Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

96 Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing it everywhere around the world! ² Sing out his praises! Bless his name. Each day tell someone that he saves.

³ Publish his glorious acts throughout the earth. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. ⁴ For the Lord is great beyond description and greatly to be praised. Worship only him among the gods! ⁵ For the gods of other nations are merely idols, but our God made the heavens! ⁶ Honor and majesty surround him; strength and beauty are in his Temple.

⁷ O nations of the world, confess that God alone is glorious and strong. ⁸ Give him the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him.^{[a] 9} Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives.^[b] Let the earth tremble before him.

¹⁴ Then the king turned around and faced the people as they stood before him, and blessed them.

¹⁵ “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,” he said, “who has done today what he promised my father David: ¹⁶ for he said to him, ‘When I brought my people from Egypt, I didn’t appoint a place for my Temple, but I appointed a man to be my people’s leader.’ ¹⁷ This man was my father David. He wanted to build a Temple for the Lord God of Israel, ¹⁸ but the Lord told him not to. ‘I am glad you want to do it,’ he said, ¹⁹ ‘but your son is the one who shall build my Temple.’ ²⁰ And now the Lord has done what he promised; for I have followed my father as king of Israel, and now this Temple has been built for the Lord God of Israel. ²¹ And I have prepared a place in the Temple for the Ark that contains the covenant made by the Lord with our fathers, at the time that he brought them out of the land of Egypt.”

11 I hope you will be patient with me as I keep on talking like a fool. Do bear with me and let me say what is on my heart. ² I am anxious for you with the deep concern of God himself—anxious that your love should be for Christ alone, just as a pure maiden saves her love for one man only, for the one who will be her husband. ³ But I am frightened, fearing that in some way you will be led away from your pure and simple devotion to our Lord, just as Eve was deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden. ⁴ You seem so gullible: you believe whatever anyone tells you even if he is preaching about another Jesus than the one we preach, or a different spirit than the Holy Spirit you received, or shows you a different way to be saved. You swallow it all.

⁵ Yet I don’t feel that these marvelous “messengers from God,” as they call themselves, are any better than I am. ⁶ If I am a poor speaker, at least I know what I am talking about, as I think you realize by now, for we have proved it again and again.