Old/New Testament
This is a psalm to say ‘thank you’.
Thank you, God![a]
100 Everyone on earth,
shout and praise the Lord!
2 Worship the Lord and be happy!
Come near to him with songs of joy.
3 Understand that the Lord is God.
He made us and we are his people.
He takes care of us,
like a shepherd with his sheep.
4 Thank him as you go through the gates into his temple.
Praise him as you stand in his temple yards.[b]
Thank him and praise him
as he deserves!
5 Yes, the Lord is good.
He always loves us as his people.
He always does what he has promised
to us and to our descendants for ever.
David wrote this psalm.
The king's song[c]
101 I will sing and praise you, Lord!
I will sing about your faithful love and your justice.[d]
2 I will be careful to live in a completely good way.
When will you come to help me, Lord?
In my own home,
I will always be completely honest.
3 As for evil things,
I will not even think about them.
I hate the things that wicked people do.
They will not be my friends.
4 I will keep away from people with wrong thoughts.
I will not mix with them.
5 If anyone secretly speaks against his friend,
I will destroy them.
If anyone is proud and they boast about themselves,
I will send them away from me.
6 Instead, I will work with people
that I can trust.
I will let them live with me and be my guides.
My servants will be people
who live in an honest way.
7 People who deceive others or who tell lies
will not have a place in my home.
8 Every morning I will remove
any wicked person who lives in our land.[e]
Nobody who does evil things
will remain in the city of the Lord.
This is the prayer of a man who is weak and in trouble. He tells the Lord that he is very sad.
A young man's prayer[f]
102 Lord, please hear my prayer!
Listen to me when I call to you for help.
2 Now that I am in trouble,
please do not turn away from me.
Listen carefully to me.
Now that I am calling to you for help,
please answer me quickly.
3 My life is quickly disappearing,
like smoke from a fire.
My bones hurt very much,
as if they were burning in an oven.[g]
4 I am very weak and upset,
like dry grass that will soon die.
I even forget to eat my food.
5 I cry aloud with pain,
so that I am just skin and bones.[h]
6 I am like a wild bird in the desert.
I am like an owl in the wilderness.
7 I am awake in the night,
like a bird that sits alone on the roof.
8 All day my enemies insult me.
They laugh at me
and they use my name as a curse.
9-10 Because you are so angry with me,
I eat ashes as my food.
My tears drop
into the water that I drink.
It seems that you have picked me up,
and then you have thrown me away.
11 My days are disappearing,
like a shadow in the evening.
Like dry grass,
I will soon die.
12 But you, Lord, rule for ever as king.
People will always remember you.
13 You will soon be kind to Zion again.
Now it is time to forgive her.
Yes, the time is now right for you to do that.
14 Her buildings have become broken stones and dust.
But your servants still love your city.
We are sad to see that it is broken down.
15 The nations will respect the Lord's name.
All the kings of the world
will praise your glory.
16 That will happen when the Lord builds Zion again
and he appears there in his glory.
17 He will answer the prayers
of poor people who have nothing.
He will not refuse to help them.
18 Write these things down
for people who live in future times to read.
Then they too will praise the Lord.
19 Tell them that the Lord looked down
from his home in heaven.
He saw what was happening on the earth.
20 He heard the prisoners call out in pain.
He saved the lives of prisoners
so they could go free before their enemies could kill them.
21 As a result, people will shout the Lord's name in Zion.
Yes, they will praise him in Jerusalem!
22 At that time, people from all nations
will meet together.
The kingdoms of the world
will come to serve the Lord.
23 But God has made me weak
before I have reached old age.
He has made my life short.
24 So I pray, ‘My God, please do not let me die now,
in the middle of my life.
The years of your life continue for ever!
25 Long ago, you built the world on a strong foundation.
You created the heavens with your own hands.
26 They will all disappear one day,
but you will remain.
They will become spoiled,
like old clothes.
Like clothes, you will remove them,
so that they disappear.
27 But you remain the same, Lord.
The years of your life will never finish.
28 As your servants,
our children will live here safely.
Their children too will be safe,
as they live near to you.’
Paul says ‘Hello’
1 This letter is from me, Paul. God chose me to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. That is what he wanted. Our Christian friend Sosthenes is with me here as I write to you.
