Book of Common Prayer
138 (0) By David:
(1) I give you thanks with all my heart.
Not to idols, but to you I sing praise.
2 I bow down toward your holy temple
and give thanks to your name for your grace and truth;
for you have made your word [even] greater
than the whole of your reputation.
3 When I called, you answered me,
you made me bold and strong.
4 All the kings of the earth will thank you, Adonai,
when they hear the words you have spoken.
5 They will sing about Adonai’s ways,
“Great is the glory of Adonai!”
6 For though Adonai is high, he cares for the lowly;
while the proud he perceives from afar.
7 You keep me alive when surrounded by danger;
you put out your hand when my enemies rage;
with your right hand you save me.
8 Adonai will fulfill his purpose for me.
Your grace, Adonai, continues forever.
Don’t abandon the work of your hands!
139 (0) For the leader. A psalm of David:
(1) Adonai, you have probed me, and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I stand up,
you discern my inclinations from afar,
3 you scrutinize my daily activities.
You are so familiar with all my ways
4 that before I speak even a word, Adonai,
you know all about it already.
5 You have hemmed me in both behind and in front
and laid your hand on me.
6 Such wonderful knowledge is beyond me,
far too high for me to reach.
7 Where can I go to escape your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I climb up to heaven, you are there;
if I lie down in Sh’ol, you are there.
9 If I fly away with the wings of the dawn
and land beyond the sea,
10 even there your hand would lead me,
your right hand would hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Let darkness surround me,
let the light around me be night,”
12 even darkness like this
is not too dark for you;
rather, night is as clear as day,
darkness and light are the same.
13 For you fashioned my inmost being,
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I thank you because I am awesomely made,
wonderfully; your works are wonders —
I know this very well.
15 My bones were not hidden from you
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes could see me as an embryo,
but in your book all my days were already written;
my days had been shaped
before any of them existed.
17 God, how I prize your thoughts!
How many of them there are!
18 If I count them, there are more than grains of sand;
if I finish the count, I am still with you.
19 God, if only you would kill off the wicked!
Men of blood, get away from me!
20 They invoke your name for their crafty schemes;
yes, your enemies misuse it.
21 Adonai, how I hate those who hate you!
I feel such disgust with those who defy you!
22 I hate them with unlimited hatred!
They have become my enemies too.
23 Examine me, God, and know my heart;
test me, and know my thoughts.
147 Halleluyah!
How good it is to sing praises to our God!
How sweet, how fitting to praise him!
2 Adonai is rebuilding Yerushalayim,
gathering the dispersed of Isra’el.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines how many stars there are
and calls them all by name.
5 Our Lord is great, his power is vast,
his wisdom beyond all telling.
6 Adonai sustains the humble
but brings the wicked down to the ground.
7 Sing to Adonai with thanks,
sing praises on the lyre to our God.
8 He veils the sky with clouds;
he provides the earth with rain;
he makes grass grow on the hills;
9 he gives food to the animals,
even to the young ravens when they cry.
10 He takes no delight in the strength of a horse,
no pleasure in a runner’s speed.
11 Adonai takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who wait for his grace.
12 Glorify Adonai, Yerushalayim!
Praise your God, Tziyon!
13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates,
he blesses your children within you,
14 he brings peace within your borders,
he gives you your fill of the finest wheat.
15 He sends his word out over the earth,
his command runs swiftly.
16 Thus he gives snow like wool,
scatters hoarfrost like ashes,
17 sends crystals of ice like crumbs of bread —
who can withstand such cold?
18 Then he sends his word out and melts them;
he makes the winds blow, and the water flows.
19 He reveals his words to Ya‘akov,
his laws and rulings to Isra’el.
20 He has not done this for other nations;
they do not know his rulings.
Halleluyah!
23 “Oh no! The shepherds are destroying and scattering the sheep in my pasture!” says Adonai. 2 Therefore this is what Adonai, the God of Isra’el, says against the shepherds who shepherd my people: “You have scattered my flock, driven them away and not taken care of them. So I will ‘take care of’ you because of your evil deeds,” says Adonai. 3 “I myself will gather what remains of my flock from all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their homes, and they will be fruitful and increase their numbers. 4 I will appoint shepherds over them who will shepherd them; then they will no longer be afraid or disgraced; and none will be missing,” says Adonai.
5 “The days are coming,” says Adonai
when I will raise a righteous Branch for David.
He will reign as king and succeed,
he will do what is just and right in the land.
6 In his days Y’hudah will be saved,
Isra’el will live in safety,
and the name given to him will be
Adonai Tzidkenu [Adonai our righteousness].
7 “Therefore,” says Adonai, “the day will come when people no longer swear, ‘As Adonai lives, who brought the people of Isra’el out of the land of Egypt,’ 8 but, ‘As Adonai lives, who brought the descendants of the house of Isra’el up from the land to the north’ and from all the countries where I drove them. Then they will live in their own land.”
8 Watch out, so that no one will take you captive by means of philosophy and empty deceit, following human tradition which accords with the elemental spirits of the world but does not accord with the Messiah. 9 For in him, bodily, lives the fullness of all that God is. 10 And it is in union with him that you have been made full — he is the head of every rule and authority.
11 Also it was in union with him that you were circumcised with a circumcision not done by human hands, but accomplished by stripping away the old nature’s control over the body. In this circumcision done by the Messiah, 12 you were buried along with him by being immersed; and in union with him, you were also raised up along with him by God’s faithfulness that worked when he raised Yeshua from the dead. 13 You were dead because of your sins, that is, because of your “foreskin,” your old nature. But God made you alive along with the Messiah by forgiving you all your sins. 14 He wiped away the bill of charges against us. Because of the regulations, it stood as a testimony against us; but he removed it by nailing it to the execution-stake. 15 Stripping the rulers and authorities of their power, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by means of the stake.
16 So don’t let anyone pass judgment on you in connection with eating and drinking, or in regard to a Jewish festival or Rosh-Hodesh or Shabbat. 17 These are a shadow of things that are coming, but the body is of the Messiah.
18 Don’t let anyone deny you the prize by insisting that you engage in self-mortification or angel-worship. Such people are always going on about some vision they have had, and they vainly puff themselves up by their worldly outlook. 19 They fail to hold to the Head, from whom the whole Body, receiving supply and being held together by its joints and ligaments, grows as God makes it grow. 20 If, along with the Messiah, you died to the elemental spirits of the world, then why, as if you still belonged to the world, are you letting yourselves be bothered by its rules? — 21 “Don’t touch this!” “Don’t eat that!” “Don’t handle the other!” 22 Such prohibitions are concerned with things meant to perish by being used [not by being avoided!], and they are based on man-made rules and teachings.[a] 23 They do indeed have the outward appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed religious observances, false humility and asceticism; but they have no value at all in restraining people from indulging their old nature.
7 So Yeshua said to them again, “Yes, indeed! I tell you that I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All those who have come before me have been thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them. 9 I am the gate; if someone enters through me, he will be safe and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only in order to steal, kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, life in its fullest measure.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, since he isn’t a shepherd and the sheep aren’t his own, sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf drags them off and scatters them. 13 The hired worker behaves like this because that’s all he is, a hired worker; so it doesn’t matter to him what happens to the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me — 15 just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father — and I lay down my life on behalf of the sheep. 16 Also I have other sheep which are not from this pen; I need to bring them, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock, one shepherd.
17 “This is why the Father loves me: because I lay down my life — in order to take it up again!
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.