Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
8 The Lord is gracious and full of compassion,
slow to anger, and great in mercy.
9 The Lord is good to all,
and His compassion is over all His works.
10 All Your works shall praise You, O Lord,
and Your godly ones shall bless You.
11 They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom
and talk of Your power,
12 to make known to people His mighty acts,
and the glorious majesty of His kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and Your dominion endures throughout all generations.
14 The Lord upholds all who fall,
and raises up all who are bowed down.
1 In the eighth month, during the second year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah, son of Berekiah, son of Iddo, saying:
A Call to Repentance
2 The Lord was very angry with your fathers, 3 so you will say to them, Thus says the Lord of Hosts: Return to Me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts. 4 Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets cried, “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: Turn away from your evil ways and deeds!” But they did not listen or pay attention to Me, says the Lord. 5 So where are your fathers, and do the prophets live forever? 6 Surely My words and statutes that I commanded to My servants, the prophets, did they not persuade your fathers?
They turned back and said, “Whatever the Lord of Hosts planned to do to us according to our ways and deeds, so He has done to us.”
An Analogy From Marriage
7 Do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding her husband. 3 So then, she will be called an adulteress if she marries another man while her husband lives. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she would not be an adulteress if she marries another man.
4 So, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may be married to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God. 5 When we were in the flesh, the passions of sin, through the law, worked in our members to bear fruit leading to death. 6 But now we are delivered from the law, having died to things in which we were bound, so that we may serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter of the law.
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.