Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

96 Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing it everywhere around the world! ² Sing out his praises! Bless his name. Each day tell someone that he saves.

³ Publish his glorious acts throughout the earth. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. ⁴ For the Lord is great beyond description and greatly to be praised. Worship only him among the gods! ⁵ For the gods of other nations are merely idols, but our God made the heavens! ⁶ Honor and majesty surround him; strength and beauty are in his Temple.

⁷ O nations of the world, confess that God alone is glorious and strong. ⁸ Give him the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him.^{[a] 9} Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives.^[b] Let the earth tremble before him. ¹⁰ Tell the nations that Jehovah reigns! He rules the world. His power can never be overthrown. He will judge all nations fairly.

¹¹ Let the heavens be glad, the earth rejoice; let the vastness of the roaring seas demonstrate his glory. ¹² Praise him for the growing fields, for they display his greatness. Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise. ¹³ For the Lord is coming to judge the earth; he will judge the nations fairly and with truth!

²⁹ King Asa of Judah had been on the throne thirty-eight years when Ahab became the king of Israel; and Ahab reigned for twenty-two years. ³⁰ But he was even more wicked than his father Omri; he was worse than any other king of Israel! ³¹ And as though that were not enough, he married Jezebel, the daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and then began worshiping Baal. ³² First he built a temple and an altar for Baal in Samaria. ³³ Then he made other idols and did more to anger the Lord God of Israel than any of the other kings of Israel before him.

³⁴ (It was during his reign that Hiel, a man from Bethel, rebuilt Jericho. When he laid the foundations, his oldest son, Abiram, died; and when he finally completed it by setting up the gates, his youngest son, Segub, died. For this was the Lord’s curse upon Jericho^[a] as declared by Joshua, the son of Nun.)

11 I hope you will be patient with me as I keep on talking like a fool. Do bear with me and let me say what is on my heart. ² I am anxious for you with the deep concern of God himself—anxious that your love should be for Christ alone, just as a pure maiden saves her love for one man only, for the one who will be her husband. ³ But I am frightened, fearing that in some way you will be led away from your pure and simple devotion to our Lord, just as Eve was deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden. ⁴ You seem so gullible: you believe whatever anyone tells you even if he is preaching about another Jesus than the one we preach, or a different spirit than the Holy Spirit you received, or shows you a different way to be saved. You swallow it all.

⁵ Yet I don’t feel that these marvelous “messengers from God,” as they call themselves, are any better than I am. ⁶ If I am a poor speaker, at least I know what I am talking about, as I think you realize by now, for we have proved it again and again.