Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 25
A song of David.
1 ALWAYS I will lift up my soul to You, Eternal One,
2 BECAUSE You are my God and I put my trust in You.
Do not let me be humiliated.
Do not let my enemies celebrate at my expense.
3 CERTAINLY none of the people who rely on You will be shamed,
but those who are unfaithful, who intentionally deceive,
they are the ones who will be disgraced.
4 DEMONSTRATE Your ways, O Eternal One.
Teach me to understand so I can follow.
5 EASE me down the path of Your truth.
FEED me Your word
because You are the True God who has saved me.
I wait all day long, hoping, trusting in You.
6 GRACIOUS Eternal One, remember Your compassion; rekindle Your concern and love,
which have always been part of Your actions toward those who are Yours.
7 Do not HOLD against me the sins I committed when I was young;
instead, deal with me according to Your mercy and love.
Then Your goodness may be demonstrated in all the world, Eternal One.
8 IMMENSELY good and honorable is the Eternal;
that’s why He teaches sinners the way.
9 With JUSTICE, He directs the humble in all that is right,
and He shows them His way.
10 KIND and true are all the ways of the Eternal
to the people who keep His covenant and His words.
11 O LORD, the Eternal, bring glory to Your name,
and forgive my sins because they are beyond number.
12 MAY anyone who fears the Eternal
be shown the path he should choose.
13 His soul will NOT only live in goodness,
but his children will inherit the land.
14 ONLY those who stand in awe of the Eternal will have intimacy with Him,
and He will reveal His covenant to them.
15 PERPETUALLY my focus takes me to the Eternal
because He will set me free from the traps laid for me.
16 QUIETLY turn Your eyes to me and be compassionate toward me
because I am lonely and persecuted.
17 RAPIDLY my heart beats as troubles build on the horizon.
Come relieve me from these threats.
18 SEE my troubles and my misery,
and forgive all my sins.
19 TAKE notice of my enemies.
See how there are so many of them
who hate me and would seek my violent destruction.
20 Watch over my soul,
and let me face shame and defeat
UNASHAMED because You are my refuge.
21 May honor and strong character keep me safe.
VIGILANTLY I wait for You, hoping, trusting.
22 Save Israel from all its troubles,
O True God.
Psalm 9[a]
For the worship leader. A song of David to the tune “Death of a Son.”[b]
In the Hebrew manuscripts, Psalms 9 and 10 work as a unit because together they form an acrostic poem, meaning each stanza begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This literary device has several functions. First, it provides a mnemonic device for easier memorization. Second, it is inherently beautiful; the rigid structure is a showcase for the author’s literary talents. Finally, it conveys the idea of completion by describing the reasons God is to be praised “from A to Z.” Psalm 9 offers David’s thanks and praise to God for defeating his enemies. Psalm 10, on the other hand, is a lament complaining that God is far off while the poor and helpless suffer.
1 All my heart will give thanks to You, Eternal One.
I will tell others about Your amazing works.
2 I will be glad and celebrate You!
I will praise You, O Most High!
3 When my adversaries turned and fled,
they fell and died right in front of You,
4 For You supported my just cause.
From Your throne, You have judged wisely.
5 You confronted the nations; You have destroyed the wicked.
You have erased their names from history.
6 The enemy is finished, their time is up;
their cities will lie in ruin forever;
all memory of them is gone.
7 Still the Eternal remains and will reign forever;
He has taken His place on His throne for judgment.
8 So He will judge the world rightly.
He shall execute that judgment equally on all people.
9 For the Eternal will be a shelter for those who know misery,
a refuge during troubling times.
10 Those who know Your name will rely on You,
for You, O Eternal One, have not abandoned those who search for You.
11 Praise Him who lives on Zion’s holy hill.
Tell the story of His great acts among the people!
12 For He remembers the victims of violence and avenges their blood;
He does not turn a deaf ear to the cry of the needy.
13 Be gracious to me, O Eternal One.
Notice the harm I have suffered because of my enemies,
You who carry me safely away from death’s door,
14 So that I may rehearse Your deeds, declare Your praise,
and rejoice in Your rescue
when I take my stand in the gates of Zion.
15 The nations have fallen into the pit they dug for others,
their own feet caught, snared by the net they hid.
16 The Eternal is well known, for He has taken action and secured justice;
He has trapped the wicked through the work of their own hands.
[pause with music][c]
17 The wicked are headed for death and the grave;
all the nations who forget the True God will share a similar fate.
18 For those in need shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor will never die.
19 Eternal One, arise! Do not allow mere mortals to win the day.
Judge the nations Yourself.
20 Put the fear of God in them, Eternal One!
Remind the nations they are mere men, not gods.
[pause][d]
Psalm 15
A song of David.
A recurring theme in the psalms is the dwelling place of God and its importance in worship. This Davidic psalm considers the moral qualities of the person who wishes to approach God.
1 Eternal One, who is invited to stay in Your dwelling?
Who is granted passage to Your holy mountain?
2 Here is the answer: The one who lives with integrity, does what is right,
and speaks honestly with truth from the heart.
3 The one who doesn’t speak evil against others
or wrong his neighbor,
or slander his friends.
4 The one who loathes the loathsome,
honors those who fear the Eternal,
And keeps all promises no matter the cost.
5 The one who does not lend money with gain in mind
and cannot be bought to harm an innocent name.
If you live this way, you will not be shaken and will live together with the Lord.
