Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

66 Sing to the Lord, all the earth! ² Sing of his glorious name! Tell the world how wonderful he is.

³ How awe-inspiring are your deeds, O God! How great your power! No wonder your enemies surrender! ⁴ All the earth shall worship you and sing of your glories. ⁵ Come, see the glorious things God has done. What marvelous miracles happen to his people! ⁶ He made a dry road through the sea for them. They went across on foot. What excitement and joy there was that day!

⁷ Because of his great power he rules forever. He watches every movement of the nations. O rebel lands, he will deflate your pride.

⁸ Let everyone bless God and sing his praises; ⁹ for he holds our lives in his hands, and he holds our feet to the path. ¹⁰ You have purified us with fire,^[a] O Lord, like silver in a crucible. ¹¹ You captured us in your net and laid great burdens on our backs. ¹² You sent troops to ride across our broken bodies.^[b] We went through fire and flood. But in the end, you brought us into wealth and great abundance.

27 This message came to Jeremiah from the Lord at the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim^[a] (son of Josiah), king of Judah:

² “Make a yoke and fasten it on your neck with leather thongs as you would strap a yoke on an ox. ³ Then send messages to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, through their ambassadors in Jerusalem, ⁴ saying, Tell your masters that the Lord, the God of Israel, sends you this message:

⁵ “By my great power I have made the earth and all mankind and every animal; and I give these things of mine to anyone I want to. ⁶ So now I have given all your countries to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who is my deputy. And I have handed over to him all your cattle for his use. ⁷ All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson until his time is up, and then many nations and great kings shall conquer Babylon and make him their slave. ⁸ Submit to him and serve him—put your neck under Babylon’s yoke! I will punish any nation refusing to be his slave; I will send war, famine, and disease upon that nation until he has conquered it.

⁹ “Do not listen to your false prophets, fortune-tellers, dreamers, mediums, and magicians who say the king of Babylon will not enslave you. ¹⁰ For they are all liars, and if you follow their advice and refuse to submit to the king of Babylon, I will drive you out of your land and send you far away to perish. ¹¹ But the people of any nation submitting to the king of Babylon will be permitted to stay in their own country and farm the land as usual.”

¹² Jeremiah repeated all these prophecies to Zedekiah, king of Judah. “If you want to live, submit to the king of Babylon,” he said. ¹³ “Why do you insist on dying—you and your people? Why should you choose war and famine and disease, which the Lord has promised to every nation that will not submit to Babylon’s king? ¹⁴ Don’t listen to the false prophets who keep telling you the king of Babylon will not conquer you, for they are liars. ¹⁵ I have not sent them, says the Lord, and they are telling you lies in my name. If you insist on heeding them, I must drive you from this land to die—you and all these ‘prophets’ too.”

¹⁶ I spoke again and again to the priests and all the people and told them: “This is what the Lord says! Don’t listen to your prophets who are telling you that soon the gold dishes taken from the Temple will be returned from Babylon. It is all a lie. ¹⁷ Don’t listen to them. Surrender to the king of Babylon and live, for otherwise this whole city will be destroyed. ¹⁸ If they are really God’s prophets, then let them pray to the Lord Almighty that the gold dishes still here in the Temple, left from before, and that those in the palace of the king of Judah and in the palaces in Jerusalem will not be carried away with you to Babylon!

^19-21 “For the Lord Almighty says: The pillars of bronze standing before the Temple, the great bronze basin in the Temple court, the metal stands, and all the other ceremonial articles left here by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, when he exiled all the important people of Judah and Jerusalem to Babylon, along with Jeconiah (son of Jehoiakim), king of Judah, ²² will all yet be carried away to Babylon and will stay there until I send for them. Then I will bring them all back to Jerusalem again.”

2 O Timothy, my son, be strong with the strength Christ Jesus gives you. ² For you must teach others those things you and many others have heard me speak about. Teach these great truths to trustworthy men who will, in turn, pass them on to others.

³ Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, just as I do; ⁴ and as Christ’s soldier, do not let yourself become tied up in worldly affairs, for then you cannot satisfy the one who has enlisted you in his army. ⁵ Follow the Lord’s rules for doing his work, just as an athlete either follows the rules or is disqualified and wins no prize. ⁶ Work hard like a farmer who gets paid well if he raises a large crop. ⁷ Think over these three illustrations, and may the Lord help you to understand how they apply to you.