Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 95
Worship and Warning
Worship
1 Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord.
Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us.
2 Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving.
With music we will shout to him.
3 For the Lord is the great God
and the great King above all gods.
4 He holds the unexplored places of the earth in his hand,
and the peaks of the mountains belong to him.
5 The sea belongs to him, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him.
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker,
7 for he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture
and the flock in his hand.
Warning
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as they did at Meribah,
as they did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers challenged me
and tested me though they had seen what I had done.
10 For forty years I was disgusted with that generation,
and I said, “They are a people who have hearts that stray.
They do not acknowledge my ways.”
11 So I swore in my anger,
“They shall never enter my resting place.”
The Lord Provides Manna and Quail
16 On the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left the land of Egypt, the entire Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Wilderness of Sin,[a] which is between Elim and Sinai. 2 The entire Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat around pots of meat and ate as much food as we wanted, but now you have brought us out into this wilderness to have this whole community die of hunger.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Watch what I will do. I will rain down bread from heaven for you, and the people will go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test whether they will follow my instructions or not. 5 On the sixth day they will prepare what they bring in, and it will be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “At evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you will see the Glory of the Lord, because he has heard your constant grumbling against the Lord. Who are we that you should grumble against us?”
8 Moses said, “Now the Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening and as much bread as you want in the morning, because the Lord has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, 16 for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and all things hold together in him.
18 He is also the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in all things he might have the highest rank. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile all things to himself (whether things on earth or in heaven) by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Reconciled Through Christ’s Death
21 At one time, you were alienated from God and hostile in your thinking as expressed through your evil deeds. 22 But now Christ reconciled you in his body of flesh through death, in order to present you holy, blameless, and faultless before him— 23 if you continue steadfast and firm in faith, without being moved away from the hope of the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a minister.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.