2 I am sending this letter to you, the people of God's church in Corinth. God has made you clean because you belong to Christ Jesus. He has chosen you to be his special people. So you join together with all people everywhere who worship our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is their Lord, as he is our Lord.
3 I pray that God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, will continue to help you. I pray that they will give you peace in your minds.
Paul thanks God
4 I always thank God because of you. I thank him because he has been very kind to you. He has helped you like that because you belong to Christ Jesus. 5 As a result, God has given you all the things that you need. You are able to speak everything that he wants you to speak. You are able to understand everything that he wants you to know. 6 In that way, God has shown you that the message we told you about Christ is true. 7 As a result, God has given you every spiritual gift that you need. God has blessed you with those gifts as you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to return. 8 God will also keep you safe and strong until the end. Then, on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns, you will not be guilty of anything wrong. 9 God always does what he has promised to do. He has chosen you to be friends with his Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Lord.
Christians must not quarrel
10 My Christian friends, I tell you this with the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘Please agree with each other. Do not become separate groups. Be united and think about things in the same way.’
11 Some people from Chloe's house have told me news about you. My friends, they say that you are quarrelling among yourselves. 12 It happens like this: One of you says, ‘I belong to Paul's group.’ Another person says, ‘I belong to Apollos's group.’ Another person says, ‘I belong to Peter's group.’ And another person says, ‘I belong to Christ's group.’
13 You should not speak like that! It seems that you are breaking Christ into several parts. I, Paul, did not die on a cross to save you. When they baptized you, it was not on my behalf. 14 I thank God that I myself did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius. 15 So none of you can say, ‘I belong to Paul's group because he baptized me.’ 16 (Now I remember that I also baptized Stephanas and his family. I cannot remember that I baptized anyone else.) 17 Christ did not send me to baptize people. But he did send me to tell God's good news to people. When I speak his message, I do not use clever words. It is Christ's death on the cross that has power to save people. I do not want to spoil that power with clever words.
Christ's death on the cross
18 Some people think that the message about Christ's death on the cross is silly. Those people are destroying themselves. But it is different for us, the people that God is saving. The message about the cross shows us God's power to save us.
19 It says in the Bible:
‘I, God, will destroy all the clever thoughts of wise people.
I will show that their clever ideas are useless.’[a]
20 So the wise people in this world are not really important. The clever teachers of God's Law are not really important. People who know how to argue well are not really important. God has shown that the wise ideas that belong to this world have no value.
21 God himself is wise. He has decided that people cannot know him just because they are wise in their own way. Instead, God uses the message about Jesus to save people. That message may seem to be silly to some people. But when we tell it to people, God saves them if they believe it.
22 Jewish people want to see God do a miracle. Then they will listen. Gentile people want to listen to a message that has clever ideas. 23 But as for us, we tell people about how Christ died on a cross. That is a message that Jewish people refuse to accept as true. Gentile people think that it is a silly message. 24 But it is different for us whom God has called to come to him. Some of us are Jews, and some of us are Gentiles. For us, Christ shows God's great power. He shows how wise God is. 25 Christ's death on a cross may seem a silly thing for God to do. But really it shows that God is very wise. He is wiser than people with their clever ideas. Christ's death on a cross may seem to show that God is weak. But really he is stronger than any human power.
26 Christian friends, remember the time when God called you to come to him. Think about what you were like. Not many of you were clever or powerful in the way that people think is good. Not many of you belonged to important families. 27 Instead, God chose to use things that people think are silly. He did this so that clever people would be ashamed. Yes, God chose to use things that people think are weak. He did this so that powerful people would be ashamed. 28 God chose to use things that people think are useless. People who belong to this world do not like those things. They think that they have no value. God did this so that the things that seem important would become unimportant.
29 Because of all this, nobody can be proud of themselves in front of God. 30 It is because of God's work that you now belong to Christ Jesus. As a result of Christ's death on the cross, we share in God's wise plan. Because we belong to Christ, God makes us right with himself. He makes us his own special people. He makes us free from the power of sin.
31 Remember what is written in the Bible:
‘If you want to be proud about something,
be proud of what the Lord has done.’[b]
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