Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

23 Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need!

^2-3 He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He gives me new strength. He helps me do what honors him the most.

⁴ Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me, guarding, guiding all the way.^[a]

⁵ You provide delicious food for me in the presence of my enemies. You have welcomed me as your guest;^[b] blessings overflow!

⁶ Your goodness and unfailing kindness shall be with me all of my life, and afterwards I will live with you forever in your home.

¹⁷ Pack your bags, he says. Get ready now to leave; the siege will soon begin. ¹⁸ For suddenly I’ll fling you from this land and pour great troubles down; at last you shall feel my wrath.

¹⁹ Desperate is my wound. My grief is great. My sickness is incurable, but I must bear it. ²⁰ My home is gone; my children have been taken away, and I will never see them again. There is no one left to help me rebuild my home. ²¹ The shepherds of my people have lost their senses; they no longer follow God nor ask his will. Therefore they perish, and their flocks are scattered. ²² Listen! Hear the terrible sound of great armies coming from the north. The cities of Judah shall become dens of jackals.

²³ O Lord, I know it is not within the power of man to map his life and plan his course— ²⁴ so you correct me, Lord; but please be gentle. Don’t do it in your anger, for I would die. ²⁵ Pour out your fury on the nations who don’t obey the Lord, for they have destroyed Israel and made a wasteland of this entire country.

¹⁶ While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply troubled by all the idols he saw everywhere throughout the city. ¹⁷ He went to the synagogue for discussions with the Jews and the devout Gentiles, and spoke daily in the public square to all who happened to be there.

¹⁸ He also had an encounter with some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Their reaction, when he told them about Jesus and his resurrection, was, “He’s a dreamer,” or, “He’s pushing some foreign religion.”

¹⁹ But they invited him to the forum at Mars Hill. “Come and tell us more about this new religion,” they said, ²⁰ “for you are saying some rather startling things and we want to hear more.” ²¹ (I should explain that all the Athenians as well as the foreigners in Athens seemed to spend all their time discussing the latest new ideas!)

²² So Paul, standing before them at the Mars Hill forum, addressed them as follows:

“Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious, ²³ for as I was out walking I saw your many altars, and one of them had this inscription on it—‘To the Unknown God.’ You have been worshiping him without knowing who he is, and now I wish to tell you about him.

²⁴ “He made the world and everything in it, and since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples; ²⁵ and human hands can’t minister to his needs—for he has no needs! He himself gives life and breath to everything, and satisfies every need there is. ²⁶ He created all the people of the world from one man, Adam,^[a] and scattered the nations across the face of the earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and when. He determined their boundaries.

²⁷ “His purpose in all of this is that they should seek after God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, ‘We are the sons of God.’ ²⁹ If this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol made by men from gold or silver or chipped from stone. ³⁰ God tolerated man’s past ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone to put away idols and worship only him. ³¹ For he has set a day for justly judging the world by the man he has appointed, and has pointed him out by bringing him back to life again.”