Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

29 Praise the Lord, you angels of his; praise his glory and his strength. ² Praise him for his majestic glory, the glory of his name. Come before him clothed in sacred garments.

³ The voice of the Lord echoes from the clouds. The God of glory thunders through the skies. ⁴ So powerful is his voice; so full of majesty. ^5-6 It breaks down the cedars. It splits the giant trees of Lebanon. It shakes Mount Lebanon and Mount Sirion. They leap and skip before him like young calves! ⁷ The voice of the Lord thunders through the lightning. ⁸ It resounds through the deserts and shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. ⁹ The voice of the Lord spins and topples the mighty oaks.^[a] It strips the forests bare. They whirl and sway beneath the blast. But in his Temple all are praising, “Glory, glory to the Lord.”

¹⁰ At the Flood the Lord showed his control of all creation. Now he continues to unveil his power. ¹¹ He will give his people strength. He will bless them with peace.

1 The author: Solomon^[a] of Jerusalem, King David’s son, “The Preacher.”

² In my opinion, nothing is worthwhile; everything is futile. ^3-7 For what does a man get for all his hard work?

Generations come and go, but it makes no difference.^[b] The sun rises and sets and hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south and north, here and there, twisting back and forth, getting nowhere. The rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full, and the water returns again to the rivers and flows again to the sea . . . ^8-11 everything is unutterably weary and tiresome. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied; no matter how much we hear, we are not content.

History merely repeats itself. Nothing is truly new; it has all been done or said before. What can you point to that is new? How do you know it didn’t exist long ages ago? We don’t remember what happened in those former times, and in the future generations no one will remember what we have done back here.

¹⁸ I know very well how foolish it sounds to those who are lost,^[a] when they hear that Jesus died to save them. But we who are saved recognize this message as the very power of God. ¹⁹ For God says, “I will destroy all human plans of salvation no matter how wise they seem to be, and ignore the best ideas of men, even the most brilliant of them.”

²⁰ So what about these wise men, these scholars, these brilliant debaters of this world’s great affairs? God has made them all look foolish and shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. ²¹ For God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never find God through human brilliance, and then he stepped in and saved all those who believed his message, which the world calls foolish and silly. ²² It seems foolish to the Jews because they want a sign from heaven as proof that what is preached is true; and it is foolish to the Gentiles because they believe only what agrees with their philosophy and seems wise to them. ²³ So when we preach about Christ dying to save them, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. ²⁴ But God has opened the eyes of those called to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, to see that Christ is the mighty power of God to save them; Christ himself is the center of God’s wise plan for their salvation. ²⁵ This so-called “foolish” plan of God is far wiser than the wisest plan of the wisest man, and God in his weakness—Christ dying on the cross—is far stronger than any man.

²⁶ Notice among yourselves, dear brothers, that few of you who follow Christ have big names or power or wealth. ²⁷ Instead, God has deliberately chosen to use ideas the world considers foolish and of little worth in order to shame those people considered by the world as wise and great. ²⁸ He has chosen a plan despised by the world, counted as nothing at all, and used it to bring down to nothing those the world considers great, ²⁹ so that no one anywhere can ever brag in the presence of God.

³⁰ For it is from God alone that you have your life through Christ Jesus. He showed us God’s plan of salvation; he was the one who made us acceptable to God; he made us pure and holy^[b] and gave himself to purchase our salvation. ³¹ As it says in the Scriptures, “If anyone is going to boast, let him boast only of what the Lord has done.”