Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

David wrote this song when he made the Philistine king think that he was crazy. He wanted the king to send him away.^[a]

God is great!^[b]

Nehemiah prays

1 These are the words of Nehemiah, Hacaliah's son.

It was the month Kislev. This was when King Artaxerxes had ruled for 20 years. I was in the big city of Susa. ² Hanani, my brother, and some other men arrived from Judah. I asked them for news of the Jews who had returned there from exile in Babylon. I asked them for news about Jerusalem. ³ They told me, ‘The Jews who returned to Judah are in much trouble. The walls of the city still have lots of holes in them. Fire has burned the city's gates down to the ground. So the people are very ashamed.’

⁴ After they told me this, I sat down and I wept. I was very sad for many days. I did not eat or drink anything and I prayed to God.

⁵ I prayed, ‘Lord, God of heaven, you are great and powerful.^[a] You always continue to love your people, as you have promised to do. You are kind to those people who love you and obey your commands. ⁶ Please listen to my prayer. I am your servant. I am praying in the day and in the night on behalf of your servants, the Israelites. I agree that we have all done wrong things. That includes me and my family. We have not obeyed you. ⁷ We have done wicked things against you. We have not obeyed the commands, the laws and the rules that you gave to your servant Moses.^[b]

⁸ Remember what you told your servant, Moses. You told him, “If the Israelites turn away from me, I will make them live among foreign people in many different places. ⁹ But if they return to me and they obey my commands, I will be kind to them. I will bring them back together again from all the different places where they are living. Even if they live far away, I will find them. I will bring them to the place that I have chosen to give honour to my name.”

¹⁰ Lord, these are your people and your servants. You used your great power and strength to rescue them. ¹¹ Please listen to my prayer, my Lord. Hear the prayers of your people who love to respect your name. Please cause the king to be kind to me. May he give me what I ask for.’

I was the king's cupbearer.^[c]

¹¹ The Levite priests were a necessary part of God's Law for Israel's people. But those priests could not make the people completely right with God. If that had been possible, the Levite priests could have continued their work. But we see that God has chosen a different kind of priest to serve him. That priest is not someone from Aaron's family, as the Levites were. Instead, he is a priest in the same way that Melchizedek was God's priest. ¹² When there is a change in the kind of priest like that, there must also be a change in the law. ¹³ It is the Lord Jesus Christ that the Bible speaks about in this way, as God's special priest. But he belongs to a different tribe. He is not a Levite. Nobody else from his tribe ever served God as a priest. ¹⁴ We know that our Lord came from Judah's tribe. Moses never said that priests could come from Judah's tribe. So we see that the old law has changed.

Jesus is a different kind of priest

¹⁵ What we have said becomes even clearer now. Another kind of priest has come, who is a priest like Melchizedek. ¹⁶ Jesus did not become a priest because of a law about which family he came from. He became God's priest because of his powerful life that nothing could ever destroy. ¹⁷ The Bible speaks about him as a priest like this:

¹⁸ So the old law about priests no longer has authority. It was weak and it could not help people. ¹⁹ God's Laws that he gave to Moses could not make anything completely right. But now God has brought us something better to hope for. And in that way, we ourselves can come near to God.

²⁰ Also, when God said that Jesus would be his special priest, he made a strong promise. When the Levites became priests, he did not make a strong promise like that. ²¹ But when Jesus became God's priest, God made a strong promise. God said:

²² Because God promised that to Jesus, we know that his new agreement with his people is very strong. It is a much better agreement than the old one.