Book of Common Prayer
The Lord's Goodness to His People
106 (A)Praise the Lord!
Give thanks to the Lord, because he is good;
his love is eternal.
2 Who can tell all the great things he has done?
Who can praise him enough?
3 Happy are those who obey his commands,
who always do what is right.
4 Remember me, Lord, when you help your people;
include me when you save them.
5 Let me see the prosperity of your people
and share in the happiness of your nation,
in the glad pride of those who belong to you.
6 We have sinned as our ancestors did;
we have been wicked and evil.
7 (B)Our ancestors in Egypt did not understand God's wonderful acts;
they forgot the many times he showed them his love,
and they rebelled against the Almighty[a] at the Red Sea.
8 But he saved them, as he had promised,
in order to show his great power.
9 (C)He gave a command to the Red Sea,
and it dried up;
he led his people across on dry land.
10 He saved them from those who hated them;
he rescued them from their enemies.
11 But the water drowned their enemies;
not one of them was left.
12 (D)Then his people believed his promises
and sang praises to him.
13 But they quickly forgot what he had done
and acted without waiting for his advice.
14 (E)They were filled with craving in the desert
and put God to the test;
15 so he gave them what they asked for,
but also sent a terrible disease among them.
16 (F)There in the desert they were jealous of Moses
and of Aaron, the Lord's holy servant.
17 Then the earth opened up and swallowed Dathan
and buried Abiram and his family;
18 fire came down on their followers
and burned up those wicked people.
19 (G)They made a gold bull-calf at Sinai
and worshiped that idol;
20 they exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an animal that eats grass.
21 They forgot the God who had saved them
by his mighty acts in Egypt.
22 What wonderful things he did there!
What amazing things at the Red Sea!
23 When God said that he would destroy his people,
his chosen servant, Moses, stood up against God
and kept his anger from destroying them.
24 (H)Then they rejected the pleasant land,
because they did not believe God's promise.
25 They stayed in their tents and grumbled
and would not listen to the Lord.
26 So he have them a solemn warning
that he would make them die in the desert
27 (I)and scatter their descendants among the heathen,
letting them die in foreign countries.
28 (J)Then at Peor, God's people joined in the worship of Baal
and ate sacrifices offered to dead gods.
29 They stirred up the Lord's anger by their actions,
and a terrible disease broke out among them.
30 But Phinehas stood up and punished the guilty,
and the plague was stopped.
31 This has been remembered in his favor ever since
and will be for all time to come.
32 (K)At the springs of Meribah the people made the Lord angry,
and Moses was in trouble on their account.
33 They made him so bitter
that he spoke without stopping to think.
34 (L)They did not kill the heathen,
as the Lord had commanded them to do,
35 but they intermarried with them
and adopted their pagan ways.
36 God's people worshiped idols,
and this caused their destruction.
37 (M)They offered their own sons and daughters
as sacrifices to the idols of Canaan.
38 (N)They killed those innocent children,
and the land was defiled by those murders.
39 They made themselves impure by their actions
and were unfaithful to God.
40 (O)So the Lord was angry with his people;
he was disgusted with them.
41 He abandoned them to the power of the heathen,
and their enemies ruled over them.
42 They were oppressed by their enemies
and were in complete subjection to them.
43 Many times the Lord rescued his people,
but they chose to rebel against him
and sank deeper into sin.
44 Yet the Lord heard them when they cried out,
and he took notice of their distress.
45 For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and because of his great love he relented.
46 He made all their oppressors
feel sorry for them.
47 (P)Save us, O Lord our God,
and bring us back from among the nations,
so that we may be thankful
and praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, the God of Israel;
praise him now and forever!
Let everyone say, “Amen!”
Praise the Lord!
The Religious Festivals
23 The Lord gave Moses 2 the following regulations for the religious festivals, when the people of Israel are to gather for worship. 3 (A)You have six days in which to do your work, but remember that the seventh day, the Sabbath, is a day of rest. On that day do not work, but gather for worship. The Sabbath belongs to the Lord, no matter where you live. 4 Proclaim the following festivals at the appointed times.
Passover and Unleavened Bread(B)
5 (C)The Passover, celebrated to honor the Lord, begins at sunset on the fourteenth day of the first month. 6 (D)On the fifteenth day the Festival of Unleavened Bread begins, and for seven days you must not eat any bread made with yeast. 7 On the first of these days you shall gather for worship and do none of your daily work. 8 Offer your food offerings to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day you shall again gather for worship, but you shall do none of your daily work.
