Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Prayer for protection, guidance, and pardon.

A Psalm of David.

⁶ Thou art Jehovah, even thou alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things that are thereon, the seas and all that is in them, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee. ⁷ Thou art ^[a]Jehovah the God, who didst choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham, ⁸ and foundest his heart faithful before thee, and madest a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, to give it unto his seed, and hast performed thy words; for thou art righteous.

⁹ And thou sawest the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red Sea, ¹⁰ and showedst signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land; for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them, and didst get thee a name, as it is this day. ¹¹ And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their pursuers thou didst cast into the depths, as a stone into the mighty waters. ¹² Moreover in a pillar of cloud thou leddest them by day; and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light in the way wherein they should go. ¹³ Thou camest down also upon mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments, ¹⁴ and madest known unto them thy holy sabbath, and commandedst them commandments, and statutes, and a law, by Moses thy servant, ¹⁵ and gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and commandedst them that they should go in to possess the land which thou hadst ^[b]sworn to give them.

5 But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that aught be written unto you. ² For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. ³ When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall in no wise escape. ⁴ But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you ^[a]as a thief: ⁵ for ye are all sons of light, and sons of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness; ⁶ so then let us not sleep, as do the rest, but let us watch and be sober. ⁷ For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that are drunken are drunken in the night. ⁸ But let us, since we are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. ⁹ For God appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰ who died for us, that, whether we ^[b]wake or sleep, we should live together with him. ¹¹ Wherefore ^[c]exhort one another, and build each other up, even as also ye do.