Amos 4:6-13
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
Israel Rejects Correction
6 I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities
and lack of bread in all your places;
yet you did not return to me,
says the Lord.(A)
7 And I also withheld the rain from you
when there were still three months to the harvest;
I would send rain on one city
and send no rain on another city;
one field would be rained upon,
and the field on which it did not rain withered;
8 so two or three towns wandered to one town
to drink water and were not satisfied;
yet you did not return to me,
says the Lord.(B)
9 I struck you with blight and mildew;
I laid waste[a] your gardens and your vineyards;
the locust devoured your fig trees and your olive trees;
yet you did not return to me,
says the Lord.(C)
10 I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
I killed your young men with the sword;
I carried away your horses;[b]
and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils;
yet you did not return to me,
says the Lord.(D)
11 I overthrew some of you
as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
and you were like a brand snatched from the fire;
yet you did not return to me,
says the Lord.(E)
12 Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel;
because I will do this to you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel!(F)
13 For the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind,
reveals his thoughts to mortals,
makes the morning darkness,
and treads on the heights of the earth—
the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!(G)
2 Peter 3:11-18
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening[a] the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and destroyed and the elements will melt with fire? 13 But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.(A)
Final Exhortation and Doxology
14 Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish,(B) 15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,(C) 16 speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist[b] to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability.(D) 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.[c]
Read full chapter
Matthew 21:33-46
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
The Parable of the Wicked Tenants
33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away.(A) 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.(B) 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.(C) 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’(D) 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”(E)
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;[a]
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?(F)
43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits.(G) 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”[b]
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.(H)
Read full chapterNew Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.