Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 138
A song of David.
1 To You, Lord, I give my whole heart, a heart filled with praise, for I am grateful;
before the gods, my heart sings praises to You and You alone.
2 I bow before You, looking to Your holy temple,
and praise Your name, for Your unfailing love and Your truth;
for You have placed Your name and Your word over all things and all times.
3 On the day I needed You, I called, and You responded
and infused my soul with strength.
4 May all the kings of the earth praise You, O Eternal One,
because they have heard the words You have spoken.
5 They will marvel at the Eternal’s ways, and they will sing,
for great is the glory of the Eternal.
6 Although He is greatest of all, He is attentive to the needy
and keeps His distance from the proud and pompous.
7 Whenever I walk into trouble,
You are there to bring me out.
You hold out Your hand
to protect me against the wrath of my enemies,
and hold me safely in Your right hand.
8 The Eternal will finish what He started in me.
Your faithful love, O Eternal One, lasts forever;
do not give up on what Your hands have made.
11 The word of the Eternal continued giving me His message.
Eternal One: 12 Son of man, sing a lament for the prince of Tyre. Tell him this is what I, the Eternal Lord, have to say:
You were a paradigm of perfection, human life at its best.
You had everything a leader needs: immense wisdom and perfect beauty.
13 You lived in Eden, God’s garden.
You were clothed in magnificent splendor, covered in jewels:
Sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper,
lapis lazuli, turquoise, and emerald.
All the mountings were made of gold,[a]
prepared for you on the day you were created.
14 I anointed you the guardian[b] of the garden and stationed you at your post to protect it.
You were on the divine mountain, the holy mount of God.
There you walked among the fiery stones.
15 You were entirely pure from the day you were created,
until wickedness crept in and was found in you!
16 Too much buying and selling—a greedy obsession!
You became motivated to violence and did wicked things.
Polluted and disgraced, I drove you off the mountain of God!
I expelled you, O guardian protector, from the fiery stones.
17 Your heart swelled with pride because of your beauty and talents.
Your hunger for fame, your thirst for glory corrupted your wisdom.
This is why I drove you to the ground
and made an example out of you before a company of kings.
18 You desecrated your sanctuaries
by pursuing sin after sin and cheating in business.
I set a flame inside of you, and it devoured you completely.
I reduced you to a pile of ashes on the ground,
a sight for all to see.
Ezekiel prophesies that the prince of Tyre will die violently without the benefit of a proper burial and find no peace in the afterlife.
19 All the nations who know you are appalled at what has happened to you.
The end of your story is a horror:
you are gone, never to return.
6 Here’s another troubling issue. If you have a grievance against another follower of Jesus, do you have the audacity to bring that brother or sister into the civil courts rather than submitting yourselves to the authority of God’s people? 2 Don’t you know that His people are destined to judge the world? If you have the authority to judge the world, can’t you handle these small matters and render a better judgment than the civil courts? 3 Further, don’t you know that we are destined to judge the heavenly messengers? So if we are to exercise authority in the heavenly realms, can’t we take care of the conflicts that arise in this life? 4 To put it another way, if you are asking the courts to adjudicate your mundane conflicts, aren’t you placing your problems under the authority of judges who have no standing within the church? 5 My words should embarrass you. Is it possible that you have no one among you with the wisdom to mediate between two siblings? 6 So one brother sues another brother in public and drags the dispute before outsiders who have no allegiance to Jesus?
7 The truth is that these public lawsuits cause all of you to lose and lose big. Wouldn’t it be better to be ripped off or defrauded? 8 In fact, you are guilty of ripping off and defrauding your own brothers and sisters, not the other way around.
9-10 Do you need reminding that the unjust have no share in the blessings of the kingdom of God? Do not be misled. A lot of people stand to inherit nothing of God’s coming kingdom, including those whose lives are defined by sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, sexual deviancy, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander, and swindling. 11 Some of you used to live in these ways, but you are different now; you have been washed clean, set apart, restored, and set on the right path in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Anointed, by the Spirit of our living God.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.