Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Isaiah Becomes a Prophet

6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a very high throne. His long robe filled the Temple. ² Heavenly creatures of fire stood above him. Each creature had six wings: It used two wings to cover its face, two wings to cover its feet, and two wings for flying. ³ Each creature was calling to the others:

⁴ Their calling caused the frame around the door to shake, as the Temple filled with smoke.

⁵ I said, “Oh, no! I will be destroyed. I am not pure, and I live among people who are not pure, but I have seen the King, the Lord All-Powerful.”

⁶ One of the heavenly creatures used a pair of tongs to take a hot coal from the altar. Then he flew to me with the hot coal in his hand. ⁷ The creature touched my mouth with the hot coal and said, “Look, your guilt is taken away, because this hot coal has touched your lips. Your sin is taken away.”

⁸ Then I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom can I send? Who will go for us?”

So I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

God in the Thunderstorm

A psalm of David.

¹² So, my brothers and sisters, we must not be ruled by our sinful selves or live the way our sinful selves want. ¹³ If you use your lives to do the wrong things your sinful selves want, you will die spiritually. But if you use the Spirit’s help to stop doing the wrong things you do with your body, you will have true life.

¹⁴ The true children of God are those who let God’s Spirit lead them. ¹⁵ The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out, “Father.”^{[a] 16} And the Spirit himself joins with our spirits to say we are God’s children. ¹⁷ If we are God’s children, we will receive blessings from God together with Christ. But we must suffer as Christ suffered so that we will have glory as Christ has glory.

Nicodemus Comes to Jesus

3 There was a man named Nicodemus who was one of the Pharisees and an important Jewish leader. ² One night Nicodemus came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we know you are a teacher sent from God, because no one can do the miracles you do unless God is with him.”

³ Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot be in God’s kingdom.”

⁴ Nicodemus said, “But if a person is already old, how can he be born again? He cannot enter his mother’s womb again. So how can a person be born a second time?”

⁵ But Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born from water and the Spirit, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. ⁶ Human life comes from human parents, but spiritual life comes from the Spirit. ⁷ Don’t be surprised when I tell you, ‘You must all be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it wants to and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where the wind comes from or where it is going. It is the same with every person who is born from the Spirit.”

⁹ Nicodemus asked, “How can this happen?”

¹⁰ Jesus said, “You are an important teacher in Israel, and you don’t understand these things? ¹¹ I tell you the truth, we talk about what we know, and we tell about what we have seen, but you don’t accept what we tell you. ¹² I have told you about things here on earth, and you do not believe me. So you will not believe me if I tell you about things of heaven. ¹³ The only one who has ever gone up to heaven is the One who came down from heaven—the Son of Man.^[a]

¹⁴ “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,^[b] the Son of Man must also be lifted up. ¹⁵ So that everyone who believes can have eternal life in him.

¹⁶ “God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. ¹⁷ God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him.