Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

113 Hallelujah! O servants of Jehovah, praise his name. ² Blessed is his name forever and forever. ³ Praise him from sunrise to sunset! ⁴ For he is high above the nations; his glory is far greater than the heavens.

⁵ Who can be compared with God enthroned on high? ⁶ Far below him are the heavens and the earth; he stoops to look, ⁷ and lifts the poor from the dirt and the hungry from the garbage dump, ⁸ and sets them among princes! ⁹ He gives children to the childless wife, so that she becomes a happy mother.

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.

¹⁷ Then the Lord said this:

^18-20 “Son of dust, the people of Israel are the worthless slag left when silver is smelted. They are the dross, compounded from the brass, the tin, the iron, and the lead. Therefore the Lord God says: ‘Because you are worthless dross, I will bring you to my crucible in Jerusalem, to smelt you with the heat of my wrath. ²¹ I will blow the fire of my wrath upon you, ²² and you will melt like silver in fierce heat, and you will know that I, the Lord, have poured my wrath upon you.’”

²³ Again the message of the Lord came to me, saying:

²⁴ “Son of dust, say to the people of Israel: ‘In the day of my indignation you shall be like an uncleared wilderness or a desert without rain.’ ²⁵ Your ‘prophets’ have plotted against you like lions stalking prey. They devour many lives; they seize treasures and extort wealth; they multiply the widows in the land. ²⁶ Your priests have violated my laws and defiled my Temple and my holiness. To them the things of God are no more important than any daily task. They have not taught my people the difference between right and wrong, and they disregard my Sabbaths, so my holy name is greatly defiled among them. ²⁷ Your leaders are like wolves, who tear apart their victims, and they destroy lives for profit. ²⁸ Your ‘prophets’ describe false visions and speak false messages they claim are from God, when he hasn’t spoken one word to them at all. Thus they repair the walls with whitewash! ²⁹ Even the common people oppress and rob the poor and needy and cruelly extort from aliens.

³⁰ “I looked in vain for anyone who would build again the wall of righteousness that guards the land, who could stand in the gap and defend you from my just attacks, but I found not one.” ³¹ And so the Lord God says: “I will pour out my anger upon you; I will consume you with the fire of my wrath. I have heaped upon you the full penalty for all your sins.”

³¹ What can we ever say to such wonderful things as these? If God is on our side, who can ever be against us? ³² Since he did not spare even his own Son for us but gave him up for us all, won’t he also surely give us everything else?

³³ Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? Will God? No! He is the one who has forgiven us and given us right standing with himself.

³⁴ Who then will condemn us? Will Christ? No! For he is the one who died for us and came back to life again for us and is sitting at the place of highest honor next to God, pleading for us there in heaven.

³⁵ Who then can ever keep Christ’s love from us? When we have trouble or calamity, when we are hunted down or destroyed, is it because he doesn’t love us anymore? And if we are hungry or penniless or in danger or threatened with death, has God deserted us?

³⁶ No, for the Scriptures tell us that for his sake we must be ready to face death at every moment of the day—we are like sheep awaiting slaughter; ³⁷ but despite all this, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us enough to die for us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels won’t, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, ³⁹ or where we are—high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean—nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us.