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.

1 These are the messages that came to Isaiah, son of Amoz, in the visions he saw during the reigns of King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz, and King Hezekiah—all kings of Judah. In these messages God showed him what was going to happen to Judah and Jerusalem in the days ahead.

² Listen, O heaven and earth, to what the Lord is saying:

The children I raised and cared for so long and tenderly have turned against me. ³ Even the animals—the donkey and the ox—know their owner and appreciate his care for them, but not my people Israel. No matter what I do for them, they still don’t care.

⁴ Oh, what a sinful nation they are! They walk bent-backed beneath their load of guilt. Their fathers before them were evil too. Born to be bad, they have turned their backs upon the Lord and have despised the Holy One of Israel. They have cut themselves off from his help.

^5-6 Oh, my people, haven’t you had enough of punishment? Why will you force me to whip you again and again? Must you forever rebel? From head to foot you are sick and weak and faint, covered with bruises and welts and infected wounds, unanointed and unbound. ⁷ Your country lies in ruins; your cities are burned; while you watch, foreigners are destroying and plundering everything they see. ⁸ You stand there helpless and abandoned like a watchman’s shanty in the field when the harvesttime is over—or when the crop is stripped and robbed.

⁹ If the Lord Almighty had not stepped in to save a few of us, we would have been wiped out as Sodom and Gomorrah were.

³⁹ “Our father is Abraham,” they declared.

“No!” Jesus replied, “for if he were, you would follow his good example. ⁴⁰ But instead you are trying to kill me—and all because I told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham wouldn’t do a thing like that! ⁴¹ No, you are obeying your real father when you act that way.”

They replied, “We were not born out of wedlock—our true Father is God himself.”

⁴² Jesus told them, “If that were so, then you would love me, for I have come to you from God. I am not here on my own, but he sent me. ⁴³ Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It is because you are prevented from doing so! ⁴⁴ For you are the children of your father the devil and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning and a hater of truth—there is not an iota of truth in him. When he lies, it is perfectly normal; for he is the father of liars. ⁴⁵ And so when I tell the truth, you just naturally don’t believe it!

⁴⁶ “Which of you can truthfully accuse me of one single sin? No one!^[a] And since I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me? ⁴⁷ Anyone whose Father is God listens gladly to the words of God. Since you don’t, it proves you aren’t his children.”