.
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If, then, as we try to be put right with God by our union with Christ, we are found to be sinners, as much as the Gentiles are---does this mean that Christ is serving the cause of sin? By no means!
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If I start to rebuild the system of Law that I tore down, then I show myself to be someone who breaks the Law.
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So far as the Law is concerned, however, I am dead---killed by the Law itself---in order that I might live for God. I have been put to death with Christ on his cross,
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so that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. This life that I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.
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I refuse to reject the grace of God. But if a person is put right with God through the Law, it means that Christ died for nothing!
