Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 52
God Judges the Proud
For the choir director. A Davidic Maskil. When Doeg the Edomite went and reported to Saul, telling him, “David went to Ahimelech’s house.”(A)
1 Why brag about evil, you hero!(B)
God’s faithful love is constant.(C)
2 Like a sharpened razor,
your tongue devises destruction,
working treachery.(D)
3 You love evil instead of good,
lying instead of speaking truthfully.(E)
4 You love any words that destroy,
you treacherous tongue!(F)
5 This is why God will bring you down forever.
He will take you, ripping you out of your tent;
He will uproot you from the land of the living.(G)
6 The righteous will look on with awe
and will ridicule him:(H)
7 “Here is the man
who would not make God his refuge,
but trusted in the abundance of his riches,
taking refuge in his destructive behavior.”[a](I)
The Day of the Lord
18 Woe to you who long for the Day of the Lord!(A)
What will the Day of the Lord be for you?
It will be darkness and not light.(B)
19 It will be like a man who flees from a lion(C)
only to have a bear confront him.
He goes home and rests his hand against the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20 Won’t the Day of the Lord
be darkness rather than light,(D)
even gloom without any brightness in it?(E)
21 I hate, I despise your feasts!(F)
I can’t stand the stench
of your solemn assemblies.(G)
22 Even if you offer Me
your burnt offerings and grain offerings,(H)
I will not accept them;(I)
I will have no regard
for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle.(J)
23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.(K)
24 But let justice flow like water,
and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.(L)
25 “House of Israel, was it sacrifices and grain offerings that you presented to Me during the 40 years in the wilderness?(M) 26 But you have taken up[a] Sakkuth[b][c] your king[d] and Kaiwan[e] your star god, images you have made for yourselves.(N) 27 So I will send you into exile beyond Damascus.”(O) Yahweh, the God of Hosts, is His name.(P) He has spoken.
Prayer for Spiritual Power
14 For this reason I kneel(A) before the Father[a] 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. 16 I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches(B) of His glory,(C) to be strengthened with power(D) in the inner man(E) through His Spirit, 17 and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,(F) 19 and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to Him who is able(G) to do above and beyond all that we ask or think(H) according to the power(I) that works in us— 21 to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.(J)
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