Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁹ “Rejoice greatly, O my people! Shout with joy! For look—your King is coming! He is the Righteous One, the Victor! Yet he is lowly, riding on a donkey’s colt! ¹⁰ I will disarm all peoples of the earth, including my people in Israel, and he shall bring peace among the nations. His realm shall stretch from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.^[a]

¹¹ “I have delivered you from death in a waterless pit because of the covenant I made with you, sealed with blood. ¹² Come to the place of safety, all you prisoners, for there is yet hope! I promise right now, I will repay you two mercies for each of your woes!

⁸ Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. ⁹ He is good to everyone, and his compassion is intertwined with everything he does. ¹⁰ All living things shall thank you, Lord, and your people will bless you. ¹¹ They will talk together about the glory of your kingdom and mention examples of your power. ¹² They will tell about your miracles and about the majesty and glory of your reign. ¹³ For your kingdom never ends. You rule generation after generation.

¹⁴ The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads.

¹⁵ I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to—what I hate. ¹⁶ I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. ¹⁷ But I can’t help myself because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things.

¹⁸ I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t. ¹⁹ When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. ²⁰ Now if I am doing what I don’t want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp.

²¹ It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. ²² I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; ^23-25 but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin.

So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done^[a] by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free.

¹⁶ “What shall I say about this nation? These people are like children playing, who say to their little friends, ¹⁷ ‘We played wedding and you weren’t happy, so we played funeral but you weren’t sad.’ ¹⁸ For John the Baptist doesn’t even drink wine and often goes without food, and you say, ‘He’s crazy.’^{[a] 19} And I, the Messiah,^[b] feast and drink, and you complain that I am ‘a glutton and a drinking man, and hang around with the worst sort of sinners!’ But brilliant men like you can justify your every inconsistency!”

²⁵ And Jesus prayed this prayer: “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise, and for revealing it to little children. ²⁶ Yes, Father, for it pleased you to do it this way! . . .

²⁷ “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father. Only the Father knows the Son, and the Father is known only by the Son and by those to whom the Son reveals him. ²⁸ Come to me and I will give you rest—all of you who work so hard beneath a heavy yoke. ^29-30 Wear my yoke—for it fits perfectly—and let me teach you; for I am gentle and humble, and you shall find rest for your souls; for I give you only light burdens.”