Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁹ How can a young man stay pure? By reading your Word and following its rules. ¹⁰ I have tried my best to find you—don’t let me wander off from your instructions. ¹¹ I have thought much about your words and stored them in my heart so that they would hold me back from sin.

¹² Blessed Lord, teach me your rules. ¹³ I have recited your laws ¹⁴ and rejoiced in them more than in riches. ¹⁵ I will meditate upon them and give them my full respect. ¹⁶ I will delight in them and not forget them.

⁸ Bring them back to me—blind as they are and deaf when I call (although they see and hear!).

⁹ Gather the nations together! Which of all their idols ever has foretold such things? Which can predict a single day ahead? Where are the witnesses of anything they said? If there are no witnesses, then they must confess that only God can prophesy.

¹⁰ But I have witnesses, O Israel, says the Lord! You are my witnesses and my servants, chosen to know and to believe me and to understand that I alone am God. There is no other God; there never was and never will be. ¹¹ I am the Lord, and there is no other Savior. ¹² Whenever you have thrown away your idols, I have shown you my power. With one word I have saved you. You have seen me do it; you are my witnesses that it is true. ¹³ From eternity to eternity I am God. No one can oppose what I do.

⁴ We dare to say these good things about ourselves only because of our great trust in God through Christ, that he will help us to be true to what we say, ⁵ and not because we think we can do anything of lasting value by ourselves. Our only power and success comes from God. ⁶ He is the one who has helped us tell others about his new agreement to save them. We do not tell them that they must obey every law of God or die; but we tell them there is life for them from the Holy Spirit. The old way, trying to be saved by keeping the Ten Commandments, ends in death; in the new way, the Holy Spirit gives them life.

⁷ Yet that old system of law that led to death began with such glory that people could not bear to look at Moses’ face. For as he gave them God’s law to obey, his face shone out with the very glory of God—though the brightness was already fading away. ⁸ Shall we not expect far greater glory in these days when the Holy Spirit is giving life? ⁹ If the plan that leads to doom was glorious, much more glorious is the plan that makes men right with God. ¹⁰ In fact, that first glory as it shone from Moses’ face is worth nothing at all in comparison with the overwhelming glory of the new agreement. ¹¹ So if the old system that faded into nothing was full of heavenly glory, the glory of God’s new plan for our salvation is certainly far greater, for it is eternal.