Psalms 146; Psalms 147; 1 Corinthians 15:1-28

1 Praise the Lord! My whole being, praise the Lord.

2 I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praises to my God as long as I live.

3 Do not put your trust in princes or other people, who cannot save you.

4 When people die, they are buried. Then all of their plans come to an end.

5 Happy are those who are helped by the God of Jacob. Their hope is in the Lord their God.

6 He made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in it. He remains loyal forever.

7 He does what is fair for those who have been wronged. He gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free.

8 The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up people who are in trouble. The Lord loves those who do right.

9 The Lord protects the foreigners. He defends the orphans and widows, but he blocks the way of the wicked.

10 The Lord will be King forever. Jerusalem, your God is everlasting.

1 Praise the Lord! It is good to sing praises to our God; it is good and pleasant to praise him.

2 The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem; he brings back the captured Israelites.

3 He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.

4 He counts the stars and names each one.

5 Our Lord is great and very powerful. There is no limit to what he knows.

6 The Lord defends the humble, but he throws the wicked to the ground.

7 Sing praises to the Lord; praise our God with harps.

8 He fills the sky with clouds and sends rain to the earth and makes grass grow on the hills.

9 He gives food to cattle and to the little birds that call.

10 He does not enjoy the strength of a horse or the strength of a man.

11 The Lord is pleased with those who respect him, with those who trust his love.

12 Jerusalem, praise the Lord; Jerusalem, praise your God.

13 He makes your city gates strong and blesses your children inside.

14 He brings peace to your country and fills you with the finest grain.

15 He gives a command to the earth, and it quickly obeys him.

16 He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes.

17 He throws down hail like rocks. No one can stand the cold he sends.

18 Then he gives a command, and it melts. He sends the breezes, and the waters flow.

19 He gave his word to Jacob, his laws and demands to Israel.

20 He didn't do this for any other nation. They don't know his laws.

1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remember the Good News I brought to you. You received this Good News and continue strong in it.

2 And you are being saved by it if you continue believing what I told you. If you do not, then you believed for nothing.

3 I passed on to you what I received, of which this was most important: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say;

4 that he was buried and was raised to life on the third day as the Scriptures say;

5 and that he was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles.

6 After that, Jesus was seen by more than five hundred of the believers at the same time. Most of them are still living today, but some have died.

7 Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.

8 Last of all he was seen by me -- as by a person not born at the normal time.

9 All the other apostles are greater than I am. I am not even good enough to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

10 But God's grace has made me what I am, and his grace to me was not wasted. I worked harder than all the other apostles. (But it was not I really; it was God's grace that was with me.)

11 So if I preached to you or the other apostles preached to you, we all preach the same thing, and this is what you believed.

12 Now since we preached that Christ was raised from the dead, why do some of you say that people will not be raised from the dead?

13 If no one is ever raised from the dead, then Christ has not been raised.

14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is worth nothing, and your faith is worth nothing.

15 And also, we are guilty of lying about God, because we testified of him that he raised Christ from the dead. But if people are not raised from the dead, then God never raised Christ.

16 If the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised either.

17 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith has nothing to it; you are still guilty of your sins.

18 And those in Christ who have already died are lost.

19 If our hope in Christ is for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone else in the world.

20 But Christ has truly been raised from the dead -- the first one and proof that those who sleep in death will also be raised.

21 Death has come because of what one man did, but the rising from death also comes because of one man.

22 In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in Christ all of us will be made alive again.

23 But everyone will be raised to life in the right order. Christ was first to be raised. When Christ comes again, those who belong to him will be raised to life,

24 and then the end will come. At that time Christ will destroy all rulers, authorities, and powers, and he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father.

25 Christ must rule until he puts all enemies under his control.

26 The last enemy to be destroyed will be death.

27 The Scripture says that God put all things under his control. When it says "all things" are under him, it is clear this does not include God himself. God is the One who put everything under his control.

28 After everything has been put under the Son, then he will put himself under God, who had put all things under him. Then God will be the complete ruler over everything.