Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A song to sing as we climb.
A happy family
128 If people respect the Lord
and they obey his commands,
God has blessed them!
2 You will eat the food that you have worked hard to grow.
You will have everything that you need.
You will be happy!
3 Your wife will be like a vine that grows in your home,
and it gives many grapes.
Your children will sit around your table,
like the branches of an olive tree that are around you.[a]
4 Yes, if a man respects the Lord,
that is how God blesses him.
5 The Lord rules from Zion,
and I pray that he will bless you.[b]
Then you will see that Jerusalem is a good place to live in
for as long as you live.
6 I pray that you will live to see your grandchildren.
May Israel have peace!
17 Listen! I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
People will not remember what things were like before.
Those thoughts will not be in their minds at all.
18 But be happy about what I will create!
Be happy for ever!
I will create Jerusalem as a happy place.
The people who live there will be full of joy.
19 And Jerusalem will cause me to be happy.
My people will give me joy.
There will be no noise of people who are weeping.
People will not be sad in Jerusalem again.
20 Never again will there be a baby
who only lives for a few days.
Old men will continue to live a long life.
People will live until they are 100 years old
and they will still seem young.
If anyone dies before he is 100 years old,
people will think that God has cursed him.
21 My people will build houses
and they will live in them.
They will plant vineyards
and they will eat the fruit from them.
22 They will no longer build houses
and then other people live in them.
They will not plant trees
and then other people to eat the fruit.
My people will have long lives,
as long as trees live.
My own people will live to enjoy the things
that they have worked hard to get.
23 Their work will not be useless.
They will not give birth to children
who will live in fear.
Instead, the Lord will bless their children.
He will bless them
and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call to me for help,
I will answer them.
While they are still praying,
I will hear them.
25 At that time,
wolves and lambs will eat together.
Lions will eat straw like cows.
A snake's food will be dirt.
Nothing will hurt or destroy anything else
anywhere on my holy mountain.’
That is what the Lord says.[a]
6 David also wrote about the same thing. He describes those people that God has accepted as right with himself. God has not accepted them because they have done good things, but as his gift to them. David tells us how happy people like that are. 7 David says:
‘The people that God has forgiven are really happy.
They have done wrong things, but he has forgiven them.
8 A person is really happy when the Lord accepts him.
The Lord does not think about that person's sin any more.’[a]
9 God does this for all people, both Jews and Gentiles. All people can be really happy like this, when God accepts them. As we have said, Abraham believed God. As a result, God accepted Abraham as right with him. 10 They circumcised Abraham to show that he was a Jew. Think about the time when God accepted Abraham. Did it happen before they circumcised him, or after that? We know that it was before they circumcised him! 11 Some time after that, God told Abraham that someone should circumcise him. That would be a mark on his body to show that God had accepted him. God had already accepted Abraham because Abraham believed in him. God did not accept Abraham because they had circumcised him as a Jewish man. This shows that Abraham is like a father to everyone that God has accepted. Like Abraham, God has accepted them because they have believed in him. It is not important that nobody has circumcised them. 12 But Abraham is also like the father of all Jews who believe in God. Someone has circumcised those Jews, but they have copied Abraham's example. They have believed in God, as Abraham believed before anyone had circumcised him.[b]
13 God promised to Abraham, and to his descendants, that the world would belong to them one day.[c] God did not promise that because Abraham obeyed any rules. God promised it because Abraham believed in him. That is why God accepted Abraham as right with him.
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