Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

96 Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing it everywhere around the world! ² Sing out his praises! Bless his name. Each day tell someone that he saves.

³ Publish his glorious acts throughout the earth. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. ⁴ For the Lord is great beyond description and greatly to be praised. Worship only him among the gods! ⁵ For the gods of other nations are merely idols, but our God made the heavens! ⁶ Honor and majesty surround him; strength and beauty are in his Temple.

⁷ O nations of the world, confess that God alone is glorious and strong. ⁸ Give him the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him.^{[a] 9} Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives.^[b] Let the earth tremble before him.

¹⁰ Tell the nations that Jehovah reigns! He rules the world. His power can never be overthrown. He will judge all nations fairly.

¹¹ Let the heavens be glad, the earth rejoice; let the vastness of the roaring seas demonstrate his glory. ¹² Praise him for the growing fields, for they display his greatness. Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise. ¹³ For the Lord is coming to judge the earth; he will judge the nations fairly and with truth!

17 In the hill country of Ephraim lived a man named Micah.

² One day he said to his mother, “That thousand dollars you thought was stolen from you, and you were cursing about—well, I stole it!”

“God bless you for confessing it,” his mother replied. ³ So he returned the money to her.

“I am going to give it to the Lord as a credit for your account,” she declared. “I’ll have an idol carved for you and plate it with the silver.”

^4-5 So his mother took a fifth of it to a silversmith, and the idol he made from it was placed in Micah’s shrine. Micah had many idols in his collection, also an ephod and some teraphim, and he installed one of his sons as the priest. ⁶ (For in those days Israel had no king, so everyone did whatever he wanted to—whatever seemed right in his own eyes.)

⁹ I sent a brief letter to the church about this, but proud Diotrephes, who loves to push himself forward as the leader of the Christians there, does not admit my authority over him and refuses to listen to me. ¹⁰ When I come I will tell you some of the things he is doing and what wicked things he is saying about me and what insulting language he is using. He not only refuses to welcome the missionary travelers himself but tells others not to, and when they do he tries to put them out of the church.

¹¹ Dear friend, don’t let this bad example influence you. Follow only what is good. Remember that those who do what is right prove that they are God’s children; and those who continue in evil prove that they are far from God. ¹² But everyone, including Truth itself, speaks highly of Demetrius. I myself can say the same for him, and you know I speak the truth.