Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹³⁷ O Lord, you are just and your punishments are fair. ¹³⁸ Your demands are just and right. ¹³⁹ I am indignant and angry because of the way my enemies have disregarded your laws. ¹⁴⁰ I have thoroughly tested your promises, and that is why I love them so much. ¹⁴¹ I am worthless and despised, but I don’t despise your laws.

¹⁴² Your justice is eternal for your laws are perfectly fair. ¹⁴³ In my distress and anguish your commandments comfort me. ¹⁴⁴ Your laws are always fair; help me to understand them, and I shall live.

⁵ The Lord replied: “Look, and be amazed! You will be astounded at what I am about to do! For I am going to do something in your own lifetime that you will have to see to believe. ⁶ I am raising a new force on the world scene, the Chaldeans,^[a] a cruel and violent nation who will march across the world and conquer it. ⁷ They are notorious for their cruelty. They do as they like, and no one can interfere. ⁸ Their horses are swifter than leopards. They are a fierce people, more fierce than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry move proudly forward from a distant land; like eagles they come swooping down to pounce upon their prey. ⁹ All opposition melts away before the terror of their presence. They collect captives like sand.

¹⁰ “They scoff at kings and princes and scorn their forts. They simply heap up dirt against their walls and capture them! ^11 [b]They sweep past like wind and are gone, but their guilt is deep, for they claim their power is from their gods.”

¹² O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal—is your plan in all of this to wipe us out? Surely not! O God our Rock, you have decreed the rise of these Chaldeans to chasten and correct us for our awful sins. ¹³ We are wicked, but they far more! Will you, who cannot allow sin in any form, stand idly by while they swallow us up? Should you be silent while the wicked destroy those who are better than they?

¹⁴ Are we but fish, to be caught and killed? Are we but creeping things that have no leader to defend them from their foes? ¹⁵ Must we be strung up on their hooks and dragged out in their nets, while they rejoice? ¹⁶ Then they will worship their nets and burn incense before them! “These are the gods who make us rich,” they’ll say.

¹⁷ Will you let them get away with this forever? Will they succeed forever in their heartless wars?

1 From: Simon Peter, a servant and missionary of Jesus Christ.

To: All of you who have our kind of faith. The faith I speak of is the kind that Jesus Christ our God and Savior gives to us. How precious it is, and how just and good he is to give this same faith to each of us.

² Do you want more and more of God’s kindness and peace? Then learn to know him better and better. ³ For as you know him better, he will give you, through his great power, everything you need for living a truly good life: he even shares his own glory and his own goodness with us! ⁴ And by that same mighty power he has given us all the other rich and wonderful blessings he promised; for instance, the promise to save us from the lust and rottenness all around us, and to give us his own character.

⁵ But to obtain these gifts, you need more than faith; you must also work hard to be good, and even that is not enough. For then you must learn to know God better and discover what he wants you to do. ⁶ Next, learn to put aside your own desires so that you will become patient and godly, gladly letting God have his way with you. ⁷ This will make possible the next step, which is for you to enjoy other people and to like them, and finally you will grow to love them deeply. ⁸ The more you go on in this way, the more you will grow strong spiritually and become fruitful and useful to our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But anyone who fails to go after these additions to faith is blind indeed, or at least very shortsighted and has forgotten that God delivered him from the old life of sin so that now he can live a strong, good life for the Lord.

¹⁰ So, dear brothers, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen, and then you will never stumble or fall away. ¹¹ And God will open wide the gates of heaven for you to enter into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.