Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

32 ^1-2 What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! What joys when sins are covered over! What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record.

³ There was a time when I wouldn’t admit what a sinner I was.^[a] But my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration. ⁴ All day and all night your hand was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day ⁵ until I finally admitted all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, “I will confess them to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

⁶ Now I say that each believer should confess his sins to God when he is aware of them, while there is time to be forgiven. Judgment will not touch him^[b] if he does.

⁷ You are my hiding place from every storm of life; you even keep me from getting into trouble! You surround me with songs of victory. ⁸ I will instruct you (says the Lord) and guide you along the best pathway for your life; I will advise you and watch your progress. ⁹ Don’t be like a senseless horse or mule that has to have a bit in its mouth to keep it in line!

¹⁰ Many sorrows come to the wicked, but abiding love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. ¹¹ So rejoice in him, all those who are his,^[c] and shout for joy, all those who try to obey him.

4 When all the people were safely across, the Lord said to Joshua, ^2-3 “Tell the twelve men chosen for a special task, one from each tribe, each to take a stone from where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan, and to carry them out and pile them up as a monument at the place where you camp tonight.”

⁴ So Joshua summoned the twelve men ⁵ and told them, “Go out into the middle of the Jordan where the Ark is. Each of you is to carry out a stone on your shoulder—twelve stones in all, one for each of the twelve tribes. ⁶ We will use them to build a monument so that in the future, when your children ask, ‘What is this monument for?’ ⁷ you can tell them, ‘It is to remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of God went across!’ The monument will be a permanent reminder to the people of Israel of this amazing miracle.”

⁸ So the men did as Joshua told them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River—one for each tribe, just as the Lord had commanded Joshua. They carried them to the place where they were camped for the night and constructed a monument there. ⁹ Joshua also built another monument of twelve stones in the middle of the river, at the place where the priests were standing; and it is there to this day. ¹⁰ The priests who were carrying the Ark stood in the middle of the river until all these instructions of the Lord, which had been given to Joshua by Moses, had been carried out. Meanwhile, the people had hurried across the riverbed, ¹¹ and when everyone was over, the people watched the priests carry the Ark up out of the riverbed.

^12-13 The troops of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh—fully armed as Moses had instructed, and forty thousand strong—led the other tribes of the Lord’s army across to the plains of Jericho.

¹⁶ That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our inner strength in the Lord is growing every day. ¹⁷ These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won’t last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God’s richest blessing upon us forever and ever! ¹⁸ So we do not look at what we can see right now, the troubles all around us, but we look forward to the joys in heaven which we have not yet seen. The troubles will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever.

5 For we know that when this tent we live in now is taken down—when we die and leave these bodies—we will have wonderful new bodies in heaven, homes that will be ours forevermore, made for us by God himself and not by human hands. ² How weary we grow of our present bodies. That is why we look forward eagerly to the day when we shall have heavenly bodies that we shall put on like new clothes. ³ For we shall not be merely spirits without bodies. ⁴ These earthly bodies make us groan and sigh, but we wouldn’t like to think of dying and having no bodies at all. We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will, as it were, be swallowed up by everlasting life. ⁵ This is what God has prepared for us, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.