Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

145 ^1-2 I will praise you, my God and King, and bless your name each day and forever.

³ Great is Jehovah! Greatly praise him! His greatness is beyond discovery! ⁴ Let each generation tell its children what glorious things he does. ⁵ I will meditate about your glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles. ⁶ Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. ⁷ Everyone will tell about how good you are and sing about your righteousness.

⁸ Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. ⁹ He is good to everyone, and his compassion is intertwined with everything he does. ¹⁰ All living things shall thank you, Lord, and your people will bless you. ¹¹ They will talk together about the glory of your kingdom and mention examples of your power. ¹² They will tell about your miracles and about the majesty and glory of your reign. ¹³ For your kingdom never ends. You rule generation after generation.

¹⁴ The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads. ¹⁵ The eyes of all mankind look up to you for help; you give them their food as they need it. ¹⁶ You constantly satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.

¹⁷ The Lord is fair in everything he does and full of kindness. ¹⁸ He is close to all who call on him sincerely. ¹⁹ He fulfills the desires of those who reverence and trust him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. ²⁰ He protects all those who love him, but destroys the wicked.

²¹ I will praise the Lord and call on all men everywhere to bless his holy name forever and forever.

4 King Solomon: “How beautiful you are, my love, how beautiful! Your eyes are those of doves. Your hair falls across your face like flocks of goats that frisk across the slopes of Gilead. ² Your teeth are white as sheep’s wool, newly shorn and washed; perfectly matched, without one missing. ³ Your lips are like a thread of scarlet—and how beautiful your mouth. Your cheeks are matched loveliness^[a] behind your locks. ⁴ Your neck is stately^[b] as the tower of David, jeweled with a thousand heroes’ shields. ⁵ Your breasts are like twin fawns of a gazelle, feeding among the lilies. ⁶ Until the morning dawns and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. ⁷ You are so beautiful, my love, in every part of you.

⁸ “Come with me from Lebanon, my bride. We will look down from the summit of the mountain, from the top of Mount Hermon,^[c] where the lions have their dens and panthers prowl.

³ May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you all of his blessings, and great peace of heart and mind.

⁴ I can never stop thanking God for all the wonderful gifts he has given you, now that you are Christ’s: ⁵ he has enriched your whole life. He has helped you speak out for him and has given you a full understanding of the truth; ⁶ what I told you Christ could do for you has happened! ⁷ Now you have every grace and blessing; every spiritual gift and power for doing his will are yours during this time of waiting for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁸ And he guarantees right up to the end that you will be counted free from all sin and guilt on that day when he returns. ⁹ God will surely do this for you, for he always does just what he says, and he is the one who invited you into this wonderful friendship with his Son, even Christ our Lord.

¹⁰ But, dear brothers, I beg you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to stop arguing among yourselves. Let there be real harmony so that there won’t be splits in the church. I plead with you to be of one mind, united in thought and purpose. ¹¹ For some of those who live at Chloe’s house have told me of your arguments and quarrels, dear brothers. ¹² Some of you are saying, “I am a follower of Paul”; and others say that they are for Apollos or for Peter; and some that they alone are the true followers of Christ. ¹³ And so, in effect, you have broken Christ into many pieces.

But did I, Paul, die for your sins? Were any of you baptized in my name? ¹⁴ I am so thankful now that I didn’t baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius. ¹⁵ For now no one can think that I have been trying to start something new, beginning a “Church of Paul.” ¹⁶ Oh, yes, and I baptized the family of Stephanas. I don’t remember ever baptizing anyone else. ¹⁷ For Christ didn’t send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel; and even my preaching sounds poor, for I do not fill my sermons with profound words and high-sounding ideas, for fear of diluting the mighty power there is in the simple message of the cross of Christ.