Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
A song; a psalm by Korah’s descendants.
48 The Lord is great.
He should be highly praised.
His holy mountain is in the city of our God.
2 Its beautiful peak is the joy of the whole earth.
Mount Zion is on the northern ridge.
It is the city of the great king.
3 God is in its palaces.
He has proved that he is a stronghold.
4 The kings have gathered.
They marched together.
5 ⌞When⌟ they saw ⌞Mount Zion⌟,
they were astonished.
They were terrified and ran away in fear.
6 Trembling seized them
like the trembling that a woman experiences during labor.
7 With the east wind you smash the ships of Tarshish.
8 The things we had only heard about, we have now seen
in the city of the Lord of Armies,
in the city of our God.
God makes Zion stand firm forever. Selah
9 Inside your temple we carefully reflect on your mercy, O God.
10 Like your name, O God,
your praise ⌞reaches⌟ to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with righteousness.
11 Let Mount Zion be glad
and the cities of Judah rejoice
because of your judgments.
12 Walk around Zion.
Go around it.
Count its towers.
13 Examine its embankments.
Walk through its palaces.
Then you can tell the next generation,
14 “This God is our God forever and ever.
He will lead us beyond death.”
The Lord’s Promise to Gather Israel from the Nations
14 Then the Lord spoke his word to me. He said, 15 “Son of man, the people who live in Jerusalem are talking about your own relatives and about the entire nation of Israel. The people who live in Jerusalem say, ‘They are far away from the Lord. This land has been given to us as our own property.’
16 “So tell them, ‘This is what the Almighty Lord says: Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, I have been their sanctuary for a little while among the countries where they’ve gone.’
17 “So tell them, ‘This is what the Almighty Lord says: I will bring them together from the nations and gather them from the countries where I’ve scattered them. I will give them the land of Israel. 18 They will come and remove all the disgusting and detestable things that are there. 19 I will give them a single purpose and put a new spirit in them. I will remove their stubborn hearts and give them obedient hearts. 20 Then they will live by my laws and obey my rules. They will be my people, and I will be their God. 21 But as for those whose minds are set on following detestable and disgusting idols, I will pay them back for what they have done, declares the Almighty Lord.’ ”
The Glory of the Lord Leaves Jerusalem
22 Then the angels [a] raised their wings, with the wheels beside them. The glory of the God of Israel was above them. 23 The Lord’s glory left the middle of the city and stopped above the mountain east of the city.
24 In this vision from God’s Spirit, the Spirit lifted me and brought me to the exiles in Babylonia. Then the vision I saw left me.
25 I told the exiles everything the Lord had shown me.
12 Now, we didn’t receive the spirit that belongs to the world. Instead, we received the Spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things which God has freely given us. 13 We don’t speak about these things using teachings that are based on intellectual arguments like people do. Instead, we use the Spirit’s teachings. We explain spiritual things to those who have the Spirit.[a]
14 A person who isn’t spiritual doesn’t accept the teachings of God’s Spirit. He thinks they’re nonsense. He can’t understand them because a person must be spiritual to evaluate them. 15 Spiritual people evaluate everything but are subject to no one’s evaluation.
16 “Who has known the mind of the Lord
so that he can teach him?”
However, we have the mind of Christ.
Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020 by God’s Word to the Nations Mission Society. All rights reserved.