Sunday, September 3, 2028

⁴Sing to God! Sing praises to his name! Extol him who rides on the clouds: to the LORD, his name! Rejoice before him! ⁵A father of the fatherless, and a defender of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. ⁶God sets the lonely in families. He brings out the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land. ⁷God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness... Selah. ¹⁰Your congregation lived therein. You, God, prepared your goodness for the poor. ¹¹The Lord announced the word. The ones who proclaim it are a great company.

¹⁸For you have not come to a mountain that might be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness, darkness, storm, ¹⁹the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them, ²²But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable multitudes of angels, ²³to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, ²⁴to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel.

¹When he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching him. ⁷He spoke a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the best seats, and said to them, ⁸“When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, don’t sit in the best seat, since perhaps someone more honorable than you might be invited by him, ⁹and he who invited both of you would come and tell you, ‘Make room for this person.’ Then you would begin, with shame, to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may tell you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” ¹²He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. ¹³But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; ¹⁴and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.”