Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
God in the Thunderstorm
A psalm of David.
29 Praise the Lord, you angels;
praise the Lord’s glory and power.
2 Praise the Lord for the glory of his name;
worship the Lord because he is holy.
3 The Lord’s voice is heard over the sea.
The glorious God thunders;
the Lord thunders over the ocean.
4 The Lord’s voice is powerful;
the Lord’s voice is majestic.
5 The Lord’s voice breaks the trees;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes the land of Lebanon dance like a calf
and Mount Hermon jump like a baby bull.
7 The Lord’s voice makes the lightning flash.
8 The Lord’s voice shakes the desert;
the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The Lord’s voice shakes the oaks
and strips the leaves off the trees.
In his Temple everyone says, “Glory to God!”
10 The Lord controls the flood.
The Lord will be King forever.
11 The Lord gives strength to his people;
the Lord blesses his people with peace.
1 These are the words of the Teacher, a son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 The Teacher says,
“Useless! Useless!
Completely useless!
Everything is useless.”
3 What do people really gain
from all the hard work they do here on earth?
Things Never Change
4 People live, and people die,
but the earth continues forever.
5 The sun rises, the sun sets,
and then it hurries back to where it rises again.
6 The wind blows to the south;
it blows to the north.
It blows from one direction and then another.
Then it turns around and repeats the same pattern, going nowhere.
7 All the rivers flow to the sea,
but the sea never becomes full.
8 Everything is boring,
so boring that you don’t even want to talk about it.
Words come again and again to our ears,
but we never hear enough,
nor can we ever really see all we want to see.
9 All things continue the way they have been since the beginning.
What has happened will happen again;
there is nothing new here on earth.
10 Someone might say,
“Look, this is new,”
but really it has always been here.
It was here before we were.
11 People don’t remember what happened long ago,
and in the future people will not remember what happens now.
Even later, other people will not remember what was done before them.
Christ Is God’s Power and Wisdom
18 The teaching about the cross is foolishness to those who are being lost, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 It is written in the Scriptures:
“I will cause the wise to lose their wisdom;
I will make the wise unable to understand.” Isaiah 29:14
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the educated person? Where is the skilled talker of this world? God has made the wisdom of the world foolish. 21 In the wisdom of God the world did not know God through its own wisdom. So God chose to use the message that sounds foolish to save those who believe. 22 The Jews ask for miracles, and the Greeks want wisdom. 23 But we preach a crucified Christ. This causes the Jews to stumble and is foolishness to non-Jews. 24 But Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God to those people God has called—Jews and Greeks. 25 Even the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
26 Brothers and sisters, look at what you were when God called you. Not many of you were wise in the way the world judges wisdom. Not many of you had great influence. Not many of you came from important families. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and he chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose what the world thinks is unimportant and what the world looks down on and thinks is nothing in order to destroy what the world thinks is important. 29 God did this so that no one can brag in his presence. 30 Because of God you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God. In Christ we are put right with God, and have been made holy, and have been set free from sin. 31 So, as the Scripture says, “If people want to brag, they should brag only about the Lord.”[a]
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.