O Lord, Be Gracious to Me
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
1 lBlessed is the one who considers the poor!1
In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him;
2 the Lord protects him and keeps him alive;
he is called blessed in the land;
you do not mgive him up to the will of his enemies.
3 The Lord sustains him on his sickbed;
in his illness you restore him to full health.2
4 As for me, I said, “O Lord, be gracious to me;
nheal me,3 for oI have sinned against you!”
5 My enemies say of me in malice,
“When will he die, and his name perish?”
6 And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words,
while his heart gathers iniquity;
when he goes out, he tells it abroad.
7 All who hate me whisper together about me;
they imagine the worst for me.4
8 They say, “A deadly thing is poured out5 on him;
he will not rise again from where he lies.”
9 Even my close friend in whom I trusted,
pwho ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
10 But you, O Lord, be gracious to me,
and raise me up, that I may repay them!
11 By this I know that you delight in me:
my enemy will not shout in triumph over me.
12 But you have upheld me because of my integrity,
and set me in your presence forever.
13 qBlessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting!
rAmen and Amen.
Proclaiming Christ Crucified
1 And I, when I came to you, brothers,1 did not come proclaiming to you the testimony2 of God with vlofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you wexcept Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in xweakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were ynot in plausible words of wisdom, but zin demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men3 but in the apower of God.
Wisdom from the Spirit
6 Yet among the bmature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a csecret and hidden wisdom of God, which God ddecreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the eLord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
f“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who glove him”—
10 these things hGod has irevealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For jwho knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have kreceived lnot the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, mthat we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.4
14 nThe natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are ofolly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The pspiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 q“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