9-10 When you come into the land that the Lord is giving you and you harvest your grain, take the first sheaf to the priest. 11 He shall present it as a special offering to the Lord, so that you may be accepted. The priest shall present it the day after the Sabbath. 12 On the day you present the offering of grain, also sacrifice as a burnt offering a one-year-old male lamb that has no defects. 13 With it you shall present four pounds of flour mixed with olive oil as a food offering. The odor of this offering is pleasing to the Lord. You shall also present with it an offering of one quart of wine. 14 Do not eat any of the new grain, whether raw, roasted, or baked into bread, until you have brought this offering to God. This regulation is to be observed by all your descendants for all time to come.
The Harvest Festival(E)
15 (F)Count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath on which you bring your sheaf of grain to present to the Lord. 16 On the fiftieth day, the day after the seventh Sabbath, present to the Lord another new offering of grain. 17 Each family is to bring two loaves of bread and present them to the Lord as a special gift. Each loaf shall be made of four pounds of flour baked with yeast and shall be presented to the Lord as an offering of the first grain to be harvested. 18 And with the bread the community is to present seven one-year-old lambs, one bull, and two rams, none of which may have any defects. They shall be offered as a burnt offering to the Lord, along with a grain offering and a wine offering. The odor of this offering is pleasing to the Lord. 19 Also offer one male goat as a sin offering and two one-year-old male lambs as a fellowship offering. 20 The priest shall present the bread with the two lambs as a special gift to the Lord for the priests. These offerings are holy. 21 On that day do none of your daily work, but gather for worship. Your descendants are to observe this regulation for all time to come, no matter where they live.
22 (G)When you harvest your fields, do not cut the grain at the edges of the fields, and do not go back to cut the heads of grain that were left; leave them for poor people and foreigners. The Lord is your God.
The Wicked One
2 (A)Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to be with him: I beg you, my friends, 2 not to be so easily confused in your thinking or upset by the claim that the Day of the Lord has come. Perhaps it is thought that we said this while prophesying or preaching, or that we wrote it in a letter. 3 Do not let anyone deceive you in any way. For the Day will not come until the final Rebellion takes place and the Wicked One appears, who is destined to hell. 4 (B)He will oppose every so-called god or object of worship and will put himself above them all. He will even go in and sit down in God's Temple and claim to be God.
5 Don't you remember? I told you all this while I was with you. 6 Yet there is something that keeps this from happening now, and you know what it is. At the proper time, then, the Wicked One will appear. 7 The Mysterious Wickedness is already at work, but what is going to happen will not happen until the one who holds it back is taken out of the way. 8 (C)Then the Wicked One will be revealed, but when the Lord Jesus comes, he will kill him with the breath from his mouth and destroy him with his dazzling presence. 9 (D)The Wicked One will come with the power of Satan and perform all kinds of false miracles and wonders, 10 and use every kind of wicked deceit on those who will perish. They will perish because they did not welcome and love the truth so as to be saved. 11 And so God sends the power of error to work in them so that they believe what is false. 12 The result is that all who have not believed the truth, but have taken pleasure in sin, will be condemned.
You Are Chosen for Salvation
13 We must thank God at all times for you, friends, you whom the Lord loves. For God chose you as the first[a] to be saved by the Spirit's power to make you his holy people and by your faith in the truth. 14 God called you to this through the Good News we preached to you; he called you to possess your share of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15 So then, our friends, stand firm and hold on to those truths which we taught you, both in our preaching and in our letter.
16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us unfailing courage and a firm hope, 17 encourage you and strengthen you to always do and say what is good.
Judging Others(A)
7 “Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, 2 (B)for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you apply to others. 3 Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? 4 How dare you say to your brother, ‘Please, let me take that speck out of your eye,’ when you have a log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
6 “Do not give what is holy to dogs—they will only turn and attack you. Do not throw your pearls in front of pigs—they will only trample them underfoot.
Ask, Seek, Knock(C)
7 (D)“Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks will receive, and anyone who seeks will find, and the door will be opened to those who knock. 9 Would any of you who are fathers give your son a stone when he asks for bread? 10 Or would you give him a snake when he asks for a fish? 11 As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
12 (E)“Do for others what you want them to do for you: this is the meaning of the Law of Moses and of the teachings of the prophets.
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.