Book of Common Prayer
A Prayer for Help
120 When I was in trouble, I called to the Lord,
and he answered me.
2 Save me, Lord,
from liars and deceivers.
3 You liars, what will God do to you?
How will he punish you?
4 With a soldier's sharp arrows,
with red-hot coals!
5 Living among you is as bad as living in Meshech
or among the people of Kedar.[a]
6 I have lived too long
with people who hate peace!
7 When I speak of peace,
they are for war.
The Lord Our Protector
121 I look to the mountains;
where will my help come from?
2 My help will come from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let you fall;
your protector is always awake.
4 The protector of Israel
never dozes or sleeps.
5 The Lord will guard you;
he is by your side to protect you.
6 The sun will not hurt you during the day,
nor the moon during the night.
7 The Lord will protect you from all danger;
he will keep you safe.
8 He will protect you as you come and go
now and forever.
In Praise of Jerusalem[b]
122 I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the Lord's house.”
2 And now we are here,
standing inside the gates of Jerusalem!
3 Jerusalem is a city restored
in beautiful order and harmony.
4 This is where the tribes come,
the tribes of Israel,
to give thanks to the Lord
according to his command.
5 Here the kings of Israel
sat to judge their people.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you prosper.
7 May there be peace inside your walls
and safety in your palaces.”
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends
I say to Jerusalem, “Peace be with you!”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God
I pray for your prosperity.
A Prayer for Mercy
123 Lord, I look up to you,
up to heaven, where you rule.
2 As a servant depends on his master,
as a maid depends on her mistress,
so we will keep looking to you, O Lord our God,
until you have mercy on us.
3 Be merciful to us, Lord, be merciful;
we have been treated with so much contempt.
4 We have been mocked too long by the rich
and scorned by proud oppressors.
God the Protector of His People[c]
124 What if the Lord had not been on our side?
Answer, O Israel!
2 “If the Lord had not been on our side
when our enemies attacked us,
3 then they would have swallowed us alive
in their furious anger against us;
4 then the flood would have carried us away,
the water would have covered us,
5 the raging torrent would have drowned us.”
6 Let us thank the Lord,
who has not let our enemies destroy us.
7 We have escaped like a bird from a hunter's trap;
the trap is broken, and we are free!
8 Our help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
The Security of God's People
125 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,
which can never be shaken, never be moved.
2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people,
now and forever.
3 The wicked will not always rule over the land of the righteous;
if they did, the righteous themselves might do evil.
4 Lord, do good to those who are good,
to those who obey your commands.
5 But when you punish the wicked,
punish also those who abandon your ways.
Peace be with Israel!
A Prayer for Deliverance
126 When the Lord brought us back to Jerusalem,[d]
it was like a dream!
2 How we laughed, how we sang for joy!
Then the other nations said about us,
“The Lord did great things for them.”
3 Indeed he did great things for us;
how happy we were!
4 Lord, make us prosperous again,[e]
just as the rain brings water back to dry riverbeds.
5 Let those who wept as they planted their crops,
gather the harvest with joy!
6 Those who wept as they went out carrying the seed
will come back singing for joy,
as they bring in the harvest.
In Praise of God's Goodness[f]
127 If the Lord does not build the house,
the work of the builders is useless;
if the Lord does not protect the city,
it does no good for the sentries to stand guard.
2 It is useless to work so hard for a living,
getting up early and going to bed late.
For the Lord provides for those he loves,
while they are asleep.
3 Children are a gift from the Lord;
they are a real blessing.
4 The sons a man has when he is young
are like arrows in a soldier's hand.
5 Happy is the man who has many such arrows.
He will never be defeated
when he meets his enemies in the place of judgment.
