Book of Common Prayer
97 Jehovah is King! Let all the earth rejoice! Tell the farthest islands to be glad.
2 Clouds and darkness surround him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 3 Fire goes forth before him and burns up all his foes. 4 His lightning flashes out across the world. The earth sees and trembles. 5 The mountains melt like wax before the Lord of all the earth. 6 The heavens declare his perfect righteousness; every nation sees his glory.
7 Let those who worship idols be disgraced—all who brag about their worthless gods—for every god must bow to him! 8-9 Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah have heard of your justice, Lord, and are glad that you reign in majesty over the entire earth and are far greater than these other gods.
10 The Lord loves those who hate evil; he protects the lives of his people and rescues them from the wicked. 11 Light is sown for the godly and joy for the good. 12 May all who are godly be happy in the Lord and crown him,[a] our holy God.
99 Jehovah is King! Let the nations tremble! He is enthroned between the Guardian Angels. Let the whole earth shake.
2 Jehovah sits in majesty in Zion, supreme above all rulers of the earth. 3 Let them reverence your great and holy name.
4 This mighty King is determined to give justice. Fairness is the touchstone of everything he does. He gives justice throughout Israel. 5 Exalt the Lord our holy God! Bow low before his feet.
6 When Moses and Aaron and Samuel, his prophet, cried to him for help, he answered them. 7 He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud, and they followed his instructions. 8 O Jehovah our God! You answered them and forgave their sins, yet punished them when they went wrong.
9 Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain in Jerusalem, for he is holy.
100 Shout with joy before the Lord, O earth! 2 Obey him gladly; come before him, singing with joy.
3 Try to realize what this means—the Lord is God! He made us—we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Go through his open gates with great thanksgiving; enter his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. 5 For the Lord is always good. He is always loving and kind, and his faithfulness goes on and on to each succeeding generation.
94 1-2 Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs, let your glory shine out. Arise and judge the earth; sentence the proud to the penalties they deserve. 3 Lord, how long shall the wicked be allowed to triumph and exult? 4 Hear their insolence! See their arrogance! How these men of evil boast! 5 See them oppressing your people, O Lord, afflicting those you love. 6-7 They murder widows, immigrants, and orphans, for “The Lord isn’t looking,” they say, “and besides, he[a] doesn’t care.”
8 Fools! 9 Is God deaf and blind—he who makes ears and eyes? 10 He punishes the nations—won’t he also punish you? He knows everything—doesn’t he also know what you are doing?
11 The Lord is fully aware of how limited and futile the thoughts of mankind are, 12-13 so he helps us by punishing us. This makes us follow his paths and gives us respite from our enemies while God traps them and destroys them. 14 The Lord will not forsake his people, for they are his prize. 15 Judgment will again be just, and all the upright will rejoice.
16 Who will protect me from the wicked? Who will be my shield? 17 I would have died unless the Lord had helped me. 18 I screamed, “I’m slipping, Lord!” and he was kind and saved me.
19 Lord, when doubts fill my mind, when my heart is in turmoil, quiet me and give me renewed hope and cheer. 20 Will you permit a corrupt government to rule under your protection—a government permitting wrong to defeat right? 21-22 Do you approve of those who condemn the innocent to death? No! The Lord my God is my fortress—the mighty Rock where I can hide. 23 God has made the sins of evil men to boomerang upon them! He will destroy them by their own plans. Jehovah our God will cut them off.
95 Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord! Give a joyous shout in honor of the Rock of our salvation!
2 Come before him with thankful hearts. Let us sing him psalms of praise. 3 For the Lord is a great God, the great King of[b] all gods. 4 He controls the formation of the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains; all are his. 5 He made the sea and formed the land; they too are his. 6 Come, kneel before the Lord our Maker, 7 for he is our God. We are his sheep, and he is our Shepherd. Oh, that you would hear him calling you today and come to him!
8 Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did in the wilderness[c] at Meribah and Massah. 9 For there your fathers doubted me, though they had seen so many of my miracles before. My patience was severely tried by their complaints. 10 “For forty years I watched them in disgust,” the Lord God says. “They were a nation whose thoughts and heart were far away from me. They refused to accept my laws. 11 Therefore, in mighty wrath I swore that they would never enter the Promised Land, the place of rest I planned for them.”
31 But Jacob learned that Laban’s sons were grumbling, “He owes everything he owns to our father. All his wealth is at our father’s expense.” 2 Soon Jacob noticed a considerable cooling in Laban’s attitude toward him.
3 Jehovah now spoke to Jacob and told him, “Return to the land of your fathers, and to your relatives there; and I will be with you.”
4 So one day Jacob sent for Rachel and Leah to come out to the field where he was with the flocks, 5 to talk things over with them.
