Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁵ Then the prophet Jeremiah replied to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the House of the Lord. ⁶ He said, “Amen! May the Lord do that! May the Lord fulfill the words you have prophesied and bring back the vessels of the Lord’s house, and may he bring all the exiles back from Babylon to this place. ⁷ Nevertheless, listen now to what I have to say in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. ⁸ The prophets from ancient times, who came before you and me, prophesied war, famine,^[a] and plague against many countries and great kingdoms. ⁹ As for the prophet who prophesies peace, only when the word of the prophet actually comes true will that prophet become known as someone whom the Lord has truly sent.”

Psalm 89

The Covenant With David

Heading
A maskil by Ethan the Ezrahite.

Opening Praise

The Statement of the Covenant

The Security of God’s People

Serve God, Not Sin, in Your Life

¹² Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. ¹³ Do not offer the members of your body to sin as tools of unrighteousness. Instead, offer yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and offer the members of your body to God as tools of righteousness. ¹⁴ Indeed, sin will not continue to control you, because you are not under law but under grace.

¹⁵ What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness?

¹⁷ Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. ¹⁸ After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ (I am speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your flesh.) Indeed, just as you offered your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer your members in the same way as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. ²¹ So what kind of fruit did you have then? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death. ²² But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

⁴⁰ “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. ⁴¹ Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward. Whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. ⁴² Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink because he is my disciple—Amen I tell you—he will never lose his reward.”