Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

80 O Shepherd of Israel who leads Israel like a flock; O God enthroned above the Guardian Angels, bend down your ear and listen as I plead. Display your power and radiant glory. ² Let Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh see you rouse yourself and use your mighty power to rescue us.

³ Turn us again to yourself, O God. Look down on us in joy and love;^[a] only then shall we be saved.

⁴ O Jehovah, God of heaven’s armies, how long will you be angry and reject our prayers? ⁵ You have fed us with sorrow and tears ⁶ and have made us the scorn of the neighboring nations. They laugh among themselves.

⁷ Turn us again to yourself, O God of Hosts. Look down on us in joy and love;^[b] only then shall we be saved.

¹⁷ Strengthen the man you love,^[a] the son of your choice, ¹⁸ and we will never forsake you again. Revive us to trust in you.

¹⁹ Turn us again to yourself, O God of the armies of heaven. Look down on us, your face aglow with joy and love—only then shall we be saved.

14 ^1-2 Watch, for the day of the Lord is coming soon! On that day the Lord will gather together the nations to fight Jerusalem; the city will be taken, the houses rifled, the loot divided, the women raped; half the population will be taken away as slaves, and half will be left in what remains of the city.

³ Then the Lord will go out fully armed for war, to fight against those nations. ⁴ That day his feet will stand upon the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will split apart, making a very wide valley running from east to west, for half the mountain will move toward the north and half toward the south. ⁵ You will escape through that valley, for it will reach across to the city gate.^[a] Yes, you will escape as your people did long centuries ago from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and the Lord my God shall come, and all his saints and angels with him.

⁶ The sun and moon and stars will no longer shine,^{[b] 7} yet there will be continuous day! Only the Lord knows how! There will be no normal day and night—at evening time it will still be light. ⁸ Life-giving waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half toward the Dead Sea and half toward the Mediterranean, flowing continuously both in winter and in summer.

⁹ And the Lord shall be King over all the earth. In that day there shall be one Lord—his name alone will be worshiped.

4 ^1-2 Let me add this, dear brothers: You already know how to please God in your daily living, for you know the commands we gave you from the Lord Jesus himself. Now we beg you—yes, we demand of you in the name of the Lord Jesus—that you live more and more closely to that ideal. ^3-4 For God wants you to be holy and pure and to keep clear of all sexual sin so that each of you will marry in holiness and honor— ⁵ not in lustful passion as the heathen do, in their ignorance of God and his ways.

⁶ And this also is God’s will: that you never cheat in this matter by taking another man’s wife because the Lord will punish you terribly for this, as we have solemnly told you before. ⁷ For God has not called us to be dirty-minded and full of lust but to be holy and clean. ⁸ If anyone refuses to live by these rules, he is not disobeying the rules of men but of God who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

⁹ But concerning the pure brotherly love that there should be among God’s people, I don’t need to say very much, I’m sure! For God himself is teaching you to love one another. ¹⁰ Indeed, your love is already strong toward all the Christian brothers throughout your whole nation. Even so, dear friends, we beg you to love them more and more. ¹¹ This should be your ambition: to live a quiet life, minding your own business and doing your own work, just as we told you before. ¹² As a result, people who are not Christians will trust and respect you, and you will not need to depend on others for enough money to pay your bills.

¹³ And now, dear brothers, I want you to know what happens to a Christian when he dies so that when it happens, you will not be full of sorrow, as those are who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and then came back to life again, we can also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him all the Christians who have died.

¹⁵ I can tell you this directly from the Lord: that we who are still living when the Lord returns will not rise to meet him ahead of those who are in their graves. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a mighty shout and with the soul-stirring cry of the archangel and the great trumpet-call of God. And the believers who are dead will be the first to rise to meet the Lord. ¹⁷ Then we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and remain with him forever. ¹⁸ So comfort and encourage each other with this news.