Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

16 Save me, O God, because I have come to you for refuge. ² I said to him, “You are my Lord; I have no other help but yours.” ³ I want the company of the godly men and women in the land; they are the true nobility. ⁴ Those choosing other gods shall all be filled with sorrow; I will not offer the sacrifices they do or even speak the names of their gods.

⁵ The Lord himself is my inheritance, my prize. He is my food and drink, my highest joy! He guards all that is mine. ⁶ He sees that I am given pleasant brooks and meadows as my share!^[a] What a wonderful inheritance! ⁷ I will bless the Lord who counsels me; he gives me wisdom in the night. He tells me what to do.

⁸ I am always thinking of the Lord; and because he is so near, I never need to stumble or fall.

⁹ Heart, body, and soul are filled with joy. ¹⁰ For you will not leave me among the dead; you will not allow your beloved one to rot in the grave. ¹¹ You have let me experience the joys of life and the exquisite pleasures of your own eternal presence.

¹⁹ Then Daniel^[a] sat there stunned and silent for an hour, aghast at the meaning of the dream. Finally the king said to him: “Belteshazzar, don’t be afraid to tell me what it means.”

Daniel replied: “Oh, that the events foreshadowed in this dream would happen to your enemies, my lord, and not to you! ²⁰ For the tree you saw growing so tall, reaching high into the heavens for all the world to see, ²¹ with its fresh green leaves, loaded with fruit for all to eat, the wild animals living in its shade, with its branches full of birds— ²² that tree, Your Majesty, is you. For you have grown strong and great; your greatness reaches up to heaven, and your rule to the ends of the earth.

²³ “Then you saw God’s angel^[b] coming down from heaven and saying, ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump and the roots in the earth surrounded by tender grass, banded with a chain of iron and brass. Let him be wet with the dew of heaven. For seven years let him eat grass with the animals of the field.’

²⁴ “Your Majesty, the Most High God has decreed—and it will surely happen— ²⁵ that your people will chase you from your palace, and you will live in the fields like an animal, eating grass like a cow, your back wet with dew from heaven. For seven years this will be your life, until you learn that the Most High God dominates the kingdoms of men and gives power to anyone he chooses. ²⁶ But the stump and the roots were left in the ground! This means that you will get your kingdom back again when you have learned that heaven rules.

²⁷ “O King Nebuchadnezzar, listen to me—stop sinning; do what you know is right; be merciful to the poor. Perhaps even yet God will spare you.”

⁶ And now just as you trusted Christ to save you, trust him, too, for each day’s problems; live in vital union with him. ⁷ Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him. See that you go on growing in the Lord, and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all he has done.

⁸ Don’t let others spoil your faith and joy with their philosophies, their wrong and shallow answers built on men’s thoughts and ideas, instead of on what Christ has said. ⁹ For in Christ there is all of God in a human body; ¹⁰ so you have everything when you have Christ, and you are filled with God through your union with Christ. He is the highest Ruler, with authority over every other power.

¹¹ When you came to Christ, he set you free from your evil desires, not by a bodily operation of circumcision but by a spiritual operation, the baptism of your souls. ¹² For in baptism you see how your old, evil nature died with him and was buried with him; and then you came up out of death with him into a new life because you trusted the Word of the mighty God who raised Christ from the dead.

¹³ You were dead in sins, and your sinful desires were not yet cut away. Then he gave you a share in the very life of Christ, for he forgave all your sins, ¹⁴ and blotted out the charges proved against you, the list of his commandments which you had not obeyed. He took this list of sins and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. ¹⁵ In this way God took away Satan’s power to accuse you of sin, and God openly displayed to the whole world Christ’s triumph at the cross where your sins were all taken away.