Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Song of Praise

138 I will give You thanks with all my heart. I will sing praises to You in front of the gods. ² I will bow down toward Your holy house. And I will give thanks to Your name for Your loving-kindness and Your truth. For You have honored Your Word because of what Your name is. ³ You answered me on the day I called. You gave me strength in my soul.

⁴ O Lord, all the kings of the earth will give thanks to You when they have heard the words of Your mouth. ⁵ And they will sing of the ways of the Lord. For the shining beauty of the Lord is great. ⁶ For even if the Lord is honored, He thinks about those who have no pride. But He knows the proud from far away. ⁷ Even if I walk into trouble, You will keep my life safe. You will put out Your hand against the anger of those who hate me. And Your right hand will save me. ⁸ The Lord will finish the work He started for me. O Lord, Your loving-kindness lasts forever. Do not turn away from the works of Your hands.

¹⁵ ‘The Lord God says, “When it goes down to the place of the dead, I will make the waters under the ground cover it in sorrow. I will stop its rivers of water and fill Lebanon with sorrow over it. All the trees of the field will waste away because of it. ¹⁶ I will make the nations shake in fear at the sound of its fall when I send it to the place of the dead with those who go down to the grave. Then all the well-watered trees of Eden, the best of Lebanon, will be comforted in the earth below. ¹⁷ And those who lived under its shadow among the nations will go down to the place of the dead with it, to those who were killed by the sword.

¹⁸ “Which of the trees of Eden can be compared with you in beauty and greatness? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth below. You will lie among the sinful, with those who were killed by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his people!”’ says the Lord God.”

¹² We do not compare ourselves with those who think they are good. They compare themselves with themselves. They decide what they think is good or bad and compare themselves with those ideas. They are foolish. ¹³ But we will not talk with pride more than God allows us to. We will follow the plan of the work He has given us to do and you are a part of that work. ¹⁴ We did not go farther than we were supposed to go when we came to you. But we did come to you with the Good News of Christ. ¹⁵ We take no pride in the work others have done there. But we hope your faith will keep growing because of help from others. Then we will grow because of you. ¹⁶ We hope to preach the Good News in the countries on the other side of you. Then we would take no pride in work done by another person in another country. ¹⁷ If anyone wants to be proud, he should be proud of what the Lord has done. ¹⁸ It is not what a man thinks and says of himself that is important. It is what God thinks of him.