Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 71

¹ In You, O Lord, do I put my trust and confidently take refuge; let me never be put to shame or confusion!

² Deliver me in Your righteousness and cause me to escape; bow down Your ear to me and save me!

³ Be to me a rock of refuge in which to dwell, and a sheltering stronghold to which I may continually resort, which You have appointed to save me, for You are my Rock and my Fortress.

⁴ Rescue me, O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the grasp of the unrighteous and ruthless man.

⁵ For You are my hope; O Lord God, You are my trust from my youth and the source of my confidence.

⁶ Upon You have I leaned and relied from birth; You are He Who took me from my mother’s womb and You have been my benefactor from that day. My praise is continually of You.

34 Josiah was eight years old when he began his thirty-one-year reign in Jerusalem.

² He did right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of David his father [forefather] and turned aside neither to the right hand nor to the left.

³ For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young [sixteen], he began to seek after and yearn for the God of David his father [forefather]; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and molten images.

⁴ They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence; the sun-images that were high above them he hewed down; the Asherim and the graven images and the molten images he broke in pieces and made dust of them and strewed it upon the graves of those who sacrificed to them.

⁵ Josiah burned the bones of the [idolatrous] priests upon their altars, and so cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.

⁶ So he did in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even to Naphtali, in their ruins round about [with their axes],

⁷ He broke down the altars and the Asherim and beat the graven images into powder and hewed down all the sun-images throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

⁴⁴ While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who were listening to the message.

⁴⁵ And the believers from among the circumcised [the Jews] who came with Peter were surprised and amazed, because the free gift of the Holy Spirit had been bestowed and poured out largely even on the Gentiles.

⁴⁶ For they heard them talking in [unknown] tongues (languages) and extolling and magnifying God. Then Peter asked,

⁴⁷ Can anyone forbid or refuse water for baptizing these people, seeing that they have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?

⁴⁸ And he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (the Messiah). Then they begged him to stay on there for some days.