Psalms 100; Psalms 101; Psalms 102; 1 Corinthians 1

1 Shout to the Lord, all the earth.

2 Serve the Lord with joy; come before him with singing.

3 Know that the Lord is God. He made us, and we belong to him; we are his people, the sheep he tends.

4 Come into his city with songs of thanksgiving and into his courtyards with songs of praise. Thank him and praise his name.

5 The Lord is good. His love is forever, and his loyalty goes on and on. A psalm of David.

1 I will sing of your love and fairness; Lord, I will sing praises to you.

2 I will be careful to live an innocent life. When will you come to me? I will live an innocent life in my house.

3 I will not look at anything wicked. I hate those who turn against you; they will not be found near me.

4 Let those who want to do wrong stay away from me; I will have nothing to do with evil.

5 If anyone secretly says things against his neighbor, I will stop him. I will not allow people to be proud and look down on others.

6 I will look for trustworthy people so I can live with them in the land. Only those who live innocent lives will be my servants.

7 No one who is dishonest will live in my house; no liars will stay around me.

8 Every morning I will destroy the wicked in the land. I will rid the Lord's city of people who do evil. A prayer of a person who is suffering when he is discouraged and tells the Lord his complaints.

1 Lord, listen to my prayer; let my cry for help come to you.

2 Do not hide from me in my time of trouble. Pay attention to me. When I cry for help, answer me quickly.

3 My life is passing away like smoke, and my bones are burned up with fire.

4 My heart is like grass that has been cut and dried. I forget to eat.

5 Because of my grief, my skin hangs on my bones.

6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl living among the ruins.

7 I lie awake. I am like a lonely bird on a housetop.

8 All day long enemies insult me; those who make fun of me use my name as a curse.

9 I eat ashes for food, and my tears fall into my drinks.

10 Because of your great anger, you have picked me up and thrown me away.

11 My days are like a passing shadow; I am like dried grass.

12 But, Lord, you rule forever, and your fame goes on and on.

13 You will come and have mercy on Jerusalem, because the time has now come to be kind to her; the right time has come.

14 Your servants love even her stones; they even care about her dust.

15 Nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings on earth will honor you.

16 The Lord will rebuild Jerusalem; there his glory will be seen.

17 He will answer the prayers of the needy; he will not reject their prayers.

18 Write these things for the future so that people who are not yet born will praise the Lord.

19 The Lord looked down from his holy place above; from heaven he looked down at the earth.

20 He heard the moans of the prisoners, and he freed those sentenced to die.

21 The name of the Lord will be heard in Jerusalem; his praise will be heard there.

22 People will come together, and kingdoms will serve the Lord.

23 God has made me tired of living; he has cut short my life.

24 So I said, "My God, do not take me in the middle of my life. Your years go on and on.

25 In the beginning you made the earth, and your hands made the skies.

26 They will be destroyed, but you will remain. They will all wear out like clothes. And, like clothes, you will change them and throw them away.

27 But you never change, and your life will never end.

28 Our children will live in your presence, and their children will remain with you." Of David.

1 From Paul. God called me to be an apostle of Christ Jesus because that is what God wanted. Also from Sosthenes, ourbrother in Christ.

2 To the church of God in Corinth, to you who have been made holy in Christ Jesus. You were called to be God's holy people with all people everywhere who pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ -- their Lord and ours:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4 I always thank my God for you because of the grace God has given you in Christ Jesus.

5 I thank God because in Christ you have been made rich in every way, in all your speaking and in all your knowledge.

6 Just as our witness about Christ has been guaranteed to you,

7 so you have every gift from God while you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to come again.

8 Jesus will keep you strong until the end so that there will be no wrong in you on the day our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.

9 God, who has called you to share everything with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

10 I beg you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree with each other and not be split into groups. I beg that you be completely joined together by having the same kind of thinking and the same purpose.

11 My brothers and sisters, some people from Chloe's family have told me quite plainly that there are quarrels among you.

12 This is what I mean: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another says, "I follow Apollos"; another says, "I follow Peter"; and another says, "I follow Christ."

13 Christ has been divided up into different groups! Did Paul die on the cross for you? No! Were you baptized in the name of Paul? No!

14 I thank God I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius

15 so that now no one can say you were baptized in my name.

16 (I also baptized the family of Stephanas, but I do not remember that I baptized anyone else.)

17 Christ did not send me to baptize people but to preach the Good News. And he sent me to preach the Good News without using words of human wisdom so that the crossn of Christ would not lose its power.

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 men to lose their wisdom; I will make the wise men unable to understand."

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 is a big problem to the Jews, and it is foolishness to those who are not 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 someone wants to brag, he should brag only about the Lord."