“Tell the Israelites this: ‘You must follow the rules about my special days of rest. You must do this because they will be a sign between you and me for all generations. This will show you that I, the Lord, have made you my special people.
Brothers and sisters, you are people the Lord loves. And we always thank God for you. That’s what we should do, because God chose you to be some of the first people to be saved. You are saved by the Spirit making you holy and by your faith in the truth.
We pray that God himself, the God of peace, will make you pure—belonging only to him. We pray that your whole self—spirit, soul, and body—will be kept safe and be blameless when our Lord Jesus Christ comes.
A priest serves God in a special way. So you must treat him in a special way, because he carries holy things. He brings the holy bread to me, and I am holy. I am the Lord, and I make you holy.
“Great blessings belong to those who have washed their robes. They will have the right to eat the food from the tree of life. They can go through the gates into the city.
It is God who has made you part of Christ Jesus. And Christ has become for us wisdom from God. He is the reason we are right with God and pure enough to be in his presence. Christ is the one who set us free from sin.
“A person should obey every command in the law, even one that does not seem important. Whoever refuses to obey any command and teaches others not to obey it will be the least important in God’s kingdom. But whoever obeys the law and teaches others to obey it will be great in God’s kingdom.
The other nations will know that I am the Lord, and they will know that I make Israel my special people by putting my holy place there among them forever.’”
I also told them about all the special days of rest, which were a special sign between us. They showed that I am the Lord and that I was making them special to me.
“You must obey my laws. You must not let your animals mate with animals of a different kind. You must not sow your field with two kinds of seed. You must not wear clothing made from two kinds of material mixed together.