Book of Common Prayer
Zayin
49 Do not forget Your promise to Your servant;
through it You have given me hope.
50 This brings me solace in the midst of my troubles:
that Your word has revived me.
51 Those who are proud cruelly ridicule me,
but I keep to the steady path of Your teachings.
52 I have considered Your ancient rulings, O Eternal One,
and their memory brings me comfort.
53 Burning anger rises in me, has me in its grip
because the unrighteous abandon Your teachings.
54 As I journey through this life,
Your statutes are my song.
55 O Eternal One, through the night, I stop to recall Your name.
That’s how I live according to Your teachings.
56 This has become my practice:
to keep Your ordinances.
Heth
57 The Eternal One is mine. He’s all I need.
I have promised to keep Your words.
58 I sought Your blessing wholeheartedly.
Show grace to me as You promised.
59 I carefully charted out my paths
to align my steps with Your decrees.
60 I did not procrastinate and hurried
to follow Your commands.
61 The wicked have entangled me in their nets,
but I have not forgotten Your teaching.
62 In the middle of the night, I wake to thank You
because Your rulings are just and right.
63 I am a friend of anyone who fears You
and of those who follow Your precepts.
64 The earth is filled with Your unfailing love, O Eternal One;
teach me to observe what You require.
Teth
65 You have handled Your servant well,
O Eternal One, as You promised.
66 Help me to learn good judgment and knowledge
because I believe Your commandments.
67 Before I had trouble, I strayed from the true path, the path of righteousness,
but now I live according to Your word.
68 You are truly good, and Your acts are too;
teach me what You require.
69 The proud smear me with their lies;
I will keep Your instructions wholeheartedly.
70 Their hearts are dull and callous;
I am delighted to study Your teaching.
71 It is a good thing that I was humbled
because it helped me learn Your limits.
72 Your teachings are more valuable to me
than a fortune in gold and silver.
Psalm 49
For the worship leader. A song of the sons of Korah.
Some songs are described as “wisdom psalms.” Similar in theme to the short sayings of Proverbs or the reflective essays of Ecclesiastes, these songs offer practical advice to the worshiper of the one True God. In Psalm 49 we find a meditation on wealth and wisdom, but others describe daily activities (127–128; 133), encouragement when evil succeeds (37; 73), and the results of following God or wickedness (112). The purpose of these songs is to edify those who sing and those who hear, reminding them, and us, how to live life as God intends.
1 Listen up, everyone!
All you who reside in this world, give an ear!
2 Everyone—rich and poor,
young and old, wise and foolish, humble and mighty—
3 My mouth will overflow with wisdom;
the reflections of my heart will guide you to understand the nature of life.
4 I will tune my ear to the words of a proverb;
to the sounds of a harp, I will reveal my riddle.
5 Why should I be afraid when dark evils swirl about me,
when I am walking among the sin of evildoers—
6 Those who depend on their own fortunes,
who boast about their earthly riches?
7 One person can’t grant salvation to another
or make a payment to the True God for another.
8 Redeeming a life is costly;
no premium is enough, ever enough,
9 That one’s body might live on forever
and never fear the grave’s decay.
10 Everyone knows that even the wisest ones die,
perishing together with the foolish and the stupid.
For all die—beggars and kings, fools and wise men.
Their wealth remains behind for others.
11 Although they wish to dwell in fine houses forever,
their graves are their real resting places.
Their homes are for all future generations,
yet for a while they have named lands after themselves.
12 [No one, regardless of how rich or important, can live forever;
he is][a] just like the animals that perish and decay.
13 This is the destiny of those foolish souls who have faith only in themselves;
this will be the end of those happy to follow in their ways.
[pause][b]
14 The fate of fools is the grave, and just like sheep,
death will feast on them.
The righteous will rule over them at dawn,
their bodies, their outward forms, rotting in the grave
far away from their great mansions.
15 But God will reach into the grave and save my life from its power.
He will fetch me and take me into His eternal house.
[pause]
16 Do not be afraid of the rich and powerful
as their prestige and honor grow,
17 For they cannot take anything with them when they die.
Their fame and glory will not follow them into the grave.
18 During their lives, they seek every blessing and advantage
because others praise you when you’ve done well.
19 But they will soon join their ancestors, for all of time,
among the tombs of the faithless—a place of no light.
20 Anyone who is rich or important without understanding
is just like the animals that perish and decay.
Psalm 53
For the worship leader. A contemplative song[a] of David. A song for the dance.[b]
1 The foolish are convinced deep down that there is no God.
Their souls are polluted, and they commit gross injustice.
Not one of them does good.
2 From heaven the one True God examines the earth
to see if any understand the big picture,
if any seek to know the True God.
3 All have turned back to their wicked ways; they’ve become totally perverse.
Not one of them does good,
not even one.
4 Do the wicked relish their ignorance,
the wicked ones who consume My people as if they were bread
and fail to call upon the True God?
5 They trembled with great fear,
though they’d never been afraid before,
Because the True God ravaged the bones of those who rose against you.
You humiliated them because the True God spat them out.
6 Oh, that the liberation of Israel would come out of Zion!
When the True God reclaims His people,
let Jacob celebrate; let Israel rejoice.
