Book of Common Prayer
The Lord is good![a]
106 Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Thank the Lord, because he is good.
His faithful love will always be with us.
2 The great things that the Lord has done
are too many to tell!
Nobody can praise him enough.
3 God has blessed the people who obey his commands.
They always do what is right.
4 Lord, when you help your people,
please remember me!
Do not forget to help me,
when you come to rescue them.
5 I want to enjoy the good things
that you give to the people that you have chosen.
I want to be happy together with them.
I want to join with the people who belong to you,
and praise you as you deserve.
6 We have done bad things,
as our ancestors also did.
We have done things that are wicked and evil.
7 When our ancestors were in Egypt,
they did not understand your miracles.
They forgot the many ways that you showed them your faithful love.
When they arrived at the Red Sea,
they turned against you, Lord.
8 But the Lord rescued them,
to show that his name is great.
He showed that he was very powerful.
9 He shouted at the Red Sea,
and it became dry.
He led his people through the middle of the deep water,
as if they walked in a desert!
10 He rescued them from the people who hated them.
He saved them from their enemy's power.
11 The water of the sea drowned their enemies,
so that none of them remained alive.[b]
12 Then God's people believed his promises.
They sang songs to praise him.[c]
13 But they soon forgot
what the Lord had done to help them.
They did not wait for him to tell them what to do.
14 In the wilderness they wanted better food.
They tested God to see what he would do.
15 He gave them the food that they asked for,
but he also sent a bad disease on them.[d]
16 The people became jealous of Moses,
and Aaron, the Lord's special priest.
17 So God made the earth break open,
so that Dathan fell into it.
It also destroyed Abiram and his people.
18 Fire burned all their group,
and it killed those wicked people.[e]
19 At Horeb, the Israelites used gold to make a cow,
and they worshipped it.
20 They turned away from their great God.
Instead, they worshipped the statue of a cow,
an animal that eats grass![f]
21 They forgot the God who had saved them,
when he did great miracles in Egypt.
22 He had done powerful things in the land of Ham's descendants,
and at the shore of the Red Sea.
His people forgot about all that!
23 So God said that he would destroy them.
But God's servant, Moses, spoke on their behalf.
He asked God not to be angry with his people,
and God agreed.
24 Later, they did not believe God's promise
to take them safely into the beautiful land of Canaan.
25 They spoke against the Lord in their tents,
and they did not obey him.
26 So he made a strong promise
that he would cause them to die in the desert.
27 He promised that he would chase their descendants away,
so that they died in foreign countries.[g]
28 After that, they started to worship the false god, Baal of Peor.
They ate the food from sacrifices
that people gave to dead idols.
29 The Lord became angry
because of what his people did.
He sent a bad disease among them.
30 Then Phinehas punished the guilty people,
so that the disease stopped killing people.[h]
31 So we remember that Phinehas was a righteous man,
and that will be true for ever.
32 At Meribah springs, the Israelites made God angry.
What they did there caused Moses to have trouble.
33 Moses was so upset that he spoke in a careless way.[i]
34 The Lord commanded his people
to destroy the nations of Canaan,
But they did not obey the Lord's command.
35 Instead, they mixed with those nations
and they learned their way of life.
36 They worshipped their idols
which caught them in a trap.
37 They even killed their sons and their daughters
as sacrifices for those idols of demons!
38 Their sons and their daughters did not deserve to die,
but they killed them as sacrifices for the idols of Canaan.
Those murders made the land unclean.
39 The things that the Lord's people did
made them unclean.
They were not faithful to the Lord,
like a wife who is not faithful to her husband.
40 So the Lord became angry with his people.
They belonged to him
but he turned away from them.
41 He let other nations have power over them.
Their enemies ruled over them.
42 Their enemies had power to hurt them,
and they were cruel to them.
43 Many times, the Lord rescued his people,
but they had decided not to obey him.
Their sins made them weaker and weaker.
44 But the Lord still saw when they were in trouble.
He answered them when they called to him for help.
45 He remembered the covenant that he had made with them.
Because of his faithful love for his people,
he stopped punishing them.
