Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
118 Oh, thank the Lord, for he’s so good! His loving-kindness is forever.
2 Let the congregation of Israel praise him with these same words: “His loving-kindness is forever.”
14 He is my strength and song in the heat of battle, and now he has given me the victory. 15-16 Songs of joy at the news of our rescue are sung in the homes of the godly. The strong arm of the Lord has done glorious things! 17 I shall not die but live to tell of all his deeds. 18 The Lord has punished me but not handed me over to death.
19 Open the gates of the Temple[a]—I will go in and give him my thanks. 20 Those gates are the way into the presence of the Lord, and the godly enter there. 21 O Lord, thank you so much for answering my prayer and saving me.
22 The stone rejected by the builders has now become the capstone of the arch![b] 23 This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous to see! 24 This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.
1 When God began creating[a] the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was[b] a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light.” And light appeared. 4-5 And God was pleased with it and divided the light from the darkness. He called the light “daytime,” and the darkness “nighttime.” Together they formed the first day.[c]
6 And God said, “Let the vapors separate[d] to form the sky above and the oceans below.” 7-8 So God made the sky, dividing the vapor above from the water below. This all happened on the second day.[e]
9-10 Then God said, “Let the water beneath the sky be gathered into oceans so that the dry land will emerge.” And so it was. Then God named the dry land “earth,” and the water “seas.” And God was pleased. 11-12 And he said, “Let the earth burst forth with every sort of grass and seed-bearing plant, and fruit trees with seeds inside the fruit, so that these seeds will produce the kinds of plants and fruits they came from.” And so it was, and God was pleased. 13 This all occurred on the third day.[f]
14-15 Then God said, “Let bright lights appear in the sky to give light to the earth and to identify the day and the night; they shall bring about the seasons on the earth, and mark the days and years.” And so it was. 16 For God had made two huge lights, the sun and moon, to shine down upon the earth—the larger one, the sun, to preside over the day and the smaller one, the moon, to preside through the night; he had also made the stars. 17 And God set them in the sky to light the earth, 18 and to preside over the day and night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God was pleased. 19 This all happened on the fourth day.[g]
35 But someone may ask, “How will the dead be brought back to life again? What kind of bodies will they have?” 36 What a foolish question! You will find the answer in your own garden! When you put a seed into the ground it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it “dies” first. 37 And when the green shoot comes up out of the seed, it is very different from the seed you first planted. For all you put into the ground is a dry little seed of wheat or whatever it is you are planting, 38 then God gives it a beautiful new body—just the kind he wants it to have; a different kind of plant grows from each kind of seed. 39 And just as there are different kinds of seeds and plants, so also there are different kinds of flesh. Humans, animals, fish, and birds are all different.
40 The angels[a] in heaven have bodies far different from ours, and the beauty and the glory of their bodies is different from the beauty and the glory of ours. 41 The sun has one kind of glory while the moon and stars have another kind. And the stars differ from each other in their beauty and brightness.
42 In the same way, our earthly bodies which die and decay are different from the bodies we shall have when we come back to life again, for they will never die. 43 The bodies we have now embarrass us, for they become sick and die; but they will be full of glory when we come back to life again. Yes, they are weak, dying bodies now, but when we live again they will be full of strength. 44 They are just human bodies at death, but when they come back to life they will be superhuman bodies. For just as there are natural, human bodies, there are also supernatural, spiritual bodies.
45 The Scriptures tell us that the first man, Adam, was given a natural, human body[b] but Christ is more than that, for he was life-giving Spirit.
46 First, then, we have these human bodies, and later on God gives us spiritual, heavenly bodies. 47 Adam was made from the dust of the earth, but Christ came from heaven above. 48 Every human being has a body just like Adam’s, made of dust, but all who become Christ’s will have the same kind of body as his—a body from heaven. 49 Just as each of us now has a body like Adam’s, so we shall some day have a body like Christ’s.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.