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!
Saul Is Acclaimed as King
17 Samuel called the people together for a religious gathering at Mizpah 18 and said to them, “The Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘I brought you out of Egypt and rescued you from the Egyptians and all the other peoples who were oppressing you. 19 I am your God, the one who rescues you from all your troubles and difficulties, but today you have rejected me and have asked me to give you a king. Very well, then, gather yourselves before the Lord by tribes and by clans.’”
20 Then Samuel had each tribe come forward, and the Lord picked the tribe of Benjamin. 21 Then Samuel had the families of the tribe of Benjamin come forward, and the family of Matri was picked out. Then the men of the family of Matri came forward,[a] and Saul son of Kish was picked out. They looked for him, but when they could not find him, 22 they asked the Lord, “Is there still someone else?”
The Lord answered, “Saul is over there, hiding behind the supplies.”
23 So they ran and brought Saul out to the people, and they could see that he was a foot taller than anyone else. 24 Samuel said to the people, “Here is the man the Lord has chosen! There is no one else among us like him.”
All the people shouted, “Long live the king!”
25 Samuel explained to the people the rights and duties of a king, and then wrote them in a book, which he deposited in a holy place. Then he sent everyone home. 26 Saul also went back home to Gibeah. Some powerful men,[b] whose hearts God had touched, went with him. 27 But some worthless people said, “How can this fellow do us any good?” They despised Saul and did not bring him any gifts.
44 (A)“Our ancestors had the Tent of God's presence with them in the desert. It had been made as God had told Moses to make it, according to the pattern that Moses had been shown. 45 (B)Later on, our ancestors who received the tent from their fathers carried it with them when they went with Joshua and took over the land from the nations that God drove out as they advanced. And it stayed there until the time of David. 46 (C)He won God's favor and asked God to allow him to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.[a] 47 (D)But it was Solomon who built him a house.
48 “But the Most High God does not live in houses built by human hands; as the prophet says,
49 (E)‘Heaven is my throne, says the Lord,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house would you build for me?
Where is the place for me to live in?
50 Did not I myself make all these things?’
51 (F)“How stubborn you are!” Stephen went on to say. “How heathen your hearts, how deaf you are to God's message! You are just like your ancestors: you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit! 52 Was there any prophet that your ancestors did not persecute? They killed God's messengers, who long ago announced the coming of his righteous Servant. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. 53 You are the ones who received God's law, that was handed down by angels—yet you have not obeyed it!”
The Stoning of Stephen
54 As the members of the Council listened to Stephen, they became furious and ground their teeth at him in anger. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw God's glory and Jesus standing at the right side of God. 56 “Look!” he said. “I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!”
57 With a loud cry the Council members covered their ears with their hands. Then they all rushed at him at once, 58 threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses left their cloaks in the care of a young man named Saul. 59 They kept on stoning Stephen as he called out to the Lord, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 He knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord! Do not remember this sin against them!” He said this and died.
8 And Saul approved of his murder.
Saul Persecutes the Church
That very day the church in Jerusalem began to suffer cruel persecution. All the believers, except the apostles, were scattered throughout the provinces of Judea and Samaria.
52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests and the officers of the Temple guard and the elders who had come there to get him, “Did you have to come with swords and clubs, as though I were an outlaw? 53 (A)I was with you in the Temple every day, and you did not try to arrest me. But this is your hour to act, when the power of darkness rules.”
Peter Denies Jesus(B)
54 They arrested Jesus and took him away into the house of the High Priest; and Peter followed at a distance. 55 A fire had been lit in the center of the courtyard, and Peter joined those who were sitting around it. 56 When one of the servant women saw him sitting there at the fire, she looked straight at him and said, “This man too was with Jesus!”
57 But Peter denied it, “Woman, I don't even know him!”
58 After a little while a man noticed Peter and said, “You are one of them, too!”
But Peter answered, “Man, I am not!”
59 And about an hour later another man insisted strongly, “There isn't any doubt that this man was with Jesus, because he also is a Galilean!”
60 But Peter answered, “Man, I don't know what you are talking about!”
At once, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. 61 The Lord turned around and looked straight at Peter, and Peter remembered that the Lord had said to him, “Before the rooster crows tonight, you will say three times that you do not know me.” 62 Peter went out and wept bitterly.
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.