(SEE 22:1)

If you sin, that does no harm to God. If you do wrong many times, does that affect him?

Do you help God by being so righteous? There is nothing God needs from you.

I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; all the good things I have come from you."

I do not reprimand you because of your sacrifices and the burnt offerings you always bring me.

all the animals in the forest are mine and the cattle on thousands of hills.

"If I were hungry, I would not ask you for food, for the world and everything in it is mine.

And so I, the Sovereign LORD, will pour out my fierce anger on this Temple. I will pour it out on people and animals alike, and even on the trees and the crops. My anger will be like a fire that no one can put out.

I gave your ancestors no commands about burnt offerings or any other kinds of sacrifices when I brought them out of Egypt.

The LORD says, "I hate your religious festivals; I cannot stand them!

Stop your noisy songs; I do not want to listen to your harps.

Go and find out what is meant by the scripture that says: 'It is kindness that I want, not animal sacrifices.' I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts."

as someone has said, 'In him we live and move and exist.' It is as some of your poets have said, 'We too are his children.'

But he has always given evidence of his existence by the good things he does: he gives you rain from heaven and crops at the right times; he gives you food and fills your hearts with happiness."

Then the LORD God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live.

But Moses and Aaron bowed down with their faces to the ground and said, "O God, you are the source of all life. When one of us sins, do you become angry with the whole community?"

" LORD God, source of all life, appoint, I pray, a man who can lead the people

It is God who directs the lives of his creatures; everyone's life is in his power.

as long as God gives me breath,

God's spirit made me and gave me life.

If God took back the breath of life,

All of them depend on you to give them food when they need it.

When you turn away, they are afraid; when you take away your breath, they die and go back to the dust from which they came.

God created the heavens and stretched them out; he fashioned the earth and all that lives there; he gave life and breath to all its people. And now the LORD God says to his servant,

I gave my people life, and I will not continue to accuse them or be angry with them forever.

This is a message about Israel from the LORD, the LORD who spread out the skies, created the earth, and gave life to man. He says,

so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil.

Who has ever given him anything, so that he had to pay it back?"

Command those who are rich in the things of this life not to be proud, but to place their hope, not in such an uncertain thing as riches, but in God, who generously gives us everything for our enjoyment.