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Psalm 48

1  Great is the Lord and highly to be praised, ♦︎
   in the city of our God.
2  His holy mountain is fair and lifted high, ♦︎
   the joy of all the earth.
3  On Mount Zion, the divine dwelling place, ♦︎
   stands the city of the great king.
4  In her palaces God has shown himself ♦︎
   to be a sure refuge.
5  For behold, the kings of the earth assembled ♦︎
   and swept forward together.
6  They saw, and were dumbfounded; ♦︎
   dismayed, they fled in terror.
7  Trembling seized them there;
      they writhed like a woman in labour, ♦︎
   as when the east wind shatters the ships of Tarshish.
8  As we had heard, so have we seen
      in the city of the Lord of hosts, the city of our God: ♦︎
   God has established her for ever.
9  We have waited on your loving-kindness, O God, ♦︎
   in the midst of your temple.
10  As with your name, O God,
      so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth; ♦︎
   your right hand is full of justice.
11  Let Mount Zion rejoice and the daughters of Judah be glad, ♦︎
   because of your judgements, O Lord.
12  Walk about Zion and go round about her;
      count all her towers; ♦︎
   consider well her bulwarks; pass through her citadels,
13  That you may tell those who come after
      that such is our God for ever and ever. ♦︎
   It is he that shall be our guide for evermore.

The Budding of Aaron’s Rod

17^*The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ²Speak to the Israelites, and get twelve staffs from them, one for each ancestral house, from all the leaders of their ancestral houses. Write each man’s name on his staff, ³and write Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi. For there shall be one staff for the head of each ancestral house. ⁴Place them in the tent of meeting before the covenant,^* where I meet with you. ⁵And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout; thus I will put a stop to the complaints of the Israelites that they continually make against you. ⁶Moses spoke to the Israelites; and all their leaders gave him staffs, one for each leader, according to their ancestral houses, twelve staffs; and the staff of Aaron was among theirs. ⁷So Moses placed the staffs before the Lord in the tent of the covenant.^*

8 When Moses went into the tent of the covenant^* on the next day, the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted. It put forth buds, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds. ⁹Then Moses brought out all the staffs from before the Lord to all the Israelites; and they looked, and each man took his staff. ¹⁰And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Put back the staff of Aaron before the covenant,^* to be kept as a warning to rebels, so that you may make an end of their complaints against me, or else they will die.’ ¹¹Moses did so; just as the Lord commanded him, so he did.

Results of Justification

5Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we^* have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access^* to this grace in which we stand; and we^* boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we^* also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. ⁹Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.^{* 10}For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. ¹¹But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.