Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
6 (A)Sacrifice and offering You did not desire;
My ears You have opened.
Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.
7 Then I said, “Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of me.
8 (B)I delight to do Your will, O my God,
And Your law is (C)within my heart.”
9 (D)I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness
In the great assembly;
Indeed, (E)I do not restrain my lips,
O Lord, You Yourself know.
10 (F)I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart;
I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation;
I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth
From the great assembly.
11 Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O Lord;
(G)Let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me.
12 For innumerable evils have surrounded me;
(H)My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up;
They are more than the hairs of my head;
Therefore my heart fails me.
13 (I)Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me;
O Lord, make haste to help me!
14 (J)Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion
Who seek to destroy my [a]life;
Let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor
Who wish me evil.
15 Let them be (K)confounded because of their shame,
Who say to me, “Aha, aha!”
God’s Ancient Plan to Redeem Israel
12 “Listen to Me, O Jacob,
And Israel, My called:
I am He, (A)I am the (B)First,
I am also the Last.
13 Indeed (C)My hand has laid the foundation of the earth,
And My right hand has stretched out the heavens;
When (D)I call to them,
They stand up together.
14 “All of you, assemble yourselves, and hear!
Who among them has declared these things?
(E)The Lord loves him;
(F)He shall do His pleasure on Babylon,
And His arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
15 I, even I, have spoken;
Yes, (G)I have called him,
I have brought him, and his way will prosper.
16 “Come near to Me, hear this:
(H)I have not spoken in secret from the beginning;
From the time that it was, I was there.
And now (I)the Lord God and His Spirit
[a]Have sent Me.”
17 Thus says (J)the Lord, your Redeemer,
The Holy One of Israel:
“I am the Lord your God,
Who teaches you to profit,
(K)Who leads you by the way you should go.
18 (L)Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!
(M)Then your peace would have been like a river,
And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
19 (N)Your descendants also would have been like the sand,
And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand;
His name would not have been cut off
Nor destroyed from before Me.”
20 (O)Go forth from Babylon!
Flee from the Chaldeans!
With a voice of singing,
Declare, proclaim this,
Utter it to the end of the earth;
Say, “The Lord has (P)redeemed
His servant Jacob!”
21 And they (Q)did not thirst
When He led them through the deserts;
He (R)caused the waters to flow from the rock for them;
He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out.
Jesus Is Questioned About Fasting(A)
14 Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, (B)“Why do we and the Pharisees fast [a]often, but Your disciples do not fast?”
15 And Jesus said to them, “Can (C)the [b]friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and (D)then they will fast. 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for [c]the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. 17 Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins [d]break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.