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Psalm 20

1  May the Lord hear you in the day of trouble, ♦︎
   the name of the God of Jacob defend you;
2  Send you help from his sanctuary ♦︎
   and strengthen you out of Zion;
3  Remember all your offerings ♦︎
   and accept your burnt sacrifice;
4  Grant you your heart’s desire ♦︎
   and fulfil all your mind.
5  May we rejoice in your salvation
      and triumph in the name of our God; ♦︎
   may the Lord perform all your petitions.
6  Now I know that the Lord will save his anointed; ♦︎
   he will answer him from his holy heaven,
      with the mighty strength of his right hand.
7  Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, ♦︎
   but we will call only on the name of the Lord our God.
8  They are brought down and fallen, ♦︎
   but we are risen and stand upright.
9  O Lord, save the king ♦︎
   and answer us when we call upon you.

Israel’s Guilt and Punishment

3Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:
² You only have I known
   of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
   for all your iniquities.

³ Do two walk together
   unless they have made an appointment?
⁴ Does a lion roar in the forest,
   when it has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from its den,
   if it has caught nothing?
⁵ Does a bird fall into a snare on the earth,
   when there is no trap for it?
Does a snare spring up from the ground,
   when it has taken nothing?
⁶ Is a trumpet blown in a city,
   and the people are not afraid?
Does disaster befall a city,
   unless the Lord has done it?
⁷ Surely the Lord God does nothing,
   without revealing his secret
   to his servants the prophets.
⁸ The lion has roared;
   who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken;
   who can but prophesy?

⁹ Proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod,
   and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt,
and say, ‘Assemble yourselves on Mount^* Samaria,
   and see what great tumults are within it,
   and what oppressions are in its midst.’
¹⁰ They do not know how to do right, says the Lord,
   those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds.
¹¹ Therefore, thus says the Lord God:
An adversary shall surround the land,
   and strip you of your defence;
   and your strongholds shall be plundered.

12 Thus says the Lord: As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who live in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part^* of a bed.

¹³ Hear, and testify against the house of Jacob,
   says the Lord God, the God of hosts:
¹⁴ On the day I punish Israel for its transgressions,
   I will punish the altars of Bethel,
and the horns of the altar shall be cut off
   and fall to the ground.
¹⁵ I will tear down the winter house as well as the summer house;
   and the houses of ivory shall perish,
and the great houses^* shall come to an end,

says the Lord.

Proclaiming Christ Crucified

2When I came to you, brothers and sisters,^* I did not come proclaiming the mystery^* of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. ²For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. ³And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. ⁴My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom,^* but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

The True Wisdom of God

6 Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. ⁷But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ⁸None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹But, as it is written,
‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
   nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him’—
¹⁰these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ¹¹For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. ¹²Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. ¹³And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.^*

14 Those who are unspiritual^* do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually. ¹⁵Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
¹⁶ ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord
   so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.