Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
God and His People[a]
78 Listen, my people, to my teaching,
and pay attention to what I say.
2 (A)I am going to use wise sayings
and explain mysteries from the past,
3 things we have heard and known,
things that our ancestors told us.
4 We will not keep them from our children;
we will tell the next generation
about the Lord's power and his great deeds
and the wonderful things he has done.
12 (A)While their ancestors watched, God performed miracles
in the plain of Zoan in the land of Egypt.
13 (B)He divided the sea and took them through it;
he made the waters stand like walls.
14 (C)By day he led them with a cloud
and all night long with the light of a fire.
15 He split rocks open in the desert
and gave them water from the depths.
16 (D)He caused a stream to come out of the rock
and made water flow like a river.
The Lord's Plan for His People
17 The holy God of Israel,
the Lord who saves you, says:
“I am the Lord your God,
the one who wants to teach you for your own good
and direct you in the way you should go.
18 “If only you had listened to my commands!
Then blessings would have flowed for you
like a stream that never goes dry.
Victory would have come to you
like the waves that roll on the shore.
19 Your descendants would be as numerous as grains of sand,
and I would have made sure they were never destroyed.”
20 (A)Go out from Babylon, go free!
Shout the news gladly; make it known everywhere:
“The Lord has saved his servant Israel!”
21 When the Lord led his people through a hot, dry desert,
they did not suffer from thirst.
He made water come from a rock for them;
he split the rock open, and water flowed out.
Warning against Judging One Another
11 Do not criticize one another, my friends. If you criticize or judge another Christian, you criticize and judge the Law. If you judge the Law, then you are no longer one who obeys the Law, but one who judges it. 12 God is the only lawgiver and judge. He alone can save and destroy. Who do you think you are, to judge someone else?
Warning against Boasting
13 (A)Now listen to me, you that say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to a certain city, where we will stay a year and go into business and make a lot of money.” 14 You don't even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears. 15 What you should say is this: “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But now you are proud, and you boast; all such boasting is wrong.
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.