Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 95
1 O come, let us sing unto the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms!
3 For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
4 In His hand are the deep places of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are also His.
5 The sea is His, for He made it,
and His hands formed the dry land.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.
7 For He is our God,
and we are the people of His pasture
and the sheep of His hand.
Today if you hear His voice,
8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
and as in the day of Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers tested Me and tried Me,
though they had seen My deeds.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known My ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in My wrath,
“They shall not enter into My rest.”
Psalm 40(A)
For the Music Director. A Psalm of David.
1 I waited patiently for the Lord,
and He turned to me, and heard my cry.
2 He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
out of the miry clay,
and set my feet on a rock,
and established my steps.
3 He has put a new song in my mouth,
even praise to our God;
many will see it, and fear,
and will trust in the Lord.
4 Blessed is the man
who places trust in the Lord,
but does not turn toward the proud,
nor those falling away to falsehood.
5 O Lord my God,
You have done many wonderful works,
and Your thoughts toward us
cannot be compared;
if I would declare and speak of them,
they are more than can be numbered.
6 Sacrifice and offering You did not desire;
You have opened up my ears to listen.
Burnt offering and sin offering
You have not required.
7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me,
8 I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your law is within my inward parts.”
9 I have proclaimed righteousness in the great congregation;
I have not held back my lips,
O Lord, You know.
10 I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart;
I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation;
I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth
from the great congregation.
11 Do not withhold Your compassion from me, O Lord;
may Your lovingkindness and Your truth always guard me.
12 For innumerable evils have surrounded me;
my iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up;
they are more than the hairs of my head
so that my heart fails me.
13 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me;
O Lord, make haste to help me.
14 May those seeking to snatch away my life
be ashamed and confounded together;
may those who desire my harm
be driven backward and dishonored.
15 May those who say to me “Aha, aha!”
be appalled on account of their shame.
16 May all those who seek You
rejoice and be glad in You;
may those who love Your salvation say continually,
“The Lord is magnified.”
17 But I am poor and needy;
yet the Lord thinks about me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
do not delay, O my God.
Psalm 54
For the Music Director. With stringed instruments. A Contemplative Maskil of David, when the Ziphites went and told Saul, “Is David not hiding among us?”
1 O God, save me by Your name,
and judge me by Your strength.
2 O God, hear my prayer;
give ear to the words of my mouth.
3 For strangers rise up against me,
and formidable adversaries seek my life;
they do not set God before them. Selah
4 God is my helper;
the Lord is with those who support my life.
5 He will repay my enemies for their evil.
In Your faithfulness, destroy them.
6 I will sacrifice a freewill offering to You;
I will give thanks to Your name, O Lord, for it is good.
7 For He has delivered me out of all trouble;
and my eye has looked down on my enemies.
Psalm 51
For the Music Director. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the Prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your lovingkindness;
according to the abundance of Your compassion,
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against You, You only, have I sinned,
and done this evil in Your sight,
so that You are justified when You speak,
and You are blameless when You judge.
5 I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward parts,
and in the hidden part You make me to know wisdom.
7 Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness,
that the bones that You have broken may rejoice.
9 Hide Your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from Your presence,
and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
and uphold me with Your willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
and sinners will return to You.
14 Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God,
God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare Your praise.
16 For You do not desire sacrifice, or I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and a contrite heart,
O God, You will not despise.
18 Do good to Zion in Your good pleasure;
build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then You will be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
with burnt offering and whole burnt offering;
then they will offer young bulls on Your altar.
Joseph Interprets Dreams
40 Sometime after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker offended their lord, the king of Egypt. 2 Pharaoh was angry with his two officials, with the chief of the cupbearers and with the chief of the bakers. 3 So he put them in confinement in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison, the place where Joseph was confined. 4 The captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he attended to them.
They continued to be in confinement for some time. 5 Then the cupbearer and the baker for the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, both had a dream the same night, each man with his own dream and each dream with its own interpretation.
6 Joseph came in to them in the morning and looked at them and realized they were sad. 7 So he asked Pharaoh’s officials who were with him in the care of his lord’s house, saying, “Why do you look so sad today?”
8 And they said to him, “We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter for it.”
Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.”
9 The chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, “In my dream, a vine was in front of me. 10 And in the vine there were three branches. As it budded, its blossoms shot forth and its clusters brought forth ripe grapes. 11 Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and I put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand.”
12 Joseph said to him, “This is the interpretation of it. The three branches are three days. 13 Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your place, and you will deliver Pharaoh’s cup into his hand in the same way you did before when you were his cupbearer. 14 But remember me when it is well with you, and show kindness, I pray you, to me, and make mention of me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this house. 15 For I was indeed kidnapped out of the land of the Hebrews, and I have done nothing that they should put me in the dungeon.”
16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Joseph, “I also was in my dream, and I had three white baskets on my head. 17 In the uppermost basket there was all manner of baked goods for Pharaoh, and the birds ate them out of the basket on my head.”
18 Joseph answered and said, “This is the interpretation: The three baskets are three days. 19 Within three days Pharaoh will lift your head from off you and will hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh from you.”
20 It happened on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants. He lifted up the heads of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker among his servants. 21 He restored the chief cupbearer to his position again, and he put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand. 22 However, he hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had interpreted to them.
23 Yet, the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.
16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17 If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy. And you are His temple.
18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness,”[a] 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”[b] 21 Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
The Calling of Levi(A)
13 He went out again by the seaside, and the whole crowd came to Him, and He taught them. 14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s station, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he rose and followed Him.
15 As Jesus was at supper in his house, many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples. For there were many, and they followed Him. 16 When the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
The Question About Fasting(B)
18 Now the disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”
19 Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.
21 “No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old garment, or else the new piece that covered it tears away from the old, and the tear is made worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, and the wine is spilled, and the wineskins will be marred. But new wine must be poured into new wineskins.”
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.