Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 95[a]
A Call To Praise and Obey God
1 [b]Come, let us sing with jubilation to the Lord;
let us cry out to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with our songs.
3 [c]For the Lord is the great God,
the King who surpasses all other gods.[d]
4 In his hands are the depths of the earth,
and the peaks of the mountains are his.
5 To him belongs the sea, for he created it,
and also the dry land[e] that his hands have molded.
6 Come forth! Let us bow down to worship him;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.[f]
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds,[g]
the flock he protects.
If only you would listen to his voice today:
8 “Harden not your hearts as you did at Meribah,[h]
as on the day of Massah in the wilderness.
9 It was there that your ancestors sought to tempt me;
they put me to the test
even though they had witnessed my works.[i]
10 “For forty years[j] I loathed that generation;
I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they do not know my ways.’
11 Therefore, in my anger I swore,
‘They will never enter my rest.’ ”[k]
Chapter 16[a]
Manna and Quail. 1 The entire community of the children of Israel set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is found between Elim and the Sinai on the fifteenth day of the second month after they left the land of Egypt. 2 In the desert the entire community of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron. 3 The children of Israel said to them, “Would that the hand of the Lord had killed us in the land of Egypt where we were seated by our pots filled with meat and where we had more than enough bread to eat. Instead you brought us out into this desert to slay the whole assembly with hunger.”
4 The Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread down from the heavens for you. The people should go out each day to collect the amount they need for that day so that I might test them to see whether they follow my law or not. 5 But on the sixth day, when they are gathering what they will bring home, they are to collect double what they collect on the other days.”
6 Moses and Aaron said this to the children of Israel: “This evening you will know that the Lord brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and tomorrow morning you will see the glory of the Lord, for he has heard your murmuring against him. For what are we, that you murmur against us?” 8 Moses also said, “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and bread to fill you in the morning, it will be because the Lord has heard the murmuring that you utter against him. What are we, after all? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the Lord.”
The Supremacy of Christ
In Christ, through Him, and for Him[a]
15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
16 For in him were created all things
in heaven and on earth,
whether visible or invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—
all things were created through him and for him.
17 He exists before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
18 He is the head of the body,
that is, the Church.
He is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that in every way
he should be supreme.
19 For in him
it pleased God
to make all fullness dwell,[b]
20 and through him
to reconcile all things for him,
whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through his blood of the cross.
21 Christ among the Gentiles.[c]You yourselves were once alienated and hostile in your intent because of your evil deeds. 22 But now, through Christ’s death in his body of flesh, God has reconciled you to himself so that you may stand holy, blameless, and irreproachable in his presence.
23 However, you must persevere in the faith, firmly grounded and steadfast in your belief, and never allowing yourselves to drift away from the hope of the gospel that you accepted and that has now been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, the gospel of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
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