Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

3 “Behold, I will send My messenger. And he shall prepare the way before Me. And the LORD Whom you seek shall speedily come to His Temple. The messenger of the Covenant, whom you desire, behold, he shall come,” says the LORD of Hosts.

² “But who may abide the Day of His coming? And who shall endure when He appears? For He is like a purging fire, and like launderer’s soap.

³ “And He shall sit down to try and refine the silver. He shall even refine the sons of Levi and purify them as gold and silver, so that they may bring Offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

⁴ “Then shall the Offerings of Judah and Jerusalem be acceptable to the LORD, as in days of old and in the years before.

⁶⁸ “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed His people!

⁶⁹ “And He has raised up the Horn of Salvation unto us, in the House of His servant David,

⁷⁰ “as He spoke by the mouth of His Holy Prophets. Who were, since the world began, saying,

⁷¹ ‘deliverance from our enemies, and from the hands of all that hate us.’

⁷² “So that He might show mercy towards our fathers, and remember His Holy Covenant -

⁷³ “the oath, which He swore to our father, Abraham -

⁷⁴ “that he would grant to us. So that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, should serve him without fear

⁷⁵ “all the days of our life, in holiness and righteousness before him.

⁷⁶ “And you, child, shall be called the Prophet of the Most High. For you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,

⁷⁷ “to give knowledge of salvation to His people, by the remission of their sins

⁷⁸ “through the tender mercy of our God (whereby the Dayspring from on high has visited us),

⁷⁹ “to give light to those who sit in darkness (and in the shadow of death), and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

³ I thank my God with every remembrance of you,

⁴ (always, in all my prayers for all you, praying with joy),

⁵ because of the fellowship which you have in the Gospel, from the first day until now.

⁶ And I am persuaded of this same thing: that He who has begun this good work in you will perfect it until the Day of Jesus Christ;

⁷ just as it is right for me to think this way of you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel you all were fellow partakers of grace with me.

⁸ For God is my witness how I long after you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.

⁹ And this I pray: that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;

¹⁰ so that you may test those things which are better; that you may be pure and without offense until the Day of Christ,

¹¹ filled with the fruit of righteousness which is by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

3 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar - Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip Tetrarch of Iturea, and of the country of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the Tetrarch of Abilene

² (when Annas and Caiaphas were the High Priests) - the Word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.

³ And he came into all the regions around Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,

⁴ as it is written in the Book of the sayings of Isaiah the Prophet, which says, “The voice of him who cries in the wilderness is, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord! Make His paths straight!

⁵ ‘Every valley shall be filled. And every mountain and hill shall be brought low. And crooked things shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth.

⁶ ‘And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”