Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A Prayer for the Nation's Restoration^[a]

Jerusalem and the Nations

14 The day when the Lord will sit in judgment is near. Then Jerusalem will be looted, and the loot will be divided up before your eyes. ² The Lord will bring all the nations together to make war on Jerusalem. The city will be taken, the houses looted, and the women raped. Half of the people will go into exile, but the rest of them will not be taken away from the city. ³ Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he has fought in times past. ⁴ At that time he will stand on the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem. Then the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west by a large valley. Half of the mountain will move northward, and half of it southward. ⁵ You will escape through this valley that divides the mountain in two.^[a] You will flee as your ancestors did when the earthquake struck in the time of King Uzziah of Judah. The Lord my God will come, bringing all the angels with him.

⁶ When that time comes, there will no longer be cold or frost,^{[b] 7} nor any darkness. There will always be daylight, even at nighttime. When this will happen is known only to the Lord.

^8 (A)When that day comes, fresh water will flow from Jerusalem, half of it to the Dead Sea and the other half to the Mediterranean. It will flow all year long, in the dry season as well as the wet. ⁹ Then the Lord will be king over all the earth; everyone will worship him as God and know him by the same name.

A Life That Pleases God

4 Finally, our friends, you learned from us how you should live in order to please God. This is, of course, the way you have been living. And now we beg and urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to do even more. ² For you know the instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. ³ God wants you to be holy and completely free from sexual immorality. ⁴ Each of you should know how to live with your wife^[a] in a holy and honorable way, ⁵ not with a lustful desire, like the heathen who do not know God. ⁶ In this matter, then, none of you should do wrong to other Christians or take advantage of them. We have told you this before, and we strongly warned you that the Lord will punish those who do that. ⁷ God did not call us to live in immorality, but in holiness. ⁸ So then, whoever rejects this teaching is not rejecting a human being, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

⁹ There is no need to write you about love for each other. You yourselves have been taught by God how you should love one another. ¹⁰ And you have, in fact, behaved like this toward all the believers in all of Macedonia. So we beg you, our friends, to do even more. ¹¹ Make it your aim to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to earn your own living, just as we told you before. ¹² In this way you will win the respect of those who are not believers, and you will not have to depend on anyone for what you need.

The Lord's Coming

¹³ Our friends, we want you to know the truth about those who have died, so that you will not be sad, as are those who have no hope. ¹⁴ We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will take back with Jesus those who have died believing in him.

^15 (A)What we are teaching you now is the Lord's teaching: we who are alive on the day the Lord comes will not go ahead of those who have died. ^16 (B)There will be the shout of command, the archangel's voice, the sound of God's trumpet, and the Lord himself will come down from heaven. Those who have died believing in Christ will rise to life first; ¹⁷ then we who are living at that time will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ So then, encourage one another with these words.