Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Prayer for Mercy

A song for going up to worship.

³⁴ When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry. He made a promise. He said, ³⁵ “I promised a good land to your ancestors. But none of you evil people will see it. ³⁶ Only Caleb son of Jephunneh will see it. I will give him and his descendants the land he walked on. I will do this because he followed me completely.”

³⁷ Because of you, the Lord was also angry with me. He said to me, “You won’t enter the land either. ³⁸ But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will go there. Encourage Joshua, because he will lead Israel to take the land for their own.”

³⁹ The Lord said to us, “You said your babies would be captured. But they will go into the land. They are too young to know right from wrong. So I will give the land to them. And they will take it for their own. ⁴⁰ But you must turn around. Follow the desert road toward the Gulf of Aqaba.”

5 We know that our body—the tent we live in here on earth—will be destroyed. But when that happens, God will have a house for us to live in. It will not be a house made by men. It will be a home in heaven that will last forever. ² But now we are tired of this body. We want God to give us our heavenly home. ³ It will clothe us, and we will not be naked. ⁴ While we live in this body, we have burdens, and we complain. We do not want to be naked. We want to be clothed with our heavenly home. Then this body that dies will be fully covered with life. ⁵ This is what God made us for. And he has given us the Spirit to be a guarantee for this new life.