Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 84
For the worship leader. A song of the sons of Korah accompanied by the harp.[a]
1 How lovely is Your temple, Your dwelling place on earth,
O Eternal One, Commander of heaven’s armies.
2 How I long to be there—my soul is spent,
wanting, waiting to walk in the courts of the Eternal.
My whole being sings joyfully
to the living God.
3 Just as the sparrow seeks her home,
and the swallow finds in her own nest
a place to lay her young,
I, too, seek Your altars, my King and my God,
Commander of heaven’s armies.
4 How blessed are those who make Your house their home,
who live with You;
they are constantly praising You.
[pause][b]
5 Blessed are those who make You their strength,
for they treasure every step of the journey [to Zion].[c]
6 On their way through the valley of Baca,
they stop and dig wells to collect the refreshing spring water,
and the early rains fill the pools.
7 They journey from place to place, gaining strength along the way;
until they meet God in Zion.
8 O Eternal God, Commander of heaven’s armies, listen to my prayer.
O please listen, God of Jacob.
[pause]
9 O True God, look at our shield, our protector,
see the face of Your anointed king, and defend our defender.
10 Just one day in the courts of Your temple is greater
than a thousand anywhere else.
I would rather serve as a porter at my God’s doorstep
than live in luxury in the house of the wicked.
11 For the Eternal God is a sun and a shield.
The Eternal grants favor and glory;
He doesn’t deny any good thing
to those who live with integrity.
12 O Eternal One, Commander of heaven’s armies,
how fortunate are those who trust You.
29 Hezekiah, son of Abijah (Zechariah’s daughter), became king when he was 25 years old and reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. 2 He followed the Eternal, just as his ancestor David had.
He “strengthens” the relationship between God and the Southern Kingdom, just as his name implies.
3 Hezekiah’s first action when he began to reign was reopening and repairing the Eternal’s temple. 4 He called all the priests and the Levites into the square east of the temple.
Hezekiah (to the Levites): 5 Listen to me. First, you must sanctify yourselves so that you can sanctify the temple of the Eternal One, the True God of your ancestors, and remove the immoral and ungodly items that are there.
6 The previous generations forgot the laws of the Eternal One, our True God, and were unfaithful—abandoning the temple, ignoring Him with their backs turned, 7 closing the doors of the front of the temple so no one else could worship there, extinguishing the temple lamps, and stopping the incense and burnt offerings to the True God of Israel. 8 For these offenses, the Eternal has punished us, Judah and Jerusalem, as you have witnessed, with deaths, disasters, and derision. 9 Our fathers were slaughtered in the wars with the Arameans and the Northern Kingdom, and our wives and children are still prisoners of those wars.
10 But I want to renew a covenant with the Eternal, God of Israel, and follow His ways again so that he will not continue to be angry with us. 11 Now that we have made this commitment, we must not abandon the Eternal, who expects us to be in His presence, serve Him, minister on His behalf to others, and burn incense continually.
16 The priests cleansed the most holy place in the Eternal’s temple, taking every unclean thing outside into the temple courts, from where the Levites then took them to the Kidron Valley to be discarded. 17 This cleansing began on the first day of the first month and ended on the eighth day of the month, when they were finally able to enter the Eternal’s temple porch. Then they blessed the Eternal’s temple, which took eight more days and ended on the sixteenth day of the first month. 18 Then they told King Hezekiah all they had done.
Levites: We have cleansed all of the Eternal’s temple: the altar of burnt offering, the table of unleavened bread, and all of the utensils. 19 Also we have recovered and sanctified all the utensils which King Ahaz disposed of during his despicable reign. Now they, too, are at the Eternal’s altar.
In chapter 9 we are reminded that what is most real, what is most true, is the unseen reality. The writer tells us that the temple in Jerusalem, the holiest place on earth, was merely a copy or shadow of another place, the heavenly temple. Whatever took place in this shadowy temple could not change the realities of alienation from God, sin, and death.
Every year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would don his priestly garb and enter the most holy place in the temple. His task was profound, his duty dangerous: he must appear before God carrying the sins of his people. All the sins of Israel were concentrated in him as he carried the blood of the sacrifice into the divine presence. But there was another day, a Day of Atonement unlike any other, when Jesus concentrated in Himself the sins of the world, hanging on a cross not far from the temple’s holiest chamber. Indeed, for a time, He became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). But unlike the high priest, the crucified and risen Jesus entered the true temple of heaven and was ushered into the divine presence. At that moment, everything changed.
23 Since what was given in the old covenant was the earthly sketch of the heavenly reality, this was sufficient to cleanse the earthly sanctuary; but in heaven, a more perfect sacrifice was needed. 24 The Anointed One did not enter into handcrafted sacred spaces—imperfect copies of heavenly originals—but into heaven itself, where He stands in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 There He does not offer Himself over and over as a sacrifice (as the high priest on earth does when he enters the most holy place each year with blood other than his own) 26 because that would require His repeated suffering since the beginning of the world. No, He has appeared once now, at the end of the age, to put away sin forever by offering Himself as a sacrifice.
27 Just as mortals are appointed to die once and then to experience a judgment, 28 so the Anointed One, our Liberating King, was offered once in death to bear the sins of many and will appear a second time, not to deal again with sin, but to rescue those who eagerly await His return.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.