Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
117 1-2 Praise God, everybody!
Applaud God, all people!
His love has taken over our lives;
God’s faithful ways are eternal.
Hallelujah!
Don’t Despair, Israel
30 1-2 This is the Message Jeremiah received from God: “God’s Message, the God of Israel: ‘Write everything I tell you in a book.
3 “‘Look. The time is coming when I will turn everything around for my people, both Israel and Judah. I, God, say so. I’ll bring them back to the land I gave their ancestors, and they’ll take up ownership again.’”
4 This is the way God put it to Israel and Judah:
5-7 “God’s Message:
“‘Cries of panic are being heard.
The peace has been shattered.
Ask around! Look around!
Can men bear babies?
So why do I see all these he-men
holding their bellies like women in labor,
Faces contorted,
pale as death?
The blackest of days,
no day like it ever!
A time of deep trouble for Jacob—
but he’ll come out of it alive.
8-9 “‘And then I’ll enter the darkness.
I’ll break the yoke from their necks,
Cut them loose from the harness.
No more slave labor to foreigners!
They’ll serve their God
and the David-King I’ll establish for them.
10-11 “‘So fear no more, Jacob, dear servant.
Don’t despair, Israel.
Look up! I’ll save you out of faraway places,
I’ll bring your children back from exile.
Jacob will come back and find life good,
safe and secure.
I’ll be with you. I’ll save you.
I’ll finish off all the godless nations
Among which I’ve scattered you,
but I won’t finish you off.
I’ll punish you, but fairly.
I won’t send you off with just a slap on the wrist.’
12-15 “This is God’s Message:
“‘You’re a burned-out case,
as good as dead.
Everyone has given up on you.
You’re hopeless.
All your fair-weather friends have skipped town
without giving you a second thought.
But I delivered the knockout blow,
a punishment you will never forget,
Because of the enormity of your guilt,
the endless list of your sins.
So why all this self-pity, licking your wounds?
You deserve all this, and more.
Because of the enormity of your guilt,
the endless list of your sins,
I’ve done all this to you.
16-17 “‘Everyone who hurt you will be hurt;
your enemies will end up as slaves.
Your plunderers will be plundered;
your looters will become loot.
As for you, I’ll come with healing,
curing the incurable,
Because they all gave up on you
and dismissed you as hopeless—
that good-for-nothing Zion.’
3-5 I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, “Look! I’m making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate.”
6-8 Then he said, “It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the Conclusion. From Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty. Conquerors inherit all this. I’ll be God to them, they’ll be sons and daughters to me. But for the rest—the feckless and faithless, degenerates and murderers, sex peddlers and sorcerers, idolaters and all liars—for them it’s Lake Fire and Brimstone. Second death!”
The City of Light
9-12 One of the Seven Angels who had carried the bowls filled with the seven final disasters spoke to me: “Come here. I’ll show you the Bride, the Wife of the Lamb.” He took me away in the Spirit to an enormous, high mountain and showed me Holy Jerusalem descending out of Heaven from God, resplendent in the bright glory of God.
12-14 The City shimmered like a precious gem, light-filled, pulsing light. She had a wall majestic and high with twelve gates. At each gate stood an Angel, and on the gates were inscribed the names of the Twelve Tribes of the sons of Israel: three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, three gates on the west. The wall was set on twelve foundations, the names of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb inscribed on them.
15-21 The Angel speaking with me had a gold measuring stick to measure the City, its gates, and its wall. The City was laid out in a perfect square. He measured the City with the measuring stick: fifteen hundred miles, its length, width, and height all equal. Using the standard measure, the Angel measured the thickness of its wall: seventy-two yards. The wall was jasper, the color of Glory, and the City was pure gold, translucent as glass. The foundations of the City walls were garnished with every precious gem imaginable: the first foundation jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate a single pearl.
21-27 The main street of the City was pure gold, translucent as glass. But there was no sign of a Temple, for the Lord God—the Sovereign-Strong—and the Lamb are the Temple. The City doesn’t need sun or moon for light. God’s Glory is its light, the Lamb its lamp! The nations will walk in its light and earth’s kings bring in their splendor. Its gates will never be shut by day, and there won’t be any night. They’ll bring the glory and honor of the nations into the City. Nothing dirty or defiled will get into the City, and no one who defiles or deceives. Only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will get in.
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Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson