Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 41
For the Music Director. A Psalm of David.
1 Blessed are those who consider the poor;
the Lord will deliver them in the day of trouble.
2 The Lord will preserve them and keep them alive,
and they will be blessed on the earth,
and You will not deliver them to the will of their enemies.
3 The Lord will sustain them on the sickbed;
You will restore all his lying down in his illness.
4 I said, “Lord, be gracious to me;
heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.”
5 My enemies speak evil of me:
“When will he die, and his name perish?”
6 And if people come to see me, they speak insincerely;
their heart gathers iniquity to itself,
when they go outside, they tell it.
7 All who hate me whisper together against me;
they devise harm against me.
8 “An evil disease clings to him.
And now that he lies down, he will not rise up again.”
9 Yes, my own close friend,
in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread,
has lifted up the heel against me.
10 But You, O Lord, be gracious to me,
and raise me up, that I may repay them.
11 By this I know that You favor me,
because my enemy does not triumph over me.
12 As for me, You uphold me in my integrity,
and set me before You forever.
13 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
from everlasting and to everlasting.
Amen and Amen.
Psalm 52
For the Music Director. A Contemplative Maskil. A Psalm of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, “David has come to the house of Ahimelek.”
1 Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man?
The goodness of God endures continually.
2 Your tongue devises calamities,
like a sharp razor, you worker of treachery.
3 You love evil more than good,
and lying rather than speaking righteousness. Selah
4 You love all devouring words,
O you deceitful tongue.
5 God will likewise break you down forever;
He will snatch you away and pluck you from your home,
and uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
6 The righteous also will see and fear,
and will laugh in contempt,
7 “See, this is the man
who did not make God his refuge,
but trusted in the abundance of riches,
and grew strong in his own wickedness.”
8 But I am like a green olive tree
in the house of God;
I trust in the mercy of God
forever and ever.
9 I will give thanks to You forever, because You have acted;
and I will wait on Your name,
for it is good before Your saints.
Psalm 44
For the Music Director. A Contemplative Maskil of the sons of Korah.
1 We have heard with our ears, O God,
our fathers have told us
what work You did in their days,
in the days of old:
2 how You drove out the nations with Your hand,
and planted others instead;
how You afflicted peoples,
and sent them away.
3 For they did not take possession of the land by their own sword,
nor did their own arm save them;
but it was Your right hand, and Your arm,
and the light of Your countenance, because You had favor on them.
4 You are my King, O God;
command deliverances for Jacob.
5 Through You we will push down our opponents;
through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us.
6 For I will not trust in my bow,
nor will my sword save me.
7 But You have saved us from our opponents,
and have put to shame those who hate us.
8 In God we boast all the day long,
and give thanks to Your name forever. Selah
9 But You have rejected us and put us to shame,
and do not go out with our armies.
10 You make us to turn back from the opponent,
and those who hate us make us their spoil.
11 You have placed us like sheep for prey,
and have scattered us among the nations.
12 You sell Your people for nothing,
and do not increase Your wealth by their sale.
13 You make us a reproach to our neighbors,
a scorn and a derision to those who surround us.
14 You make us a byword among the nations,
a shaking of the head among the people.
15 All day long my reproach is before me,
and the shame of my face covers me,
16 from the voice of him who reproaches and reviles,
by reason of the enemy and avenger.
17 All this is come on us,
yet we have not forgotten You,
nor have we dealt falsely in Your covenant.
18 Our heart is not turned back,
nor have our steps deviated from Your way,
19 though You have crushed us in the place of jackals,
and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we have forgotten the name of our God,
or stretched out our hands to a strange god,
21 would not God search this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yes, for Your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are considered like sheep for the slaughter.
23 Awake; why do You sleep, O Lord?
Arise; do not reject us forever.
24 Why do You hide Your face,
and forget our affliction and our oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our body cleaves to the earth.
26 Arise, be our help,
and redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness.
Abram Rescues Lot
14 In the days that Amraphel was king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goyim, 2 they made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). 3 All these were joined together in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Dead Sea). 4 For twelve years they had served Kedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.
5 In the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, and the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim, 6 and the Horites in their hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran, which is by the wilderness. 7 Then they turned back and came to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh) and conquered all the country of the Amalekites and also the Amorites who lived in Hazezon Tamar.
8 Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) came out, and they joined together in battle in the Valley of Siddim 9 against Kedorlaomer, the king of Elam, Tidal king of Goyim, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five. 10 Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell in them, and the rest fled to the hill country. 11 Then they took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and departed. 12 They also took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who lived in Sodom, and his possessions, and went their way.
13 Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living near the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshkol and Aner, and these were allies with Abram. 14 When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants born in his own house, and pursued them as far as Dan. 15 During the night he divided his men to attack them and defeated them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. 16 He brought back all the possessions, along with his relative Lot and his possessions, and also the women and the people.
Melchizedek Blesses Abram
17 After his return from the defeat of Kedorlaomer and the kings who had joined with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).
18 Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was the priest of God Most High. 19 And he blessed him and said,
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator[a] of heaven and earth;
20 and blessed be God Most High,
who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
21 The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and take the goods for yourself.”
22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have lifted up my hand to the Lord, God Most High, the Possessor of heaven and earth, 23 that I will take nothing that is yours, not a thread or a sandal strap; lest you say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ 24 I will accept only that which my men have eaten and the portion that belongs to the men who went with me, Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre. Let them take their portion.”
Jesus Our High Priest
8 Now this is the main point of the things that we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, 2 a minister in the sanctuary and the true tabernacle, which the Lord, not man, set up.
3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this priest also have something to offer. 4 For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests that offer gifts according to the law. 5 They serve in a sanctuary that is an example and shadow of the heavenly one, as Moses was instructed by God when he was about to make the tabernacle, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”[a] 6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, because He is the Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no occasion would have been sought for a second. 8 For finding fault with them, God says:
“Surely the days are coming, says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah,
9 not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers
in the day when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of the land of Egypt;
because they did not continue in My covenant,
and I rejected them, says the Lord.
10 This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws into their minds
and write them on their hearts;
and I will be their God,
and they shall be My people.
11 No longer shall every man teach his neighbor,
and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for all shall know Me,
from the least of them to the greatest.[b]
12 For I will be merciful toward their unrighteousness,
and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”[c]
13 In speaking of a new covenant He has made the first one old. Now that which is decaying and growing old is ready to vanish away.
The Healing of the Nobleman’s Son(A)
43 After the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. 44 For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45 Then, when He came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him, having seen all the things He did at Jerusalem at the feast. For they had also gone to the feast.
46 So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him, pleading that He would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
48 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
49 The nobleman said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
50 Jesus said to him, “Go your way. Your son lives.”
And the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. 51 While he was going down, his servants met him and told him, “Your son lives!” 52 When he inquired of them the hour when he began to heal, they answered, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.”
53 Then the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives.” So he and his whole household believed.
54 This was the second sign that Jesus did when He had come from Judea to Galilee.
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.