Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

72 O God, help the king to judge as you would, and help his son to walk in godliness. ² Help him to give justice to your people, even to the poor. ³ May the mountains and hills flourish in prosperity because of his good reign. ⁴ Help him to defend the poor and needy and to crush their oppressors. ⁵ May the poor and needy revere you constantly, as long as sun and moon continue in the skies! Yes, forever!

⁶ May the reign of this son of mine^[a] be as gentle and fruitful as the springtime rains upon the grass—like showers that water the earth! ⁷ May all good men flourish in his reign with abundance of peace to the end of time.

¹⁸ Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, who only does wonderful things! ¹⁹ Blessed be his glorious name forever! Let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen!

¹⁹ O my people in Jerusalem, you shall weep no more, for he will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. He will answer you. ²⁰ Though he give you the bread of adversity and water of affliction, yet he will be with you to teach you—with your own eyes you will see your Teacher. ²¹ And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you say, “No, this is the way; walk here.” ²² And you will destroy all your silver idols and gold images and cast them out like filthy things you hate to touch. “Ugh!” you’ll say to them. “Be gone!”

²³ Then God will bless you with rain at planting time and with wonderful harvests and with ample pastures for your cows. ²⁴ The oxen and young donkeys that till the ground will eat grain, its chaff blown away by the wind. ²⁵ In that day when God steps in to destroy your enemies, he will give you streams of water flowing down each mountain and every hill. ²⁶ The moon will be as bright as the sun, and the sunlight brighter than seven days! So it will be when the Lord begins to heal his people and to cure the wounds he gave them.

¹⁶ So Paul stood, waved a greeting to them^[a] and began. “Men of Israel,” he said, “and all others here who reverence God, let me begin my remarks with a bit of history.

¹⁷ “The God of this nation Israel chose our ancestors and honored them in Egypt by gloriously leading them out of their slavery. ¹⁸ And he nursed them through forty years of wandering around in the wilderness. ^19-20 Then he destroyed seven nations in Canaan and gave Israel their land as an inheritance. Judges ruled for about four hundred and fifty years and were followed by Samuel the prophet.

²¹ “Then the people begged for a king, and God gave them Saul (son of Kish), a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years. ²² But God removed him and replaced him with David as king, a man about whom God said, ‘David (son of Jesse) is a man after my own heart, for he will obey me.’ ²³ And it is one of King David’s descendants, Jesus, who is God’s promised Savior of Israel!

²⁴ “But before he came, John the Baptist preached the need for everyone in Israel to turn from sin to God. ²⁵ As John was finishing his work he asked, ‘Do you think I am the Messiah? No! But he is coming soon—and in comparison with him, I am utterly worthless.’