Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
David wrote this prayer.
God will help me
16 Please keep me safe, God,
because I come to you for help.
2 I have said to the Lord,
‘You are my Lord.
All the good things that I have in my life
are gifts from you.’
3 When I think about your own people who live in this land,
it makes me happy!
They are truly great people!
4 But many troubles will come
to people who choose to worship other gods.
I will not join with them
to offer gifts of blood to their gods.
I will never use the names of their gods
to make promises.
5 You, Lord, are all that I need.
What you give to me is enough,
for me and for my descendants.
6 Yes, you have given to me a good way of life.
Your gifts are better than good fields
or valuable land.
7 I will praise the Lord,
who is my guide through life.
In the dark nights,
you help me to learn what is right.
8 I will always trust the Lord to be with me.
He is very near to me,
so I will not be upset.
9 I am truly happy and I thank God.
I know that my life is safe with God.
10 You, Lord, will not leave me
in the deep hole of death.
As one who belongs to you,
you will not leave my body to spoil in the grave.
11 You will lead me along the path of life.
Because you are with me,
I am very happy.
I know that I will be with you for ever,
and that makes me very happy!
28 All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. 29 One year later, he was walking on the flat roof of the king's palace in Babylon. 30 The king said, ‘Look how great Babylon is! It is the city that I have built to be my home as king. It shows that I am a great and powerful king!’
31 While King Nebuchadnezzar was still boasting about his power, he heard a voice from heaven. It said, ‘I am speaking to you, King Nebuchadnezzar. I have taken away your authority to rule as king! 32 People will chase you away from the city so that you live with the wild animals. You will eat grass as cows do. I will cause you to live like that for seven years. Then you will understand that the powerful God above rules over human kingdoms. He gives authority to rule to anyone that he chooses.’
33 Immediately the message given to Nebuchadnezzar really happened. People chased him away from the city. He ate grass as cows do. Dew from the sky made his body wet. His hair grew very long, like the feathers of an eagle. His feet became like a bird's feet.
God makes Nebuchadnezzar better
34 At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up towards heaven. My own mind returned to me again. I praised the powerful God above who lives for ever. I worshipped him as a great God.
His kingdom will continue for ever.
He will always have authority to rule.
35 All the people on the earth seem like nothing to him.
He does whatever he wants among the angels in heaven,
and among the people on the earth too.
Nobody can stop him.
Nobody can ask him, ‘Why are you doing that?’
36 When my own mind returned to me, I also received my authority again as king. People respected me as a great king again. My officers and important men came back to work with me. I ruled again over my kingdom. I became even greater than I was before. 37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise the King of heaven as a great God. He always does what is right and fair. When people are proud, he can cause them to become humble.
Jesus tells a story about a garden
12 Then Jesus began to speak again to the important Jews. He told them stories. He said, ‘There was a man who made a garden. He planted vines to grow grapes there. He built a wall around the garden. He dug a hole in the ground where he could make the grapes into wine. He also built a tall building to watch over the garden.[a] He found some farmers who would work in the garden for him. Then he went away to another country.[b]
2 At the time for the harvest, the man sent a servant to speak to the farmers.[c] He wanted them to give him some fruit from the garden. 3 But the farmers took hold of the servant and they hit him with sticks. They sent him away with nothing. 4 So the man sent another servant to the farmers. They also hit this servant on the head, and they did other bad things to him. 5 The man then sent another servant, but the farmers killed this servant. He sent many other servants to them. The farmers hit some of these servants with sticks and they killed other servants.
6 The man had only one person that he could still send. This was his own son. The man loved him very much.[d] So, last of all, he sent his son to the farmers. He thought, “The farmers will surely respect my son.”
7 But those farmers said to each other, “This is the son of our master. The garden will belong to him when his father dies. We should kill the son and then the garden will be ours.” 8 So the farmers took the son and they killed him. Then they threw his dead body out of the garden.’[e]
9 Jesus then asked, ‘What will the master of the garden do then? I tell you, he will come and he will kill those farmers. Then he will give the garden to other people to take care of it. 10 I am sure that you have read these words in the Bible:[f]
“The builders refused to use a certain stone. [g]
They thought that it had no value.
But now that stone has become the most important stone at the corner of the building.
11 The Lord God did this.
And we can see that he did something great.” ’
12 The Jewish leaders knew that Jesus had told this story about them. They were the bad farmers in the story. So they wanted to take hold of Jesus. But they were afraid of the crowd. So they left him and they went away.
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