Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 80

To the Chief Musician; [set to the tune of] “Lilies, a Testimony.” A Psalm of Asaph.

¹ Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, You Who lead Joseph like a flock; You Who sit enthroned upon the cherubim [of the ark of the covenant], shine forth

² Before ^[a]Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh! Stir up Your might, and come to save us!

³ Restore us again, O God; and cause Your face to shine [in pleasure and approval on us], and we shall be saved!

⁴ O Lord God of hosts, how long will You be angry with Your people’s prayers?

⁵ You have fed them with the bread of tears, and You have given them tears to drink in large measure.

⁶ You make us a strife and scorn to our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves.

⁷ Restore us again, O God of hosts; and cause Your face to shine [upon us with favor as of old], and we shall be saved!

¹⁷ Let Your hand be upon the man of Your right hand, upon the son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself.

¹⁸ Then will we not depart from You; revive us (give us life) and we will call upon Your name.

¹⁹ Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; cause Your face to shine [in pleasure, approval, and favor on us], and we shall be saved!

14 Behold, a day of the Lord is coming when the spoil [taken from you] shall be divided [among the victors] in the midst of you.

² For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses rifled and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

³ Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle.

⁴ And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from the east to the west by a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north and half of it toward the south.^(A)

⁵ And you shall flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal, and you shall flee as you fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah; and the Lord my [Zechariah’s] ^[a]God shall come, and all the holy ones [saints and angels] with Him.^(B)

⁶ And it shall come to pass in that day that there shall not be light; the glorious and bright ones [the heavenly bodies] shall be darkened.

⁷ But it shall be one continuous day, known to the Lord—not day and not night, but at evening time there shall be light.

⁸ And it shall be in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern [Dead] Sea and half of them to the western [Mediterranean] Sea; in summer and in winter shall it be.

⁹ And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day the Lord shall be one [in the recognition and worship of men] and His name one.

4 Furthermore, ^[a]brethren, we beg and admonish you in [virtue of our union with] the Lord Jesus, that [you follow the instructions which] you learned from us about how you ought to walk so as to please and gratify God, as indeed you are doing, [and] that you do so even more and more abundantly [attaining yet greater perfection in living this life].

² For you know what charges and precepts we gave you [^[b]on the authority and by the inspiration of] the Lord Jesus.

³ For this is the will of God, that you should be consecrated (separated and set apart for pure and holy living): that you should abstain and shrink from all sexual vice,

⁴ That each one of you should know how to ^[c]possess (control, manage) his own ^[d]body in consecration (purity, separated from things profane) and honor,

⁵ Not [to be used] in the passion of lust like the heathen, who are ignorant of the true God and have no knowledge of His will,

⁶ That no man transgress and overreach his brother and defraud him in this matter or defraud his brother in business. For the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we have already warned you solemnly and ^[e]told you plainly.

⁷ For God has not called us to impurity but to consecration [to dedicate ourselves to the most thorough purity].

⁸ Therefore whoever disregards (sets aside and rejects this) disregards not man but God, Whose [very] Spirit [Whom] He gives to you is holy (chaste, pure).

⁹ But concerning brotherly love [for all other Christians], you have no need to have anyone write you, for you yourselves have been [personally] taught by God to love one another.

¹⁰ And indeed you already are [extending and displaying your love] to all the brethren throughout Macedonia. But we beseech and earnestly exhort you, brethren, that you ^[f]excel [in this matter] more and more,

¹¹ To make it your ambition and definitely endeavor to live quietly and peacefully, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you,

¹² So that you may bear yourselves becomingly and be correct and honorable and command the respect of the outside world, being dependent on nobody [self-supporting] and having need of nothing.

¹³ Now also we would not have you ignorant, brethren, about those who fall asleep [^[g]in death], that you may not grieve [for them] as the rest do who have no hope [beyond the grave].

¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will also bring with Him through Jesus those who have fallen asleep [^[h]in death].

¹⁵ For this we declare to you by the Lord’s [own] word, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall in no way precede [into His presence] or have any advantage at all over those who have previously fallen asleep [in Him ^[i]in death].

¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud cry of summons, with the shout of an archangel, and with the blast of the trumpet of God. And those who have departed this life in Christ will rise first.

¹⁷ Then we, the living ones who remain [on the earth], shall simultaneously be caught up along with [the resurrected dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so always (through the eternity of the eternities) we shall be with the Lord!

¹⁸ Therefore comfort and encourage one another with these words.