Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The Lord—Our Helper

146 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! ² I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God as long as I live. ³ Do not put your trust in princes, in a son of a man, who cannot save us. ⁴ When his spirit leaves, he returns to the earth. His thoughts end on that day. ⁵ Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, and whose hope is in the Lord his God. ⁶ The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. He is faithful forever. ⁷ He helps those who have a bad power over them. He gives food to the hungry. And He sets those in prison free.

⁸ The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord raises up those who are brought down. The Lord loves those who are right and good. ⁹ The Lord keeps the strangers safe. He takes care of the children who have no father and the woman whose husband has died. But He destroys the way of the sinful. ¹⁰ The Lord will rule forever. Your God, O Zion, will rule over all people for all time. Praise the Lord!

¹⁷ Then the Lord said to Moses, ¹⁸ “Say to the people of Israel, ‘When you come into the land where I bring you ¹⁹ and when you eat of the food of the land, you must lift up a gift in worship to the Lord. ²⁰ Give a loaf of bread as a gift from the first of your grain. Give it as the gift of the grain-floor. ²¹ From the first of your grain you and all your children-to-come must give a gift to the Lord.

²² ‘Without knowing it you might not obey all these Laws which the Lord has spoken to Moses, ²³ even all that the Lord has told you to do through Moses, from the day when the Lord told you and through all your children-to-come. ²⁴ If this is done without the people knowing it, then all the people must give one bull for a burnt gift. It will be a pleasing smell to the Lord. It must be brought with its grain gift and its drink gift, by the Law, and with one male goat for a sin gift. ²⁵ Then the religious leader will pay for the sins of all the people of Israel, and they will be forgiven. Because it was a mistake, they brought their gift, a gift by fire to the Lord, and their sin gift to the Lord, for their mistake. ²⁶ So all the people of Israel and the stranger who stays among them will be forgiven. For it happened to all the people by mistake.

Paul Speaks to King Agrippa

26 Agrippa said to Paul, “You may now speak for yourself.” Paul lifted his hand and started to talk, ² “King Agrippa, the Jews have said many things against me. I am happy to be able to tell you my side of the story. ³ You know all about the Jewish ways and problems. So I ask you to listen to me until I have finished.

⁴ “All the Jews know about my life from the time I was a boy until now. I lived among my own people in Jerusalem. ⁵ If they would tell what they know, they would say that I lived the life of a proud religious law-keeper. I was in the group of proud religious law-keepers who tried to obey every law.

⁶ “And now I am on trial here because I trust the promise God made to our fathers. ⁷ This promise is what our twelve family groups of the Jewish nation hope to see happen. They worship God day and night. King Agrippa, it is because of this hope that they are saying things against me. ⁸ Why do you think it is hard to believe that God raises people from the dead?

⁹ “I used to think I should work hard against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. ¹⁰ I did that in Jerusalem. I put many of the followers in prison. The head religious leaders gave me the right and the power to do it. Then when the followers were killed, I said it was all right. ¹¹ I beat them and tried to make them speak against God in all the Jewish places of worship. In my fight against them, I kept going after them even into cities in other countries.