Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
14 That man is a fool who says to himself, “There is no God!” Anyone who talks like that is warped and evil and cannot really be a good person at all.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who are wise, who want to please God. 3 But no, all have strayed away; all are rotten with sin. Not one is good, not one! 4 They eat my people like bread and wouldn’t think of praying! Don’t they really know any better?
5 Terror shall grip them, for God is with those who love him. 6 He is the refuge of the poor and humble when evildoers are oppressing them. 7 Oh, that the time of their rescue were already here, that God would come from Zion now to save his people. What gladness when the Lord has rescued Israel!
4 O Israel, if you will truly return to me and absolutely discard your idols, 2 and if you will swear by me alone, the living God, and begin to live good, honest, clean lives, then you will be a testimony to the nations of the world, and they will come to me and glorify my name.
3 The Lord is saying to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Plow up the hardness of your hearts; otherwise the good seed will be wasted among the thorns. 4 Cleanse your minds and hearts,[a] not just your bodies, or else my anger will burn you to a crisp because of all your sins. And no one will be able to put the fire out.
5 Shout to Jerusalem and to all Judea, telling them to sound the alarm throughout the land. “Run for your lives! Flee to the fortified cities!” 6 Send a signal from Jerusalem: “Flee now, don’t delay!” For I the Lord am bringing vast destruction on you from the north.[b] 7 A lion—a destroyer of nations—stalks from his lair; and he is headed for your land. Your cities will lie in ruin without inhabitant. 8 Put on clothes of mourning and weep with broken hearts, for the fierce anger of the Lord has not stopped yet. 9 In that day, says the Lord, the king and the princes will tremble in fear; and the priests and the prophets will be stricken with horror.
10 (Then I said, “But Lord, the people have been deceived by what you said, for you promised great blessings on Jerusalem. Yet the sword is even now poised to strike them dead!”)
2 But there were false prophets, too, in those days, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will cleverly tell their lies about God, turning against even their Master who bought them; but theirs will be a swift and terrible end. 2 Many will follow their evil teaching that there is nothing wrong with sexual sin. And because of them Christ and his way will be scoffed at.
3 These teachers in their greed will tell you anything to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago and their destruction is on the way. 4 For God did not spare even the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell, chained in gloomy caves and darkness until the judgment day. 5 And he did not spare any of the people who lived in ancient times before the flood except Noah, the one man who spoke up for God, and his family of seven. At that time God completely destroyed the whole world of ungodly men with the vast flood. 6 Later, he turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into heaps of ashes and blotted them off the face of the earth, making them an example for all the ungodly in the future to look back upon and fear.
7-8 But at the same time the Lord rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a good man, sick of the terrible wickedness he saw everywhere around him day after day. 9 So also the Lord can rescue you and me from the temptations that surround us, and continue to punish the ungodly until the day of final judgment comes. 10 He is especially hard on those who follow their own evil, lustful thoughts, and those who are proud and willful, daring even to scoff at the Glorious Ones[a] without so much as trembling,
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.