Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
(A special psalm by Ethan the Ezrahite.)
The Lord's Agreement with David
1 (A) Our Lord, I will sing
of your love forever.
Everyone yet to be born
will hear me praise
your faithfulness.
2 I will tell them, “God's love
can always be trusted,
and his faithfulness lasts
as long as the heavens.”
3 You said, “David, my servant,
is my chosen one,
and this is the agreement
I made with him:
4 (B) David, one of your descendants
will always be king.”
19 In a vision, you once said
to your faithful followers:
“I have helped a mighty hero.
I chose him from my people
and made him famous.
20 (A) David, my servant, is the one
I chose to be king,
21 and I will always be there
to help and strengthen him.
22 “No enemy will outsmart David,
and he won't be defeated
by any hateful people.
23 I will strike down and crush
his troublesome enemies.
24 He will always be able
to depend on my love,
and I will make him strong
with my own power.
25 I will let him rule the lands
across the rivers and seas.
26 He will say to me,
‘You are my Father
and my God,
as well as the mighty rock[a]
where I am safe.’
2 Manoah from the tribe of Dan lived in the town of Zorah. His wife was not able to have children, 3-5 (A) but one day an angel from the Lord appeared to her and said:
You have never been able to have any children, but very soon you will be pregnant and have a son. He will belong to God[a] from the day he is born, so his hair must never be cut. And even before he is born, you must not drink any wine or beer or eat any food forbidden by God's laws.
Your son will begin to set Israel free from the Philistines.
6 She went to Manoah and said, “A prophet who looked like an angel of God came and talked to me. I was so frightened, that I didn't even ask where he was from. He didn't tell me his name, 7 but he did say that I'm going to have a baby boy. I'm not supposed to drink any wine or beer or eat any food forbidden by God's laws. Our son will belong to God for as long as he lives.”
8 Then Manoah prayed, “Our Lord, please send that prophet again and let him tell us what to do for the son we are going to have.”
9 God answered Manoah's prayer, and the angel went back to Manoah's wife while she was resting in the fields. Manoah wasn't there at the time, 10 so she found him and said, “That same man is here again! He's the one I saw the other day.”
11 Manoah went with his wife and asked the man, “Are you the one who spoke to my wife?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
12 Manoah then asked, “When your promise comes true, what rules must he obey and what will be his work?”
13 “Your wife must be careful to do everything I told her,” the Lord's angel answered. 14 “She must not eat or drink anything made from grapes. She must not drink wine or beer or eat anything forbidden by God's laws. I told her exactly what to do.”
15 “Please,” Manoah said, “stay here with us for just a little while, and we'll fix a young goat for you to eat.” 16 Manoah didn't realize that he was really talking to one of the Lord's angels.
The angel answered, “I can stay for a little while, although I won't eat any of your food. But if you would like to offer the goat as a sacrifice to the Lord, that would be fine.”
17 Manoah said, “Tell us your name, so we can honor you after our son is born.”
18 “No,” the angel replied. “You don't need to know my name. And if you did, you couldn't understand it.”
19 So Manoah took a young goat over to a large rock he had chosen for an altar, and he built a fire on the rock. Then he killed the goat, and offered it with some grain as a sacrifice to the Lord. But then an amazing thing happened. 20 The fire blazed up toward the sky, and the Lord's angel went up toward heaven in the fire. Manoah and his wife bowed down low when they saw what happened.
21 Although the angel didn't appear to them again, they realized he was one of the Lord's angels. 22 Manoah said, “We have seen an angel.[b] Now we're going to die.”[c]
23 “The Lord isn't going to kill us,” Manoah's wife responded. “The Lord accepted our sacrifice and grain offering, and he let us see something amazing. Besides, he told us that we're going to have a son.”
24 Later, Manoah's wife did give birth to a son, and she named him Samson. As the boy grew, the Lord blessed him.
The People Take Sides
40 When the crowd heard Jesus say this, some of them said, “He must be the Prophet!”[a] 41 Others said, “He is the Messiah!” Others even said, “Can the Messiah come from Galilee? 42 (A) The Scriptures say that the Messiah will come from the family of King David. Doesn't this mean that he will be born in David's hometown of Bethlehem?” 43 The people started taking sides against each other because of Jesus. 44 Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him.
The Leaders Refuse To Have Faith in Jesus
45 When the temple police returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, they were asked, “Why didn't you bring Jesus here?”
46 They answered, “No one has ever spoken like this man!”
47 The Pharisees said to them, “Have you also been fooled? 48 Not one of the chief priests or the Pharisees has faith in him. 49 And these people who don't know the Law are under God's curse anyway.”
50 (B) Nicodemus was there at the time. He was a member of the council, and was the same one who had earlier come to see Jesus.[b] He said, 51 “Our Law doesn't let us condemn people before we hear what they have to say. We cannot judge them before we know what they have done.”
52 Then they said, “Nicodemus, you must be from Galilee! Read the Scriptures, and you will find that no prophet is to come from Galilee.”
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