46 He caused all their enemies to be kind to them.
47 Lord, our God, please save us!
Bring us safely home from among the other nations.[j]
Then we will thank you!
We will shout aloud to praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, Israel's God,
as he deserves!
Praise him now and for ever!
Let everybody say, ‘Amen! We agree!’
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord![k]
Do not cause trouble
13 So we must no longer judge other believers. Instead, you must decide never to bring trouble to another believer. Do not cause them to do something wrong. 14 As for me, I am sure that we may eat any kind of food. God does not think that any food is unclean. The Lord Jesus has shown me that that is true. But someone else may believe that it is wrong to eat certain food. For that person, it would be wrong to eat that kind of food.
15 You should not cause another believer to be sad because of what you eat. If you do make him sad, then you are not really loving him. Remember that Christ died on behalf of that person. So do not let your food make him turn away from God. 16 You may think that something is good. But still you should not do it, if other people will say that it is bad.
17 We belong to God's people and he is our King. The things that we eat and drink are not really important to him. This is important: We should do what is right. We should have peace in our minds. And we should be truly happy. God's Holy Spirit helps us to live like that. 18 If anyone serves Christ in that way, they will make God happy. And other people will respect them.
19 So then, we should try to live in a way that brings peace. We should try to help each other so that we become stronger as God's people. 20 Do not bring trouble to someone because of the food that you eat. Do not destroy what God has done in the life of another believer. God lets us eat all kinds of food. But do not eat anything that will cause another believer to do something wrong. 21 It is good not to do anything that might cause another believer to do something wrong. That includes if you eat meat or if you drink wine.
22 What you believe about these things should be a secret between yourself and God. You should do what you have decided is right for you. Do not feel guilty about what you eat. Then God will bless you. 23 But someone else may not be sure whether it is right to eat certain kinds of food. If that person does eat that kind of food, then he shows that he is guilty. He has not trusted God that it is right for him to do that. Whatever things we do, we must trust God about them. If we do not trust God that something is right, then it is a sin.
Jesus makes a young girl well
40 When Jesus returned to the other side of the lake, the crowd was very happy to see him. They were all waiting for him to come back. 41 Then a man called Jairus came to see him. He was a leader at the Jewish meeting place. He went down on his knees at the feet of Jesus and said, ‘Please come to my house. 42 I have one daughter. She is 12 years old and she is very ill. She will die very soon.’
So Jesus went along. A crowd of people went with him. They were pushing against him. 43 There was a sick woman in the crowd who had lost blood for 12 years. She had paid all her money to doctors and now she had no money. But nobody could help her to become well again. 44 She came in the crowd behind Jesus and she touched the edge of his coat. Immediately she stopped bleeding. 45 Jesus asked, ‘Who touched me?’
Everyone round him said, ‘It was not me. I did not touch you.’ Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, there is a big crowd round you. Many people are pushing against you.’
46 Jesus said, ‘Someone did touch me. I know that something powerful went out from me.’ 47 The woman knew that she could not hide herself. So she was very afraid. She came to Jesus and she went down on the ground in front of him. She spoke so that all the people could hear her. She said, ‘I wanted to be well again, so I touched him. When I did that, I became well immediately.’ 48 Jesus said to her, ‘Young woman, you are well again because you believed in me. Go now and have peace in your mind.’[a]
49 While Jesus was still speaking, someone arrived from Jairus' house. ‘Your daughter is dead,’ he told Jairus. ‘Do not ask the teacher to come now.’
50 Jesus heard what the man said. So he said to Jairus, ‘Do not be afraid. Just believe in me. Then she will become well again.’
51 When they arrived at the house, Jesus would not let everyone go in with him. He took only Peter, John and James. He also let the mother and father of the girl go into the house. 52 All the people there were crying loudly because they were very sad. ‘Do not weep,’ Jesus told them. ‘The child is not dead. She is only asleep.’
53 But the people knew that she had died. So they laughed at him. 54 But Jesus went and held the child's hand. He said to her, ‘My child, get up.’ 55 Then she became alive again. Immediately she stood up. Jesus said to her parents, ‘Give her something to eat.’ 56 They were very surprised. Jesus said to them very strongly, ‘You must not tell anyone about what has happened.’
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