Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 48[a]
Thanksgiving for the Deliverance of God’s People
1 A psalm of the sons of Korah.[b] A song.
2 Great is the Lord and worthy of high praise
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain,[c] 3 towering in its beauty,
is the joy of the entire earth.
Mount Zion, the true heights of the north,[d]
is the city of the great King.
4 God is in her citadels
and has revealed himself as her fortress.[e]
5 [f]For the kings conspired together
and came onward in unison.
6 As soon as they beheld her, they were astounded;
filled with panic, they fled.
7 They were seized with trembling,
with pains like those of a woman in labor,
8 as though a wind from the east[g]
were breaking up the ships of Tarshish.
9 What we had heard,
we have now beheld for ourselves[h]
in the city of the Lord of hosts,
in the city of our God
that he established to endure forever. Selah
10 O God, as we stand in the midst of your temple,
we will meditate on your kindness.[i]
11 Like your name,[j] O God,
your praise extends to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with righteousness;
12 let Mount Zion rejoice.
Let the towns of Judah exult
in your saving judgments.[k]
13 [l]Walk around Zion; pass throughout her;
count the number of her towers.
14 Take careful note of her ramparts,
walk through her citadels,
so that you may recount for future generations
15 that such is God;
our God forever and ever,
he will be our guide eternally.[m]
14 Restoration of the People in Exile. Then the word of the Lord was addressed to me: 15 Son of man, it is about your brothers and your kinsmen and the entire house of Israel that the inhabitants of Israel have said, “They have strayed far from the Lord. This land has been given to us as our possession.”
16 Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: Although I removed them far away among the nations and scattered them over the earth, I have nevertheless been a sanctuary to them for a time in the countries where they settled.
17 Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the nations and bring you together from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
18 When they return there, they will purge it of all its vile and abominable practices. 19 I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh.
20 Thus, they will live according to my statutes and observe and obey my ordinances. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 21 However, those whose hearts are determined to continue their vile and abominable practices I will force to answer for all they have done. Thus says the Lord God.
22 Then the cherubim lifted their wings, with the wheels beside them and the glory of the God of Israel above them, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. 23 The glory of the Lord rose from the center of the city and halted on the mountain to the east of it. 24 The Spirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God to the exiles in Chaldea. After the vision I had seen faded, 25 I told the exiles everything that the Lord had revealed to me.
12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed upon us by God. 13 And we speak of these things in words taught to us not by human wisdom but by the Spirit, expressing spiritual things in spiritual words.[a]
14 An unspiritual person refuses to accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him such things are foolish. He is unable to understand them because they can be discerned only in a spiritual way. 15 A spiritual person[b] discerns all things, and he is himself subject to no one else’s judgment:
16 “For who has ever known the mind of the Lord?
Who has ever been his instructor?”
But we possess the mind of Christ.
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