Thursday, March 22, 2012

Genesis 24:12-31 and Matthew 15:1-20 (NIV)

Genesis 24:12-31
Isaac and Rebekah

12  Then he prayed, “LORD, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham.
13  See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water.
14  May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
15  Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor.
16  The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.
17  The servant hurried to meet her and said, “Please give me a little water from your jar.”
18  “Drink, my lord,” she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink.
19  After she had given him a drink, she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels too, until they have had enough to drink.”
20  So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water, and drew enough for all his camels.
21  Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the LORD had made his journey successful.
22  When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a beka and two gold bracelets weighing ten shekels.
23  Then he asked, “Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?”
24  She answered him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son that Milkah bore to Nahor.”
25  And she added, “We have plenty of straw and fodder, as well as room for you to spend the night.”
26  Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD,
27  saying, “Praise be to the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. As for me, the LORD has led me on the journey to the house of my master’s relatives.”
28  The young woman ran and told her mother’s household about these things.
29  Now Rebekah had a brother named Laban, and he hurried out to the man at the spring.
30  As soon as he had seen the nose ring, and the bracelets on his sister’s arms, and had heard Rebekah tell what the man said to her, he went out to the man and found him standing by the camels near the spring.
31  “Come, you who are blessed by the LORD,” he said. “Why are you standing out here? I have prepared the house and a place for the camels.”



Matthew 15:1-20
Clean and Unclean
1    Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked,
2    “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
3    Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 
4    For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 
5    But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 
6    they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 
7    You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8    “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
9    They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’
10  Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 
11  What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
12  Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”
13  He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 
14  Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
15  Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”
16  “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them.
17  “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 
18  But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 
19  For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 
20  These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

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