Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

84 How lovely is your Temple, O Lord of the armies of heaven.

² I long, yes, faint with longing to be able to enter your courtyard and come near to the Living God. ³ Even the sparrows and swallows are welcome to come and nest among your altars and there have their young, O Lord of heaven’s armies, my King and my God! ⁴ How happy are those who can live in your Temple, singing your praises.

⁵ Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who want above all else to follow your steps. ⁶ When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after rains! ⁷ They will grow constantly in strength, and each of them is invited to meet with the Lord in Zion.

⁸ O Jehovah, God of the heavenly armies, hear my prayer! Listen, God of Israel. ⁹ O God, our Defender and our Shield, have mercy on the one you have anointed as your king.^[a]

¹⁰ A single day spent in your Temple is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a doorman of the Temple of my God than live in palaces^[b] of wickedness. ¹¹ For Jehovah God is our Light and our Protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk along his paths.^[c]

¹² O Lord of the armies of heaven, blessed are those who trust in you.

6 It was in the spring of the fourth year of Solomon’s reign that he began the actual construction of the Temple. (This was 480 years after the people of Israel left their slavery in Egypt.) ² The Temple was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high. ³ All along the front of the Temple was a porch thirty feet long and fifteen feet deep. ⁴ Narrow windows were used throughout.

^21-22 Then he overlaid the interior of the remainder of the Temple—including the cedar altar—with pure gold; and he made gold chains to protect the entrance to the Most Holy Place.

¹⁰ God, in his kindness, has taught me how to be an expert builder. I have laid the foundation and Apollos has built on it. But he who builds on the foundation must be very careful. ¹¹ And no one can ever lay any other real foundation than that one we already have—Jesus Christ. ¹² But there are various kinds of materials that can be used to build on that foundation. Some use gold and silver and jewels; and some build with sticks and hay or even straw! ¹³ There is going to come a time of testing at Christ’s Judgment Day to see what kind of material each builder has used. Everyone’s work will be put through the fire so that all can see whether or not it keeps its value, and what was really accomplished. ¹⁴ Then every workman who has built on the foundation with the right materials, and whose work still stands, will get his pay. ¹⁵ But if the house he has built burns up, he will have a great loss. He himself will be saved, but like a man escaping through a wall of flames.

¹⁶ Don’t you realize that all of you together are the house of God, and that the Spirit of God lives among you in his house? ¹⁷ If anyone defiles and spoils God’s home, God will destroy him. For God’s home is holy and clean, and you are that home.

¹⁸ Stop fooling yourselves. If you count yourself above average in intelligence, as judged by this world’s standards, you had better put this all aside and be a fool rather than let it hold you back from the true wisdom from above. ¹⁹ For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As it says in the book of Job, God uses man’s own brilliance to trap him; he stumbles over his own “wisdom” and falls. ²⁰ And again, in the book of Psalms, we are told that the Lord knows full well how the human mind reasons and how foolish and futile it is.

²¹ So don’t be proud of following the wise men of this world.^[a] For God has already given you everything you need. ²² He has given you Paul and Apollos and Peter as your helpers. He has given you the whole world to use, and life and even death are your servants. He has given you all of the present and all of the future. All are yours, ²³ and you belong to Christ, and Christ is God’s.