Sunday 16 June 2024

22“The Lord GOD says:‘I will also take some of the lofty top of the cedar,and will plant it.I will crop off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one,and I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.23I will plant it in the mountain of the height of Israel;and it will produce boughs,and bear fruit, and be a good cedar.Birds of every kind will dwell in the shade of its branches.24All the trees of the field will know that I,the Lord, have brought down the high tree,have exalted the low tree,have dried up the green tree,and have made the dry tree flourish.

“‘I, the Lord, have spoken and have done it.’”

2It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord,to sing praises to your name, Most High,3to proclaim your loving kindness in the morning,and your faithfulness every night,

13The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.14They are planted in the Lord’s house.They will flourish in our God’s courts.

15They will still produce fruit in old age.They will be full of sap and green,16to show that the Lord is upright.He is my rock,and there is no unrighteousness in him.

6Therefore we are always confident and knowthat while we are at home in the body,we are absent from the Lord;7for we walk by faith, not by sight.8We are courageous,I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the bodyand to be at home with the Lord.9Therefore also we make it our aim,whether at home or absent,to be well pleasing to him.10For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christthat each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done,whether good or bad.

26He said, “God’s Kingdom is as if a man should cast seed on the earth,27and should sleep and rise night and day,and the seed should spring up and grow,though he doesn’t know how.28For the earth bears fruit by itself:first the blade, then the ear,then the full grain in the ear.29But when the fruit is ripe,immediately he puts in the sickle,because the harvest has come.”

30He said, “How will we liken God’s Kingdom?Or with what parable will we illustrate it?31It’s like a grain of mustard seed,which, when it is sown in the earth,though it is less than all the seedsthat are on the earth,32yet when it is sown,grows up and becomes greater than all the herbs,and puts out great branches,so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow.”

33With many such parables he spoke the word to them,as they were able to hear it.34Without a parable he didn’t speak to them;but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.