Book of Common Prayer
33 God transforms wild, flowing rivers into dry, lonely deserts,
lively springs of water into thirsty ground.
34 He turns lush gardens into lifeless wastelands,
all because of the wickedness of those who reside there.
35 Yet He transforms a dry, lonely desert into pools of living water,
parched ground into lively springs.
36 And He allows those who are hungry to live there
so that they might build a livable city.
37 There they sow fields and plant vineyards
and gather up an abundant harvest.
38 He anoints them with His blessings, and they greatly increase in number.
He does not allow their herds to dwindle.
39 When His people lessen in number and are humbled
through persecution, suffering, and brokenheartedness,
40 He pours out contempt on those responsible leaders
and then makes them drift around in an uncharted wasteland.
41 But He raises the poor away from their suffering
and multiplies their families like a flock.
42 The righteous see God’s actions, and they take delight in what He does,
but the unrighteous don’t dare to speak.
43 Is there anyone wise? If so, may the wise take notice of these things
and reflect upon the loyal love of the Eternal.
Psalm 108
A song of David.
1 My heart is committed, O God:
I will sing;
I will sing praises with great affection
and pledge my whole soul to the singing.
2 Wake up the harp and lyre, and strum the strings;
I will stir the sleepy dawn from slumber!
3 I will stand and offer You my thanks, Eternal One, in the presence of others;
I will sing of Your greatness among the nations no matter where I am.
4 For Your amazing love soars overhead far into the heavens;
Your truth rises up to the clouds
where passing light bends.
5 O God, that You would be lifted up above the heavens in the hearts of Your people
until the whole earth knows Your glory.
6 Reach down and rescue those whom You love;
pull us to safety by Your mighty right hand, and answer me.
7 God’s voice has been heard in His holy sanctuary:
“I will celebrate.
I will allocate Shechem and the Succoth Valley to My people.
8 Gilead belongs to Me, and so does Manasseh;
Ephraim is the helmet that protects My head;
Judah is the scepter through which I rule;
9 Moab is the washpot in which I clean Myself;
I will throw My shoe over Edom in conquest;
Philistia will soon hear My victory shout.”
10 But who will take me into the fortified city?
Who will lead me into Edom?
11 Have You not turned Your back on us, O God?
Will You stay away and not accompany our armies, O God?
12 Help us against our enemy; we need Your help!
It’s useless to trust in the hand of man for liberation.
13 Only through God can we be successful.
It is God alone who will defeat our enemies and bring us victory!
Psalm 33
1 Release your heart’s joy in sweet music to the Eternal.
When the upright passionately sing glory-filled songs to Him, everything is in its right place.
2 Worship the Eternal with your instruments, strings offering their praise;
write awe-filled songs to Him on the 10-stringed harp.
3 Sing to Him a new song;
play each the best way you can,
and don’t be afraid to be bold with your joyful feelings.
4 For the word of the Eternal is perfect and true;
His actions are always faithful and right.
5 He loves virtue and equity;
the Eternal’s love fills the whole earth.
6 The unfathomable cosmos came into being at the word of the Eternal’s imagination, a solitary voice in endless darkness.
The breath of His mouth whispered the sea of stars into existence.
7 He gathers every drop of every ocean as in a jar,
securing the ocean depths as His watery treasure.
8 Let all people stand in awe of the Eternal;
let every man, woman, and child live in wonder of Him.
9 For He spoke, and all things came into being.
A single command from His lips, and all creation obeyed and stood its ground.
10 The Eternal cripples the schemes of the other nations;
He impedes the plans of rival peoples.
11 The Eternal’s purposes will last to the end of time;
the thoughts of His heart will awaken and stir all generations.
12 The nation whose True God is the Eternal is truly blessed;
fortunate are all whom He chooses to inherit His legacy.
13 The Eternal peers down from heaven
and watches all of humanity;
14 He observes every soul
from His divine residence.
15 He has formed every human heart, breathing life into every human spirit;
He knows the deeds of each person, inside and out.
16 A king is not delivered by the might of his army.
Even the strongest warrior is not saved by his own strength.
17 A horse is not the way to victory;
its great strength cannot rescue.
18 Listen, the eye of the Eternal is upon those who live in awe of Him,
those who hope in His steadfast love,
19 That He may save them from the darkness of the grave
and be kept alive during the lean seasons.
20 We live with hope in the Eternal. We wait for Him,
for He is our Divine Help and Impenetrable Shield.
21 Our hearts erupt with joy in Him
because we trust His holy name.
22 O Eternal, drench us with Your endless love,
even now as we wait for You.
21 This is the Eternal’s message against Sennacherib:
“She has abhorred and ridiculed you,
Zion’s virgin daughter.
She has ridiculed you behind your back,
Jerusalem’s daughter!
22 Whom have you rebuked and spoken blasphemies against?
Whom do you speak loudly against?
And arrogantly lift up your eyes
against the Holy One, Israel’s God?
23 Your messengers have been your vessels of rebuke against the Lord;
you have spoken, ‘In the company of my countless chariots,
I arrived at the mountain heights.
At the most distant lands of Lebanon,
I chopped down the tallest cedars
and the finest-looking cypress trees.
I went to its most distant resting place,
in its deepest forest.
24 I made wells in the ground
and quenched my thirst with foreign waters;
With the bottom of my feet I soaked up
every last drop of Egypt’s rivers.’