“Your father has turned against me,” he told them, “and now the God of my fathers has come and spoken to me. 6 You know how hard I’ve worked for your father, 7 but he has been completely unscrupulous and has broken his wage contract with me again and again and again. But God has not permitted him to do me any harm! 8 For if he said the speckled animals would be mine, then all the flock produced speckled; and when he changed and said I could have the streaked ones, then all the lambs were streaked! 9 In this way God has made me wealthy at your father’s expense.
10 “And at the mating season, I had a dream, and saw that the he-goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled, and mottled. 11 Then, in my dream, the Angel of God called to me 12 and told me that I should mate the white female goats with streaked, speckled, and mottled male goats.[a] ‘For I have seen all that Laban has done to you,’ the Angel said. 13 ‘I am the God you met at Bethel,’ he continued, ‘the place where you anointed the pillar and made a vow to serve me. Now leave this country and return to the land of your birth.’”
14 Rachel and Leah replied, “That’s fine with us! There’s nothing for us here—none of our father’s wealth will come to us anyway! 15 He has reduced our rights to those of foreign women; he sold us, and what he received for us has disappeared. 16 The riches God has given you from our father were legally ours and our children’s to begin with! So go ahead and do whatever God has told you to.”
17-20 So one day while Laban was out shearing sheep, Jacob set his wives and sons on camels, and fled without telling Laban his intentions. He drove the flocks before him—Jacob’s flocks he had gotten there at Paddan-aram—and took everything he owned and started out to return to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan. 21 So he fled with all of his possessions (and Rachel stole her father’s household gods and took them with her) and crossed the Euphrates River and headed for the territory of Gilead.
22 Laban didn’t learn of their flight for three days. 23 Then, taking several men with him, he set out in hot pursuit and caught up with them seven days later, at Mount Gilead. 24 That night God appeared to Laban in a dream.
“Watch out what you say to Jacob,” he was told. “Don’t give him your blessing and don’t curse him.”
2 My little children, I am telling you this so that you will stay away from sin. But if you sin, there is someone to plead for you before the Father. His name is Jesus Christ, the one who is all that is good and who pleases God completely. 2 He is the one who took God’s wrath against our sins upon himself and brought us into fellowship with God; and he is the forgiveness for our sins,[a] and not only ours but all the world’s.
3 And how can we be sure that we belong to him? By looking within ourselves: are we really trying to do what he wants us to?
4 Someone may say, “I am a Christian; I am on my way to heaven; I belong to Christ.” But if he doesn’t do what Christ tells him to, he is a liar. 5 But those who do what Christ tells them to will learn to love God more and more. That is the way to know whether or not you are a Christian. 6 Anyone who says he is a Christian should live as Christ did.
7 Dear brothers, I am not writing out a new rule for you to obey, for it is an old one you have always had, right from the start. You have heard it all before. 8 Yet it is always new, and works for you just as it did for Christ; and as we obey this commandment, to love one another, the darkness in our lives disappears and the new light of life in Christ shines in.
9 Anyone who says he is walking in the light of Christ but dislikes his fellow man is still in darkness. 10 But whoever loves his fellow man is “walking in the light” and can see his way without stumbling around in darkness and sin. 11 For he who dislikes his brother is wandering in spiritual darkness and doesn’t know where he is going, for the darkness has made him blind so that he cannot see the way.
18 The Jewish leaders wouldn’t believe he had been blind, until they called in his parents 19 and asked them, “Is this your son? Was he born blind? If so, how can he see?”
20 His parents replied, “We know this is our son and that he was born blind, 21 but we don’t know what happened to make him see, or who did it. He is old enough to speak for himself. Ask him.”
22-23 They said this in fear of the Jewish leaders who had announced that anyone saying Jesus was the Messiah would be excommunicated.
24 So for the second time they called in the man who had been blind and told him, “Give the glory to God, not to Jesus, for we know Jesus is an evil person.”
25 “I don’t know whether he is good or bad,” the man replied, “but I know this: I was blind, and now I see!”
26 “But what did he do?” they asked. “How did he heal you?”
27 “Look!” the man exclaimed. “I told you once; didn’t you listen? Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
28 Then they cursed him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know God has spoken to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t know anything about him.”
30 “Why, that’s very strange!” the man replied. “He can heal blind men, and yet you don’t know anything about him! 31 Well, God doesn’t listen to evil men, but he has open ears to those who worship him and do his will. 32 Since the world began there has never been anyone who could open the eyes of someone born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he couldn’t do it.”
34 “You illegitimate bastard,[a] you!” they shouted. “Are you trying to teach us?” And they threw him out.
35 When Jesus heard what had happened, he found the man and said, “Do you believe in the Messiah?”[b]
36 The man answered, “Who is he, sir, for I want to.”
37 “You have seen him,” Jesus said, “and he is speaking to you!”
38 “Yes, Lord,” the man said, “I believe!” And he worshiped Jesus.
39 Then Jesus told him, “I have come into the world to give sight to those who are spiritually blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.”
40 The Pharisees who were standing there asked, “Are you saying we are blind?”
41 “If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty,” Jesus replied. “But your guilt remains because you claim to know what you are doing.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.