Book of Common Prayer
97 The Lord rules, and the earth is happy.
All the faraway lands are happy.
2 Thick, dark clouds surround him.
Goodness and justice make his kingdom strong.
3 Fire goes before him
and destroys his enemies.
4 His lightning flashes in the sky.
The earth sees it and trembles with fear.
5 The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth.
6 The skies tell about his goodness,
and the nations see his glory.
7 People worship their idols.
They brag about their “gods.”
But they will be embarrassed.
And all their “gods” will bow down before the Lord.
8 Zion, listen and be happy!
Cities of Judah, be glad!
Rejoice because the Lord’s decisions are fair.
9 Lord Most High, you really are the ruler of the earth.
You are much better than the “gods.”
10 Hate evil, you who love the Lord.
He protects his followers and saves them from evil people.
11 Light and happiness shine on those
who want to do right.
12 Good people, be happy in the Lord!
Praise his holy name!
99 The Lord is King,
so let the nations shake with fear.
He sits as King above the Cherub angels,
so let the whole earth shake.
2 The Lord in Zion is great!
He is the great leader over all people.
3 Let all the nations praise your name.
Your name is great and awesome.
Your name is holy.
4 You are the powerful King who loves justice.
You have made things right.
You have brought goodness and fairness to Jacob.
5 Praise the Lord our God,
and bow down before his footstool,[a] for he is holy.
6 Moses and Aaron were some of his priests,
and Samuel was one of the men who called on his name.
They prayed to the Lord,
and he answered them.
7 God spoke from the tall cloud,
and they obeyed his commands
and the law he gave them.
8 Lord our God, you answered their prayers.
You showed them that you are a forgiving God
and that you punish people for the evil they do.
9 Praise the Lord our God.
Bow down toward his holy mountain and worship him.
The Lord our God is holy!
A song of thanks.
100 Earth, sing to the Lord!
2 Be happy as you serve the Lord!
Come before him with happy songs!
3 Know that the Lord is God.
He made us, and we belong to him.
We are his people, the sheep he takes care of.
4 Come through the gates to his Temple giving thanks to him.
Enter his courtyards with songs of praise.
Honor him and bless his name.
5 The Lord is good!
There is no end to his faithful love.
We can trust him forever and ever!
94 The Lord is a God who punishes people.
God, come punish them.
2 You are the judge of the whole earth.
Give proud people the punishment they deserve.
3 Lord, how long will the wicked have their fun?
How much longer?
4 How much longer will those criminals
brag about the evil they did?
5 Lord, they hurt your people
and make them suffer.
6 They kill widows and foreigners living in our country.
They murder orphans.
7 And they say the Lord does not see them doing these evil things!
They say the God of Jacob does not know what is happening.
8 You evil people are foolish.
When will you learn your lesson?
You are so stupid!
You must try to understand.
9 God made our ears,
so surely he can hear what is happening!
He made our eyes,
so surely he can see you!
10 The one who disciplines nations will surely correct you.
He is the one who teaches us everything.
11 The Lord knows what people are thinking.
He knows that their thoughts are like a puff of wind.
12 Lord, great blessings belong to those you discipline,
to those you teach from your law.
13 You help them stay calm when trouble comes.
You will help them until the wicked are put in their graves.
14 The Lord will not leave his people.
He will not leave them without help.
15 Justice will return and bring fairness.
And those who want to do right will be there to see it.
16 No one helped me fight against the wicked.
No one stood with me against those who do evil.
17 And if the Lord had not helped me,
I would have been silenced by death.
18 I know I was ready to fall,
but, Lord, your faithful love supported me.
19 I was very worried and upset,
but you comforted me and made me happy!
20 You don’t help crooked judges.
They use the law to make life hard for the people.
21 They attack those who do right.
They say innocent people are guilty and put them to death.
22 But the Lord is my place of safety, high on the mountain.
God, my Rock, is my safe place!
23 He will punish those evil judges for the bad things they did.
He will destroy them because they sinned.
The Lord our God will destroy them.
95 Come, let us sing praise to the Lord!
Let us shout praises to the Rock who saves us.
2 Come and worship him with songs of thanks.[a]
Let us sing happy songs of praise to him.
3 For the Lord is a great God,
the great King ruling over all the other “gods.”
4 The deepest caves and the highest mountains belong to him.
5 The ocean is his—he created it.
He made the dry land with his own hands.
6 Come, let us bow down and worship him!
Let us kneel before the Lord who made us.
7 He is our God,
and we are the people he cares for,
his sheep that walk by his side.
Listen to his voice today:
8 “Don’t be stubborn, as you were at Meribah,
as you were at Massah[b] in the desert.
9 Your ancestors doubted and tested me,
even after they saw what I could do!
10 I was angry with them for 40 years.
I said, ‘They are not faithful to me.
They refuse to do what I say.’
11 So in my anger I made this vow:
‘They will never enter my land of rest.’”
Time to Leave—Jacob Runs Away
31 One day Jacob heard Laban’s sons talking. They said, “Jacob has taken everything that our father owned. He has become rich—and he has taken all this wealth from our father.” 2 Then Jacob noticed that Laban was not as friendly as he had been in the past. 3 The Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to your own land where your ancestors lived. I will be with you.”
4 So Jacob told Rachel and Leah to meet him in the field where he kept his flocks of sheep and goats. 5 He said to them, “I have noticed that your father is not as friendly with me as he used to be. But the God of my father has been with me. 6 You both know that I have worked as hard as I could for your father. 7 But he cheated me. He has changed my pay ten times. But during all this time, God protected me from all of Laban’s tricks.
