Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

27 The Lord is my light and my salvation; he protects me from danger—whom shall I fear? ² When evil men come to destroy me, they will stumble and fall! ³ Yes, though a mighty army marches against me, my heart shall know no fear! I am confident that God will save me.

⁴ The one thing I want from God, the thing I seek most of all, is the privilege of meditating in his Temple, living in his presence every day of my life, delighting in his incomparable perfections and glory. ⁵ There I’ll be when troubles come. He will hide me. He will set me on a high rock ⁶ out of reach of all my enemies. Then I will bring him sacrifices and sing his praises with much joy.

^26-27 At daybreak the next morning, Samuel called up to him, “Get up; it’s time you were on your way!”

So Saul got up, and Samuel accompanied him to the edge of the city. When they reached the city walls, Samuel told Saul to send the servant on ahead. Then he told him, “I have received a special message for you from the Lord.”

10 Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it over Saul’s head, and kissed him on the cheek and said,

“I am doing this because the Lord has appointed you to be the king of his people, Israel! ² When you leave me, you will see two men beside Rachel’s tomb at Zelzah, in the land of Benjamin; they will tell you that the donkeys have been found and that your father is worried about you and is asking, ‘How am I to find my son?’ ³ And when you get to the oak of Tabor, you will see three men coming toward you who are on their way to worship God at the altar at Bethel; one will be bringing three young goats, another will have three loaves of bread, and the third will have a bottle of wine. ⁴ They will greet you and offer you two of the loaves, which you are to accept. ⁵ After that you will come to Gibeath-elohim, also known as “God’s Hill,” where the garrison of the Philistines is. As you arrive there you will meet a band of prophets coming down the hill playing a psaltery, a timbrel, a flute, and a harp, and prophesying as they come.

⁶ “At that time the Spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon you and you will prophesy with them, and you will feel and act like a different person. ⁷ From that time on your decisions should be based on whatever seems best under the circumstances, for the Lord will guide you. ⁸ Go to Gilgal and wait there seven days for me, for I will be coming to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings. I will give you further instructions when I arrive.”

2 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along too. ² I went there with definite orders from God to confer with the brothers there about the message I was preaching to the Gentiles. I talked privately to the leaders of the church so that they would all understand just what I had been teaching and, I hoped, agree that it was right. ³ And they did agree; they did not even demand that Titus, my companion, should be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.

⁴ Even that question wouldn’t have come up except for some so-called “Christians” there—false ones, really—who came to spy on us and see what freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus, as to whether we obeyed the Jewish laws or not. They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. ⁵ But we did not listen to them for a single moment, for we did not want to confuse you into thinking that salvation can be earned by being circumcised and by obeying Jewish laws.

⁶ And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their being great leaders made no difference to me, for all are the same to God.) ^7-9 In fact, when Peter, James, and John, who were known as the pillars of the church, saw how greatly God had used me in winning the Gentiles, just as Peter had been blessed so greatly in his preaching to the Jews—for the same God gave us each our special gifts—they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews. ¹⁰ The only thing they did suggest was that we must always remember to help the poor, and I, too, was eager for that.