Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁹ O Lord, don’t stay away. O God my Strength, hurry to my aid. ²⁰ Rescue me from death; spare my precious life from all these evil men.^{[a] 21} Save me from these lions’ jaws and from the horns of these wild oxen. Yes, God will answer me and rescue me.

²² I will praise you to all my brothers; I will stand up before the congregation and testify of the wonderful things you have done. ²³ “Praise the Lord, each one of you who fears him,” I will say. “Each of you^[b] must fear and reverence his name. Let all Israel sing his praises, ²⁴ for he has not despised my cries of deep despair; he has not turned and walked away. When I cried to him, he heard and came.”

²⁵ Yes, I will stand and praise you^[c] before all the people. I will publicly fulfill my vows in the presence of all who reverence your name.

²⁶ The poor^[d] shall eat and be satisfied; all who seek the Lord shall find him and shall praise his name. Their hearts shall rejoice with everlasting joy. ²⁷ The whole earth shall see it and return to the Lord; the people of every nation shall worship him.

²⁸ For the Lord is King and rules the nations.

57 The good men perish; the godly die before their time, and no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to realize that God is taking them away from evil days ahead. ² For the godly who die shall rest in peace.

³ But you—come here, you witches’ sons, you offspring of adulterers and harlots! ⁴ Who is it you mock, making faces and sticking out your tongues? You children of sinners and liars! ⁵ You worship your idols with great zeal beneath the shade of every tree and slay your children as human sacrifices down in the valleys, under overhanging rocks. ⁶ Your gods are the smooth stones in the valleys. You worship them, and they, not I, are your inheritance. Does all this make me happy? ^7-8 You have committed adultery on the tops of the mountains, for you worship idols there, deserting me. Behind closed doors you set your idols up and worship someone other than me. This is adultery, for you are giving these idols your love instead of loving me. ⁹ You have taken pleasant incense and perfume to Molech as your gift. You have traveled far, even to hell itself, to find new gods to love. ¹⁰ You grew weary in your search, but you never gave up. You strengthened yourself and went on. ¹¹ Why were you more afraid of them than of me? How is it that you gave not even a second thought to me? Is it because I’ve been too gentle that you have no fear of me?

¹² And then there is your “righteousness” and your “good works”—none of which will save you. ¹³ Let’s see if the whole collection of your idols can help you when you cry to them to save you! They are so weak that the wind can carry them off! A breath can puff them away. But he who trusts in me shall possess the land and inherit my holy mountain.

¹⁵ Dear brothers, even in everyday life a promise made by one man to another, if it is written down and signed, cannot be changed. He cannot decide afterward to do something else instead.

¹⁶ Now, God gave some promises to Abraham and his Child. And notice that it doesn’t say the promises were to his children, as it would if all his sons—all the Jews—were being spoken of, but to his Child—and that, of course, means Christ. ¹⁷ Here’s what I am trying to say: God’s promise to save through faith—and God wrote this promise down and signed it—could not be canceled or changed four hundred and thirty years later when God gave the Ten Commandments. ¹⁸ If obeying those laws could save us, then it is obvious that this would be a different way of gaining God’s favor than Abraham’s way, for he simply accepted God’s promise.

¹⁹ Well then, why were the laws given? They were added after the promise was given, to show men how guilty they are of breaking God’s laws. But this system of law was to last only until the coming of Christ, the Child to whom God’s promise was made. (And there is this further difference. God gave his laws to angels to give to Moses, who then gave them to the people; ²⁰ but when God gave his promise to Abraham, he did it by himself alone, without angels or Moses as go-betweens.)

^21-22 Well then, are God’s laws and God’s promises against each other? Of course not! If we could be saved by his laws, then God would not have had to give us a different way to get out of the grip of sin—for the Scriptures insist we are all its prisoners. The only way out is through faith in Jesus Christ; the way of escape is open to all who believe him.