Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 50
A song of Asaph.
1 The Mighty God, the Eternal—God of past, present, and future—
has spoken over the world,
calling together all things from sunrise to sunset.
2 From Zion, that perfectly beautiful holy place,
shines the radiance of God.
3 Our God will come, and He will not enter on a whisper.
A fire will devour the earth before Him;
the wind will storm wildly about Him.
4 He calls heaven above and earth below
to assist in bringing judgment on His people.
5 “Gather up those who are aligned with Me; bring them to Me;
bring everyone who belongs to Me who have made covenant sacrifice.”
6 And the heavens shout of His justice,
for He is the True God, an honest judge.
[pause][a]
7 “Listen, My people, I have something to say:
O Israel, My testimony comes against you;
I am God, your God.
8 I am not going to scold you because of your sacrifices;
your burnt offerings are always before Me.
9 I will not accept the best bull from your fields
or goats from your meadow,
10 For they are already Mine, just as the forest beast
and the cattle grazing over a thousand hills are Mine.
11 Every bird flying over the mountains I know;
every animal roaming over the fields belongs to Me.
12 I would not come to you if I were hungry,
for the world and all it contains are Mine.
13 Do you really think I eat bull meat?
Or drink goat’s blood?
14 Set out a sacrifice I can accept: your thankfulness.
Be true to your word to the Most High.
15 When you are in trouble, call for Me.
I will come and rescue you,
and you will honor Me.”
16 But to those acting against Him, God says,
“Who do you think you are?
Listing off My laws,
acting as if your life is in alignment with My ways?
17 For it’s clear that you despise My guidance;
you throw My wise words over your shoulder.
18 You play with thieves,
spend your time with adulterers.
19 Evil runs out of your mouth;
your tongue is wrapped in deceit.
20 You sit back and gossip about your brother;
you slander your mother’s son.
21 While you did these things, I kept silent;
somehow you got the idea that I was like you.
But now My silence ends, and I am going to indict you.
I’ll state the charge against you clearly, face-to-face.
22 All you who have forgotten Me, your God, should think about what I have said,
or I will tear you apart and leave no one to save you.
23 Set out a sacrifice I can accept: your thankfulness.
Do this, and you will honor Me.
Those who straighten up their lives
will know the saving grace of God.”
13 Later that day, when the book of Moses was being read to the people, we discovered a passage that said no Ammonite or Moabite should be allowed to enter the sacred gatherings of God’s people.[a]
2 This prohibition went back to the time when our ancestors wandered in the desert—when the Ammonites and the Moabites refused to welcome the Israelites with food and drink. In fact, they hired Balaam to curse them. But it didn’t work. God turned the curse into a blessing. 3 As soon as people heard what God’s law said, they excluded anyone with any non-Israelite descent from Israel.
23 During that same time, I witnessed men from Judah marrying women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. 24 Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and could not speak the language of Judah or understand our laws but only the languages of their peoples. 25 I rebuked and cursed them. Some of them I beat, and I tore out their hair. I made them take an oath in the name of God.
Nehemiah: You will not let your daughters marry their sons, nor will you accept their daughters as wives for yourselves or your sons! 26 This is the very thing that caused King Solomon’s downfall. In all the world, there was no king like him. God loved him dearly and made him king over all Israel. Yet these foreign wives led Solomon into sin. 27 Now we discover that you have embraced the same wicked ways, betraying our God by marrying these foreign women.
28 Even the family of High Priest Eliashib was guilty. One of his grandsons, a son of Joiada, married one of the daughters of Sanballat the Horonite. I drove him away from me.
Nehemiah: 29 O God—my God—remember how these men polluted the priesthood and the sacred vows of the priests and Levites.
30 Once more we went through the rituals of purification, removing every foreign object. I reassigned the priests and the Levites to their tasks; everyone had a specific job to do. 31 I made sure the altar was supplied with the offering of wood and the offerings of firstfruits, too—each at the right time.
Nehemiah: O God—my God—remember me with favor.
Sexual sin is always painful, but incest decimates families and communities, and it leaves people isolated and angry. The danger for believers who understand the reality of sin is that they may lose sight of redemption and become complacent in their brokenness. In Corinth the believers have become so complacent that they are ignoring the incest in their community. The church’s reputation is beginning to suffer among outsiders.
Church discipline if properly done accomplishes two things: first, it protects the community from harm caused by the sin; second, it can lead to a restoration of the sinner to God and the community. Ignoring the sin actually makes the lives of the sinners worse. Real love confronts the sin and leads the sinners toward redemption and wholeness.
9 In the letter I wrote to you previously, I made it clear that you are not to band together with those who have embraced immoral lives. 10 Don’t misunderstand; I’m not telling you to hole up and hunker down from the rest of the world. That’s impossible. The world is filled with immoral people consumed by their desire for more; they steal from one another without hesitation and will worship man-made idols with no shame at all. If you attempted to avoid these people, you would have to leave the world itself. 11 What I was saying is that you should not associate with someone who calls himself a brother or sister but lives contrary to all we stand for: committing immoral sexual acts, consumed with desire for more, worshiping tangible lifeless things, using profanity, drinking into oblivion, swindling and cheating others. Do not even sit at the table with a person like this. 12 Why would I ever attempt to judge those outside the church? Aren’t we called to judge those within the church? 13 God judges the outsiders. Your job is this: “Expel the wicked from your own community.”[a]
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.