Throughout the book, Job has very little to cling to besides a hope for the end of his current suffering. Each of his three friends expounds on hope, drawing three similar but increasingly brutal conclusions. Eliphaz realizes Job is basically a righteous man, so he encourages Job to take hope in the person he already is; somehow his own righteousness will manage to save him. Bildad adds to Eliphaz’s conclusion, claiming that wicked men cannot hope; they are left with only despair. Zophar, the most unabashedly honest of the three men, believes hope exists only for the righteous; and since Job is obviously a sinful man, he is hopeless until he changes. Fortunately, all three “wise” men are ultimately wrong. Hope is a product of trusting God and is not based on anyone’s actions, wicked or otherwise.
12 In responding to his friends’ collective accusation of his guilt, Job finally spoke.
2 Job (sarcastically to his friends): Surely, surely, my discerning friends, you are the ones!
And when you pass away, the sum total of all wisdom will perish from the earth.
3 I have a mind as good as yours.
Don’t think I am so far beneath you!
After all, who doesn’t know all about these things?
Who isn’t acquainted with the pedestrian platitudes you’ve trotted out?
4 As for me—the one who called upon God and whom God answered—
now, I am pitiful, laughable, a just and upright joke.
5 Those who have it easy may easily scorn the unfortunate;
they have their contempt already prepared for those whose feet slip.
6 Ironically, there is peace inside the tents of the raiders,
and those who upset God seem to live safe and secure;
They carry their gods around in their hands.
13 With God is the sum total of all wisdom and of all power;
His is the greatest of plans and the deepest of comprehensions.
14 So, then, what God tears down cannot be built back up;
the man He shuts up cannot be released.
15 If God withholds the rains and stops the streams from flowing, the earth suffers drought;
if He unleashes too much, the lands are ravaged by flood.
16 He is strong, and sound wisdom belongs to Him:
whether one deceives or is deceived, he is under God’s control.
17 He leads the counselors off as captives, barefoot and stripped;
He makes a mockery of judges.
18 He strips off the royal sashes of kings
and ties them at the waist, making them slaves as well.
19 He leads the priests away barefoot
and defeats the long-incumbent men of power.
20 He robs trusted advisors of speech;
He steals discretion from elders.
21 He heaps contempt on rulers,
and loosens the bind of alliances among world powers.
22 Aspects of His deep wisdom that were hidden away,
He shows in plain sight;
darkness is brought into the light.
23 He builds the strength of nations, only to crush them—
increases their population across the earth, only to scatter them again.
24 He divests each nation’s leaders of understanding,
and causes them to wander aimlessly with nowhere to go,
25 Until finally they grope in the dark, the light having departed,
and He lets them stumble and stagger like drunks.
Just as the experience of the Holy Spirit transforms that small community of believers into the church at the beginning of this book, the presence of the Spirit’s work among these outsiders, the ones who were not a part of God’s covenant with Moses, demonstrates that they, too, are part of the church. This isn’t what many expected, and questions about inclusion of outsiders consume the early life of the church.
19 The believers who were scattered from Judea because of the persecution following Stephen’s stoning kept moving out, reaching Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. Until this time, they had only shared their message with Jews. 20 Then some men from Cyprus and Cyrene who had become believers came to Antioch, and they began sharing the message of the Lord Jesus with some Greek converts to Judaism. 21 The Lord was at work through them, and a large number of these Greeks became believers and turned to the Lord Jesus.
22 Word of this new development came to the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch to investigate. 23 He arrived and saw God’s grace in action there, so he rejoiced and urged them to remain faithful to the Lord, to maintain an enduring, unshakable devotion. 24 This Barnabas truly was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, full of faith. A very large number of people were brought to the Lord.
25 Barnabas soon was off again—now to Tarsus to look for Saul. 26 He found Saul and brought him back to Antioch. The two of them spent an entire year there, meeting with the church and teaching huge numbers of people. It was there, in Antioch, where the term “Christian” was first used to identify disciples of Jesus.
27 During that year, some prophets came north from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 A prophet named Agabus stood in a meeting and made a prediction by the Holy Spirit: there would be an expansive, terrible famine in the whole region during the reign of Claudius. 29 In anticipation of the famine, the disciples determined to give an amount proportionate to their financial ability and create a relief fund for all the believers in Judea. 30 They sent Barnabas and Saul to carry this fund to the elders in Jerusalem.
Jesus (to the crowds): 21 I am leaving this place, and you will look for Me and die in your sin. For where I am going, you are unable to come.
Jews: 22 Is He suicidal? He keeps saying, “Where I am going, you are unable to come.”
Jesus: 23 You originate from the earth below, and I have come from the heavens above. You are from this world, and I am not. 24 That’s why I told you that you will die here as a result of your sins. Unless you believe I am who I have said I am, your sins will lead to your death.
Jews: 25 Who exactly are You?
Jesus: From the beginning of My mission, I have been telling you who I am. 26 I have so much to say about you, so many judgments to render; but if you hear one thing, hear that the One who sent Me is true, and all the things I have heard from Him I speak into the world.
27 The people had not understood that Jesus was teaching about the Father.
Jesus: 28 Whenever the day comes and you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He. It will be clear then that I am not acting alone, but that I am speaking the things I have learned directly from the Father. 29 The One who sent Me is with Me; He has not abandoned Me because I always do what pleases Him.
30 As Jesus was speaking, many in the crowd believed in Him.
Even though many believe, they can not imagine what He means about the lifting up of the Son of Man.
Jesus (to the new Jewish believers): 31 If you hear My voice and abide in My word, you are truly My disciples; 32 you will know the truth, and that truth will give you freedom.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.