Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

71 Lord, you are my refuge! Don’t let me down! ² Save me from my enemies, for you are just! Rescue me! Bend down your ear and listen to my plea and save me. ³ Be to me a great protecting Rock, where I am always welcome, safe from all attacks. For you have issued the order to save me. ⁴ Rescue me, O God, from these unjust and cruel men. ⁵ O Lord, you alone are my hope; I’ve trusted you from childhood. ⁶ Yes, you have been with me from birth and have helped me constantly—no wonder I am always praising you!

²⁰ Afterwards King Neco of Egypt led his army to Carchemish on the Euphrates River, and Josiah declared war on him.

²¹ But King Neco sent ambassadors to Josiah with this message: “I don’t want a fight with you, O king of Judah! I have come only to fight the power with which I am at war. Leave me alone! God has told me to hurry! Don’t meddle with God or he will destroy you, for he is with me.”

²² But Josiah refused to turn back. Instead he led his army into the battle at the valley of Megiddo. (He laid aside his royal robes so that the enemy wouldn’t recognize him.) Josiah refused to believe that Neco’s message was from God. ²³ The enemy archers struck King Josiah with their arrows and fatally wounded him.

“Take me out of the battle,” he exclaimed to his aides.

^24-25 So they lifted him out of his chariot and placed him in his second chariot and brought him back to Jerusalem where he died. He was buried there in the royal cemetery. And all Judah and Jerusalem, including even Jeremiah the prophet, mourned for him, as did the Temple choirs. To this day they still sing sad songs about his death, for these songs of sorrow were recorded among the official lamentations.

²⁶ The other activities of Josiah, and his good deeds, and how he followed the laws of the Lord, ²⁷ all are written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel and Judah.

19 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through Turkey and arrived in Ephesus, where he found several disciples. ² “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them.

“No,” they replied, “we don’t know what you mean. What is the Holy Spirit?”

³ “Then what beliefs did you acknowledge at your baptism?” he asked.

And they replied, “What John the Baptist taught.”

⁴ Then Paul pointed out to them that John’s baptism was to demonstrate a desire to turn from sin to God and that those receiving his baptism must then go on to believe in Jesus, the one John said would come later.

⁵ As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in^[a] the name of the Lord Jesus. ⁶ Then, when Paul laid his hands upon their heads, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other languages and prophesied. ⁷ The men involved were about twelve in number.

⁸ Then Paul went to the synagogue and preached boldly each Sabbath day^[b] for three months, telling what he believed and why, and persuading many to believe in Jesus. ⁹ But some rejected his message and publicly spoke against Christ, so he left, refusing to preach to them again. Pulling out the believers, he began a separate meeting at the lecture hall of Tyrannus and preached there daily. ¹⁰ This went on for the next two years, so that everyone in the Turkish province of Asia Minor—both Jews and Greeks—heard the Lord’s message.