Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

5 ^1-2 O Lord, hear me praying; listen to my plea, O God my King, for I will never pray to anyone but you. ³ Each morning I will look to you in heaven and lay my requests before you, praying earnestly.

⁴ I know you get no pleasure from wickedness and cannot tolerate the slightest sin. ⁵ Therefore, proud sinners will not survive your searching gaze, for how you hate their evil deeds. ⁶ You will destroy them for their lies; how you abhor all murder and deception.

⁷ But as for me, I will come into your Temple protected by your mercy and your love; I will worship you with deepest awe.

⁸ Lord, lead me as you promised me you would; otherwise my enemies will conquer me. Tell me clearly what to do, which way to turn. ⁹ For they cannot speak one truthful word. Their hearts are filled to the brim with wickedness. Their suggestions are full of the stench of sin and death. Their tongues are filled with flatteries to gain their wicked ends. ¹⁰ O God, hold them responsible. Catch them in their own traps; let them fall beneath the weight of their own transgressions, for they rebel against you.

¹¹ But make everyone rejoice who puts his trust in you. Keep them shouting for joy because you are defending them. Fill all who love you with your happiness. ¹² For you bless the godly man, O Lord; you protect him with your shield of love.

¹⁸ But I will not completely blot you out. So says the Lord.

¹⁹ And when your people ask, “Why is it that the Lord is doing this to us?” then you shall say, “You rejected him and gave yourselves to other gods while in your land; now you must be slaves to foreigners in their lands.”

²⁰ Make this announcement to Judah and to Israel:

²¹ Listen, O foolish, senseless people—you with the eyes that do not see and the ears that do not listen— ²² have you no respect at all for me? the Lord God asks. How can it be that you don’t even tremble in my presence? I set the shorelines of the world by perpetual decrees, so that the oceans, though they toss and roar, can never pass those bounds. Isn’t such a God to be feared and worshiped?

^23-24 But my people have rebellious hearts; they have turned against me and gone off into idolatry. Though I am the one who gives them rain each year in spring and fall and sends the harvesttimes, yet they have no respect or fear for me. ²⁵ And so I have taken away these wondrous blessings from them. This sin has robbed them of all of these good things.

²⁶ Among my people are wicked men who lurk for victims like a hunter hiding in a blind. They set their traps for men. ²⁷ Like a coop full of chickens their homes are full of evil plots. And the result? Now they are great and rich, ²⁸ they are well fed and well groomed, and there is no limit to their wicked deeds. They refuse justice to orphans and the rights of the poor. ²⁹ Should I sit back and act as though nothing is going on? the Lord God asks. Shouldn’t I punish a nation such as this?

³⁰ A horrible thing has happened in this land— ³¹ the priests are ruled by false prophets, and my people like it so! But your doom is certain.

¹³ And we will never stop thanking God for this: that when we preached to you, you didn’t think of the words we spoke as being just our own, but you accepted what we said as the very Word of God—which, of course, it was—and it changed your lives when you believed it.

¹⁴ And then, dear brothers, you suffered what the churches in Judea did, persecution from your own countrymen, just as they suffered from their own people, the Jews. ¹⁵ After they had killed their own prophets, they even executed the Lord Jesus; and now they have brutally persecuted us and driven us out. They are against both God and man, ¹⁶ trying to keep us from preaching to the Gentiles for fear some might be saved; and so their sins continue to grow. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

¹⁷ Dear brothers, after we left you and had been away from you but a very little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried hard to come back to see you once more. ¹⁸ We wanted very much to come, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan stopped us. ¹⁹ For what is it we live for, that gives us hope and joy and is our proud reward and crown? It is you! Yes, you will bring us much joy as we stand together before our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes back again. ²⁰ For you are our trophy and joy.