8 “At one time Laban said, ‘You can keep all the goats with spots. This will be your pay.’ After he said this, all the animals gave birth to spotted goats, so they were all mine. But then Laban said, ‘I will keep the spotted goats. You can have all the striped goats. That will be your pay.’ After he said this, all the animals gave birth to striped goats. 9 So God has taken the animals away from your father and has given them to me.
10 “I had a dream during the time when the animals were mating. I saw that the only male goats that were mating were the ones with stripes and spots. 11 The angel of God spoke to me in that dream. The angel said, ‘Jacob!’
“I answered, ‘Yes!’
12 “The angel said, ‘Look, only the striped and spotted goats are mating. I am causing this to happen. I have seen all the wrong things Laban has been doing to you. I am doing this so that you can have all the new baby goats. 13 I am the God who came to you at Bethel, and there you made an altar, poured olive oil on it, and made a promise to me. Now I want you to be ready to go back to the country where you were born.’”
14 Rachel and Leah answered Jacob, “Our father has nothing to give us when he dies. 15 He treated us like strangers. He sold us to you, and then he spent all the money that should have been ours. 16 God took all this wealth from our father, and now it belongs to us and our children. So you should do whatever God told you to do.”
17 So Jacob prepared for the trip. He put his children and his wives on camels. 18 Then they began traveling back to the land of Canaan, where his father lived. All the flocks of animals that Jacob owned walked ahead of them. He carried everything with him that he had gotten while he lived in Paddan Aram.
19 While Laban was gone to cut the wool from his sheep, Rachel went into his house and stole the false gods that belonged to her father.
20 Jacob tricked Laban the Aramean. He did not tell Laban he was leaving. 21 Jacob took his family and everything he owned and left quickly. They crossed the Euphrates River and traveled toward the hill country of Gilead.
22 Three days later Laban learned that Jacob had run away. 23 So he gathered his men together and began to chase Jacob. After seven days Laban found Jacob near the hill country of Gilead. 24 That night God came to Laban in a dream and said, “Be careful! Be careful of every word you say to Jacob.”
Jesus Is Our Helper
2 My dear children, I write this letter to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone sins, we have Jesus Christ to help us. He always did what was right, so he is able to defend us before God the Father. 2 Jesus is the way our sins are taken away. And he is the way all people can have their sins taken away too.
3 If we obey what God has told us to do, then we are sure that we know him. 4 If we say we know God but do not obey his commands, we are lying. The truth is not in us. 5 But when we obey God’s teaching, his love is truly working in us. This is how we know that we are living in him. 6 If we say we live in God, we must live the way Jesus lived.
Jesus Told Us to Love Others
7 My dear friends, I am not writing a new command to you. It is the same command you have had since the beginning. This command is the teaching you have already heard. 8 But what I write is also a new command. It is a true one; you can see its truth in Jesus and in yourselves. The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.
9 Someone might say, “I am in the light,” but if they hate any of their brothers or sisters in God’s family, they are still in the darkness. 10 Those who love their brothers and sisters live in the light, and there is nothing in them that will make them do wrong. 11 But whoever hates their brother or sister is in darkness. They live in darkness. They don’t know where they are going, because the darkness has made them blind.
18 The Jewish leaders still did not believe that this really happened to the man—that he was blind and was now healed. But later they sent for his parents. 19 They asked them, “Is this your son? You say he was born blind. So how can he see?”
20 His parents answered, “We know that this man is our son. And we know that he was born blind. 21 But we don’t know why he can see now. We don’t know who healed his eyes. Ask him. He is old enough to answer for himself.” 22 They said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. The leaders had already decided that they would punish anyone who said Jesus was the Messiah. They would stop them from coming to the synagogue. 23 That is why his parents said, “He is old enough. Ask him.”
24 So the Jewish leaders called the man who had been blind. They told him to come in again. They said, “You should honor God by telling the truth. We know that this man is a sinner.”
25 The man answered, “I don’t know if he is a sinner. But I do know this: I was blind, and now I can see.”
26 They asked, “What did he do to you? How did he heal your eyes?”
27 He answered, “I have already told you that. But you would not listen to me. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to be his followers too?”
28 At this they shouted insults at him and said, “You are his follower, not us! We are followers of Moses. 29 We know that God spoke to Moses. But we don’t even know where this man comes from!”
30 The man answered, “This is really strange! You don’t know where he comes from, but he healed my eyes. 31 We all know that God does not listen to sinners, but he will listen to anyone who worships and obeys him. 32 This is the first time we have ever heard of anyone healing the eyes of someone born blind. 33 This man must be from God. If he were not from God, he could not do anything like this.”
34 The Jewish leaders answered, “You were born full of sin! Are you trying to teach us?” And they told the man to get out of the synagogue and to stay out.
Spiritual Blindness
35 When Jesus heard that they had forced the man to leave, he found him and asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 The man said, “Tell me who he is, sir, so I can believe in him.”
37 Jesus said to him, “You have already seen him. The Son of Man is the one talking with you now.”
38 The man answered, “Yes, I believe, Lord!” Then he bowed and worshiped Jesus.
39 Jesus said, “I came into this world so that the world could be judged. I came so that people who are blind[a] could see. And I came so that people who think they see would become blind.”
40 Some of the Pharisees were near Jesus. They heard him say this. They asked, “What? Are you saying that we are blind too?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would not be guilty of sin. But you say that you see, so you are still guilty.”
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International