25 Don’t you know?
I did this thing a long time ago;
From the beginning, I planned it.
I have now done it,
So that you might cause strong cities
to turn into piles of rubble.
26 Those who lived there were weak;
they were distressed and humiliated.
They became like the grass that grows in the field
and also like the green herb,
Just like grass that grows on the roofs of houses
but is burned by the sun before it gets too high and thick.
27 But I am aware of everything you do—
when you sit down, when you go out, when you return—
and I am aware of your fury against Me.
28 Because you have raged against Me,
because your arrogance has flooded My ears,
I am going to insert My hook into your nose
and harness your lips with My bridle,
And I will send you back in the direction
from which you came.
29 “This will be the sign for you: for the first year, you will feast on what grows on its own; for the second year, you will feast on what grows from the original source; and for the third year, you will prepare the soil, gather, plant vineyards, and feast on their fruit. 30 Whatever is left of Judah’s house will again spread its roots down into the soil and grow upward with fruit. 31 A remnant will depart from Jerusalem; survivors will depart from Mount Zion. This will all be accomplished by the intense passion of the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies.”
32 This is the Eternal’s message regarding Assyria’s king: “He will not approach this city, nor will he shoot an arrow toward it. He will not approach it with a shield in hand or construct a ramp against it. 33 He will go back the same way he came, and he will not approach this city.” This is the Eternal’s message. 34 “I will defend this city in order to preserve it for My own honor and for the honor of David, My servant.”
35 That night one of the Eternal One’s heavenly messengers invaded the Assyrian camp and struck 185,000 men. When they woke up the next morning, the camp was filled with corpses. 36 Assyria’s king, Sennacherib, went away and returned to his own land, Nineveh.
10 I wouldn’t want you to be ignorant of our history, brothers and sisters. Our ancestors were once safeguarded under a miraculous cloud in the wilderness and brought safely through the sea. 2 Enveloped in water by cloud and by sea, they were, you might say, ritually cleansed into Moses through baptism.[a] 3 Together they were sustained supernaturally: they all ate the same spiritual food, manna; 4 and they all drank the same spiritual water, flowing from a spiritual rock that was always with them, for the rock was the Anointed One, our Liberating King. 5 Despite all of this, they were punished in the wilderness because God was unhappy with most of them.
6 Look at what happened to them as an example; it’s right there in the Scriptures so that we won’t make the same mistakes and hunger after evil as they did. So here’s my advice: 7 don’t degrade yourselves by worshiping anything less than the living God as some of them did. Remember it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and then rose up in dance and play.”[b] 8 We must be careful not to engage in sexual sins as some of them did. In one day, 23,000 died because of sin.[c] 9 None of us must test the limits of the Lord’s patience. Some of the Israelites did, and serpents bit them and killed them. 10 You need to stop your groaning and whining. Remember the story. Some of them complained, and the messenger of death came for them and destroyed them. 11 All these things happened for a reason: to sound a warning. They were written down and passed down to us to teach us. They were meant especially for us because the beginning of the end is happening in our time. 12 So let even the most confident believers remember their examples and be very careful not to fall as some of them did.
One of the strengths of the Jewish people is their corporate identity that comes from belonging to a unique, suffering people deeply loved by God. The tendency for the new, non-Jewish believers may be to create a new identity among themselves because they lack the sense of belonging shared by Israel’s descendants. A new day is dawning, a day when all may come to God regardless of ethnicity, locale, or social class. Believers in Corinth are not part of a new movement; they are a fresh expression of the historic movement of God.
The twenty-first century church needs to hear this truth today as much as the church in Corinth did two millennia ago. The world has changed drastically since the times of Abraham, David, John the Baptist, and even Martin Luther. In the midst of radical economic and technological advances, some within the church are embracing new or contemporary practices and regarding them as somehow superior to ancient and historic practices. Paul is challenging this idea and calling all believers to see themselves as a part of the local, global, and historic church.
13 Any temptation you face will be nothing new. But God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can handle. But He always provides a way of escape so that you will be able to endure and keep moving forward.
18 Jesus saw that a crowd had gathered around Him, and He gave orders to go to the other side of the sea. 19 A scribe came up to Him.
Scribe: Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.
Jesus: 20 Foxes have dens in which to sleep, and the birds have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.
Disciple: 21 Jesus, before I do the things You’ve asked me to do, I must first bury my father.
Jesus: 22 Follow Me! And let the dead bury their own dead.
Does Jesus say, “Fair enough, you must of course bury your father. Just catch up with Me when you are done”? No. This is one of the strange and radical things Jesus brings about—our families are no longer our families. Our deepest bonds are not those of blood. Our family now is found in the bonds of fellowship made possible by this Jesus.
23 And then Jesus got into a boat, and His disciples followed Him. 24 Out of nowhere, a vicious storm blew over the sea. Waves were lapping up over the boat, threatening to overtake it! Yet Jesus was asleep. 25 Frightened (not to mention confused—how could anyone sleep through this?), the disciples woke Him up.
Disciples: Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!
Jesus: 26 Please! What are you so afraid of, you of little faith?
Jesus got up, told the wind and the waves to calm down, and they did. The sea became still and calm once again. 27 The disciples were astonished.
Disciples: Who is this? What sort of man is He, that the sea and the winds listen to Him?
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.