8 “So then, because you would not listen to him, the Lord Almighty says, 9 ‘I am going to send for all the peoples from the north and for my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. I am going to bring them to fight against Judah and its inhabitants and against all the neighboring nations. I am going to destroy this nation and its neighbors and leave them in ruins forever, a terrible and shocking sight. I, the Lord, have spoken. 10 (A)I will silence their shouts of joy and gladness and the happy sounds of wedding feasts. They will have no oil for their lamps, and there will be no more grain. 11 (B)This whole land will be left in ruins and will be a shocking sight, and the neighboring nations will serve the king of Babylonia for seventy years. 12 After that I will punish Babylonia and its king for their sin. I will destroy that country and leave it in ruins forever. 13 I will punish Babylonia with all the disasters that I threatened to bring on the nations when I spoke through Jeremiah—all the disasters recorded in this book. 14 I will pay the Babylonians back for what they have done, and many nations and great kings will make slaves of them.’”
God's Judgment on the Nations
15 The Lord, the God of Israel, said to me, “Here is a wine cup filled with my anger. Take it to all the nations to whom I send you, and make them drink from it. 16 When they drink from it, they will stagger and go out of their minds because of the war I am sending against them.”
17 So I took the cup from the Lord's hand, gave it to all the nations to whom the Lord had sent me, and made them drink from it.
10 My friends, how I wish with all my heart that my own people might be saved! How I pray to God for them! 2 I can assure you that they are deeply devoted to God; but their devotion is not based on true knowledge. 3 They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God's way of putting people right. 4 For Christ has brought the Law to an end, so that everyone who believes is put right with God.
Salvation Is for All
5 (A)Moses wrote this about being put right with God by obeying the Law: “Whoever obeys the commands of the Law will live.” 6 (B)But what the scripture says about being put right with God through faith is this: “You are not to ask yourself, Who will go up into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down). 7 “Nor are you to ask, Who will go down into the world below?” (that is, to bring Christ up from death). 8 What it says is this: “God's message is near you, on your lips and in your heart”—that is, the message of faith that we preach. 9 If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved. 10 For it is by our faith that we are put right with God; it is by our confession that we are saved. 11 (C)The scripture says, “Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.” 12 This includes everyone, because there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles; God is the same Lord of all and richly blesses all who call to him. 13 (D)As the scripture says, “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved.”
18 The Jewish authorities, however, were not willing to believe that he had been blind and could now see, until they called his parents 19 and asked them, “Is this your son? You say that he was born blind; how is it, then, that he can now see?”
20 His parents answered, “We know that he is our son, and we know that he was born blind. 21 But we do not know how it is that he is now able to see, nor do we know who cured him of his blindness. Ask him; he is old enough, and he can answer for himself!” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, who had already agreed that anyone who said he believed that Jesus was the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue. 23 That is why his parents said, “He is old enough; ask him!”
24 A second time they called back the man who had been born blind, and said to him, “Promise before God that you will tell the truth! We know that this man who cured you is a sinner.”
25 “I do not know if he is a sinner or not,” the man replied. “One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see.”
26 “What did he do to you?” they asked. “How did he cure you of your blindness?”
27 “I have already told you,” he answered, “and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Maybe you, too, would like to be his disciples?”
28 They insulted him and said, “You are that fellow's disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. 29 We know that God spoke to Moses; as for that fellow, however, we do not even know where he comes from!”
30 The man answered, “What a strange thing that is! You do not know where he comes from, but he cured me of my blindness! 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners; he does listen to people who respect him and do what he wants them to do. 32 Since the beginning of the world nobody has ever heard of anyone giving sight to a person born blind. 33 Unless this man came from God, he would not be able to do a thing.”
34 They answered, “You were born and brought up in sin—and you are trying to teach us?” And they expelled him from the synagogue.
Spiritual Blindness
35 When Jesus heard what had happened, he found the man and asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 The man answered, “Tell me who he is, sir, so that I can believe in him!”
37 Jesus said to him, “You have already seen him, and he is the one who is talking with you now.”
38 “I believe, Lord!” the man said, and knelt down before Jesus.
39 Jesus said, “I came to this world to judge, so that the blind should see and those who see should become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were there with him heard him say this and asked him, “Surely you don't mean that we are blind, too?”
41 Jesus answered, “If you were blind, then you would not be guilty; but since you claim that you can see, this means that you are still guilty.”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.