Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

48 How great is the Lord! How much we should praise him. He lives upon Mount Zion in Jerusalem. ² What a glorious sight! See Mount Zion rising north of the city^[a] high above the plains for all to see—Mount Zion, joy of all the earth, the residence of the great King.

³ God himself is the defender of Jerusalem.^{[b] 4} The kings of the earth have arrived together to inspect the city. ⁵ They marvel at the sight and hurry home again, ⁶ afraid of what they have seen; they are filled with panic like a woman in travail! ⁷ For God destroys the mightiest warships with a breath of wind. ⁸ We have heard of the city’s glory—the city of our God, the Commander of the armies of heaven. And now we see it for ourselves! God has established Jerusalem forever.

⁹ Lord, here in your Temple we meditate upon your kindness and your love. ¹⁰ Your name is known throughout the earth, O God. You are praised everywhere for the salvation^[c] you have scattered throughout the world. ¹¹ O Jerusalem,^[d] rejoice! O people of Judah, rejoice! For God will see to it that you are finally treated fairly. ¹² Go, inspect the city! Walk around and count her many towers! ¹³ Note her walls and tour her palaces so that you can tell your children.

¹⁴ For this great God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide until we die.

¹⁸ Then the Lord will pity his people and be indignant for the honor of his land! ¹⁹ He will reply, “See, I am sending you much corn and wine and oil, to fully satisfy your need. No longer will I make you a laughingstock among the nations. ²⁰ I will remove these armies from the north and send them far away; I will turn them back into the parched wastelands where they will die; half shall be driven into the Dead Sea and the rest into the Mediterranean, and then their rotting stench will rise upon the land. The Lord has done a mighty miracle for you.”

²¹ Fear not, my people; be glad now and rejoice, for he has done amazing things for you. ²² Let the flocks and herds forget their hunger; the pastures will turn green again. The trees will bear their fruit; the fig trees and grapevines will flourish once more. ²³ Rejoice, O people of Jerusalem, rejoice in the Lord your God! For the rains he sends are tokens of forgiveness. Once more the autumn rains will come, as well as those of spring. ²⁴ The threshing floors will pile high again with wheat, and the presses overflow with olive oil and wine.

²⁵ “And I will give you back the crops the locusts ate!—my great destroying army that I sent against you. ²⁶ Once again you will have all the food you want.

“Praise the Lord, who does these miracles for you. Never again will my people experience disaster such as this. ²⁷ And you will know that I am here among my people Israel, and that I alone am the Lord your God. And my people shall never again be dealt a blow like this.

²⁸ “After I have poured out my rains again, I will pour out my Spirit upon all of you! Your sons and daughters will prophesy; your old men will dream dreams, and your young men see visions. ²⁹ And I will pour out my Spirit even on your slaves, men and women alike,

2 Dear brothers, even when I first came to you I didn’t use lofty words and brilliant ideas to tell you God’s message. ² For I decided that I would speak only of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. ³ I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling. ⁴ And my preaching was very plain, not with a lot of oratory and human wisdom, but the Holy Spirit’s power was in my words, proving to those who heard them that the message was from God. ⁵ I did this because I wanted your faith to stand firmly upon God, not on man’s great ideas.

⁶ Yet when I am among mature Christians I do speak with words of great wisdom, but not the kind that comes from here on earth, and not the kind that appeals to the great men of this world, who are doomed to fall. ⁷ Our words are wise because they are from God, telling of God’s wise plan to bring us into the glories of heaven. This plan was hidden in former times, though it was made for our benefit before the world began. ⁸ But the great men of the world have not understood it; if they had, they never would have crucified the Lord of Glory.

⁹ That is what is meant by the Scriptures which say that no mere man has ever seen, heard, or even imagined what wonderful things God has ready for those who love the Lord. ¹⁰ But we know about these things because God has sent his Spirit to tell us, and his Spirit searches out and shows us all of God’s deepest secrets. ¹¹ No one can really know what anyone else is thinking or what he is really like except that person himself. And no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit.