Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹ ¶ O come, let us bring joy unto the LORD; let us sing with joy unto the rock of our saving health.

² Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and sing unto him with joy.

³ For the LORD is a great God and a great King above all gods.

⁴ In his hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.

⁵ The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶ O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD our maker.

⁷ ¶ For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today if ye will hear his voice,

⁸ harden not your heart, as in the provocation and as in the day of trials in the wilderness

⁹ When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.

¹⁰ Forty years long I was grieved with this generation and said, It is a people that err from the heart, who have not known my ways;

¹¹ unto whom I swore in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

16 ¶ And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.

² And the whole congregation of the sons of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness;

³ and the sons of Israel said unto them, It would have been better if we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots and when we ate bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

⁴ Then the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather the word for every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or not.

⁵ And it shall come to pass that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in, which shall be twice as much as they gather daily.

⁶ Then Moses and Aaron said unto all the sons of Israel, At evening ye shall know that the LORD has brought you out from the land of Egypt;

⁷ And in the morning ye shall see the glory of the LORD; for he has heard your murmurings against the LORD; and what are we, that ye murmur against us?

⁸ And Moses said, This shall be when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat and in the morning bread to the full; for the LORD has heard your murmurings which ye have murmured against him; and what are we? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD.

¹⁵ who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature;

¹⁶ for by him were all things created, that are in the heavens and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they are thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by him and in him;

¹⁷ And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the congregation, {Gr. ekklesia – called out ones} who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.

¹⁹ For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell

²⁰ and by him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross, {Gr. stauro – stake} whether they are the things in the earth or the things in the heavens.

²¹ And you, that were in another time alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled you

²² in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight

²³ if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard and which is preached to every creature which is under heaven, of which I Paul am made a minister,