8 The Lord has dispatched a word against Jacob;
it will come down hard on Israel.
9 All the people of Ephraim and the citizens of its capital Samaria will know.
In their pride and arrogance they say:
10 “Hey! The walls have collapsed, but this gives us a chance to rebuild
better than it was before with the best stones instead of brick.
The invaders may have chopped down the sycamores,
but we will plant cedars in their place.”
11 But the Eternal stirs up Rezin’s enemies to move against Israel
and arouses all their foes to join them.
12 They come, these enemies, from both sides (Syrians on the east and Philistines on the west)
and consume Israel, swallowing it whole.
Still, God’s anger smolders.
His hand is raised; there’s more to come.
13 But the people don’t return to God after all His punishment.
They don’t change their ways and right their paths
To seek the Eternal, the Commander of heavenly armies.
14 Therefore, He will take them to task.
In a single day He’ll cut off from Israel the head and the tail;
He’ll cut down the noble palm and lowly reed.
15 The head are those charged with leadership—political and religious—
who used their power in the worst possible ways;
And the tail are the prophets who slur their lies.
16 These misguided leaders have misled this people;
and those who follow have become swallowed up in their deceit.
17-18 Even now the Lord takes no joy in a single one, not even the young.
Mercy has run out for even those without power—the widows and orphans.
For every single person is at fault and behaves badly.
No one thinks or acts as God would have them do.
Every mouth utters foolishness like a wildfire, out of control;
wickedness rages, leveling and clearing briars and thorns;
Forests and thickets burn, leaving the whole a smoking heap.
Still, God’s anger smolders. His hand is raised; there’s more to come.
2 Just as false prophets rose up in the past among God’s people, false teachers will rise up in the future among you. They will slip in with their destructive opinions, denying the very Master who bought their freedom and dooming themselves to destruction swiftly, 2 but not before they attract others by their unbridled and immoral behavior. Because of them and their ways, others will criticize and condemn the path of truth we walk as seedy and disreputable. 3 These false teachers will follow their greed and exploit you with their fabrications, but be assured that their judgment was pronounced long ago and their destruction does not sleep.
New Testament writers warn the church to watch out for false teachers. Peter faults them primarily for their immoral lifestyles rather than for doctrinal differences.
4 For God did not spare the heavenly beings who sinned, but He cast them into the dark pits[a] of hell[b] to be kept until the time of judgment; 5 and He did not spare the ancient world, but He sent a flood swirling over the ungodly (although He did save Noah, God’s herald for what is right, with seven other members of his family); 6 and God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing them to ash as a lesson of what He will do with the ungodly in the days to come 7-8 (although again He did rescue Lot, a person who did what was right in God’s eyes and who was distressed by the immorality and the lawlessness of the society around him. Day after day, the sights and sounds of their lawlessness were like daggers into that good man’s soul). 9 If all this happened in the past, it shows clearly the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials and how to hold the wicked in punishment until the day of judgment.
Is God different in the New Testament from what He is in the First Testament? In the First Testament, God seems prone to judgment; but some feel God is more concerned about love in the New Testament. However, the central and most repeated affirmation about God’s character in the First Testament is that He is gracious and compassionate (Exodus 34:6–7). And the New Testament clearly does not ignore the idea of God’s judgment, as this text shows. His judgment will come, but it is delayed by God’s patient mercy.
10 And above all, it shows He will punish those who let the desires of their bodies rule them and who have no respect for authority. People like this are so bold and willful that they aren’t even afraid of offending heavenly beings,
When Mark writes in the first chapter about a mysterious man entering the scene, instantly the reader recognizes there’s something very different about Jesus. He comes into the picture not as a rock star but rather as someone humble, kind, and yet, still kingly. Mark describes the people who are drawn toward this man as regular people who have become affected by the character, passion, and light of this strange Galilean.
Maybe that’s why Mark jumps right into the action of Jesus’ story. He offers little by way of introduction. He writes nothing about Jesus’ family tree. Unlike Matthew and Luke, he doesn’t mention His birth. Mark’s retelling begins with Scripture and the preaching of John the Baptist who calls people to repent. Like all the greats of history, Jesus doesn’t just arrive—He is announced—and who better than John to do that? Right before Jesus makes His entrance into Mark’s narrative, John says, “I’ve washed you here with water, but when He gets here, He will wash you in the Spirit of God.”
1 This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King, the Son of God.
2 Isaiah the prophet told us what would happen before He came:
Watch, I will send My messenger in front of You
to prepare Your way and make it clear and straight.[a]
3 You’ll hear him, a voice crying in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way of the Eternal One,
a straight way in the wandering desert, a highway for our God.”[b]
4 That messenger was John the Baptist,[c] who appeared in the desert near the Jordan River preaching that people should be ritually cleansed through baptism with water as a sign of both their changed hearts[d] and God’s forgiveness of their sins. 5 People from across the countryside of Judea and from the city of Jerusalem came to him and confessed that they were deeply flawed and needed help, so he cleansed[e] them with the waters of the Jordan. 6 John dressed as some of the Hebrew prophets had, in clothes made of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. He made his meals in the desert from locusts and wild honey. 7 He preached a message in the wilderness.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.