Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Book IV
Psalms 90–106
Psalm 90
Teach Us to Number Our Days
Heading
A prayer of Moses, the man of God.
God Is Eternal
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity you are God.
Man Is Mortal
3 You grind people to dust,
and you say, “Return, children of Adam.”
4 For a thousand years in your sight are like a day,
like yesterday that has gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away like a flood.
They are like sleep in the morning,
like grass which changes quickly.
6 In the morning it sprouts and grows.
By evening it is cut down, and it withers.
7 Surely, we are consumed by your anger,
and by your wrath we are terrified.
8 You have laid out our guilty deeds in front of you.
Our hidden sins are revealed in the light of your face.
9 For all our days pass away under your fury.
We finish our years like a sigh.
10 The days of our lives add up to seventy years,
or eighty years if we are strong.
Yet the best of them are trouble and sorrow,
for they disappear quickly, and we fly away.
11 Who can understand the power of your anger?
But your fury is consistent with the fear that is owed to you.
Mortal Man Needs God’s Grace
12 Teach us to number our days in such a way
that we bring a heart of wisdom.
The End Has Come
7 The word of the Lord came to me.
2 And to you, son of man, this is what the Lord God says about the soil of Israel. An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. 3 Now that the end is upon you, I will unleash my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will place on you the penalty for all your abominations.[a] 4 My eye will not have pity on you, and I will have no compassion, for I will place on you the penalty for your ways, and the punishment for your abominations will be in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord!
5 This is what the Lord God says. Disaster! An unparalleled disaster![b] Watch, it is coming! 6 An end has come! The end has come! It has begun against you. Look, it is coming! 7 Doom[c] has come upon you, you inhabitants of the land. The time has come, the day is near. A day of panic, not joy, is on the mountains. 8 Now very soon I will pour out my wrath upon you, and I will exhaust my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will place on you the penalty for all your abominations. 9 My eye will not show pity, and I will have no compassion. According to your ways I will place the penalty on you, and the punishment for your abominations will be in your midst. Then you will know that I, the Lord, am the one who strikes you!
8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to burn people with fire. 9 People were scorched by the fierce heat. Then they blasphemed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues, but they did not repent and give him praise.
10 The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast. The beast’s kingdom was darkened. People gnawed their tongues in their torment. 11 They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their torments and their sores. But they did not repent of their deeds.
The Sixth Bowl: The Battle of Armageddon
12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates. Its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings coming from the east. 13 I saw three unclean spirits, like frogs, which came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 They are, in fact, miracle-working, demonic spirits, which go out to the kings of the whole earth[a] to bring them together for the battle on the great day of the Almighty God.
15 “Look: I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes on, so that he does not walk around naked and his shame is not seen.”
16 Then they brought them together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.
The Seventh Bowl: The End of the World
17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl on the air. And a loud voice came out of the temple[b] from the throne, saying, “It is done.” 18 There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and crashes of thunder. There was also a great earthquake of a kind that has not occurred since mankind has been[c] on the earth.
19 And the great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. Babylon the Great was remembered by God, and he gave her the wine cup filled with his fierce wrath. 20 Every island vanished, and the mountains could no longer be found. 21 Massive hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell on people from the sky. And the people blasphemed God because of the plague of hail, because the plague was so severe.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.