Book of Common Prayer
The Lord is good![a]
106 Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Thank the Lord, because he is good.
His faithful love will always be with us.
2 The great things that the Lord has done
are too many to tell!
Nobody can praise him enough.
3 God has blessed the people who obey his commands.
They always do what is right.
4 Lord, when you help your people,
please remember me!
Do not forget to help me,
when you come to rescue them.
5 I want to enjoy the good things
that you give to the people that you have chosen.
I want to be happy together with them.
I want to join with the people who belong to you,
and praise you as you deserve.
6 We have done bad things,
as our ancestors also did.
We have done things that are wicked and evil.
7 When our ancestors were in Egypt,
they did not understand your miracles.
They forgot the many ways that you showed them your faithful love.
When they arrived at the Red Sea,
they turned against you, Lord.
8 But the Lord rescued them,
to show that his name is great.
He showed that he was very powerful.
9 He shouted at the Red Sea,
and it became dry.
He led his people through the middle of the deep water,
as if they walked in a desert!
10 He rescued them from the people who hated them.
He saved them from their enemy's power.
11 The water of the sea drowned their enemies,
so that none of them remained alive.[b]
12 Then God's people believed his promises.
They sang songs to praise him.[c]
13 But they soon forgot
what the Lord had done to help them.
They did not wait for him to tell them what to do.
14 In the wilderness they wanted better food.
They tested God to see what he would do.
15 He gave them the food that they asked for,
but he also sent a bad disease on them.[d]
16 The people became jealous of Moses,
and Aaron, the Lord's special priest.
17 So God made the earth break open,
so that Dathan fell into it.
It also destroyed Abiram and his people.
18 Fire burned all their group,
and it killed those wicked people.[e]
19 At Horeb, the Israelites used gold to make a cow,
and they worshipped it.
20 They turned away from their great God.
Instead, they worshipped the statue of a cow,
an animal that eats grass![f]
21 They forgot the God who had saved them,
when he did great miracles in Egypt.
22 He had done powerful things in the land of Ham's descendants,
and at the shore of the Red Sea.
His people forgot about all that!
23 So God said that he would destroy them.
But God's servant, Moses, spoke on their behalf.
He asked God not to be angry with his people,
and God agreed.
24 Later, they did not believe God's promise
to take them safely into the beautiful land of Canaan.
25 They spoke against the Lord in their tents,
and they did not obey him.
26 So he made a strong promise
that he would cause them to die in the desert.
27 He promised that he would chase their descendants away,
so that they died in foreign countries.[g]
28 After that, they started to worship the false god, Baal of Peor.
They ate the food from sacrifices
that people gave to dead idols.
29 The Lord became angry
because of what his people did.
He sent a bad disease among them.
30 Then Phinehas punished the guilty people,
so that the disease stopped killing people.[h]
31 So we remember that Phinehas was a righteous man,
and that will be true for ever.
32 At Meribah springs, the Israelites made God angry.
What they did there caused Moses to have trouble.
33 Moses was so upset that he spoke in a careless way.[i]
34 The Lord commanded his people
to destroy the nations of Canaan,
But they did not obey the Lord's command.
35 Instead, they mixed with those nations
and they learned their way of life.
36 They worshipped their idols
which caught them in a trap.
37 They even killed their sons and their daughters
as sacrifices for those idols of demons!
38 Their sons and their daughters did not deserve to die,
but they killed them as sacrifices for the idols of Canaan.
Those murders made the land unclean.
39 The things that the Lord's people did
made them unclean.
They were not faithful to the Lord,
like a wife who is not faithful to her husband.
40 So the Lord became angry with his people.
They belonged to him
but he turned away from them.
41 He let other nations have power over them.
Their enemies ruled over them.
42 Their enemies had power to hurt them,
and they were cruel to them.
43 Many times, the Lord rescued his people,
but they had decided not to obey him.
Their sins made them weaker and weaker.
44 But the Lord still saw when they were in trouble.
He answered them when they called to him for help.
45 He remembered the covenant that he had made with them.
Because of his faithful love for his people,
he stopped punishing them.
46 He caused all their enemies to be kind to them.
47 Lord, our God, please save us!
Bring us safely home from among the other nations.[j]
Then we will thank you!
We will shout aloud to praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, Israel's God,
as he deserves!
Praise him now and for ever!
Let everybody say, ‘Amen! We agree!’
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord![k]
King Balak asks Balaam to help him
22 The Israelites travelled to Moab. They lived in tents at the side of the Jordan River. Jericho city was on the other side of the river.
2 The king of Moab at that time was Balak, the son of Zippor. He had seen what the Israelites did to the Amorites. 3 The people in Moab were afraid because there were so many Israelites. All the people in Moab became very afraid of the Israelites.
4 So the Moabites said to the leaders of the Midianites, ‘This large group of people will destroy everything round us. They will be like a bull that eats all the grass in a field!’
So Balak, the king of Moab, 5 sent men to get Balaam, the son of Beor. Balaam was living near the Euphrates river at Pethor. Balak told the men to say to Balaam, ‘A large group of people has come here from Egypt. They cover all the ground, everywhere. They have put up their tents near our land. 6 They are more powerful than I am. Come here and put a curse on them. If you do that, maybe I will win against them. Then I can chase them away from our land. I know that you have the authority to bless people or to curse them.’
7 The leaders of Moab and Midian went to find Balaam. They took the money to pay for Balaam's work. When they found him, they told him what Balak had said. 8 Balaam said to them, ‘Stay here tonight. I will talk to the Lord. Tomorrow, I will tell you his answer.’ So the Moabite officers stayed with Balaam.
9 Then God came to Balaam and he asked, ‘Who are these men who are staying with you?’
10 Balaam said to God, ‘Zippor's son Balak, the king of Moab, has sent a message to me. 11 He said, “A big group of people has come from Egypt and they cover all the ground. So please come and curse them for me. Then perhaps I will be able to fight them and send them away.” ’
12 God said to Balaam, ‘Do not agree to go with them. You must not curse those people. They are special people. I have blessed them.’
13 The next day, Balaam said to the officers from Moab, ‘Go back to Moab. The Lord told me that I should not go with you.’ 14 So the officers went back to Moab. They told King Balak that Balaam would not come with them.
15 Then Balak sent other officers to speak to Balaam. These officers were even more important than the first group, and there were more of them. 16 They said to Balaam, ‘King Balak says, “Do not let anything stop you from coming to me. 17 I will certainly make you rich and famous. I will do for you anything that you want. So please come and curse these people for me.” ’
18 Balaam said to them, ‘No, I will only do what the Lord tells me. I can do no more than that, and no less. Even if Balak gives me his house, all his gold and all his silver, I will only do what the Lord says. 19 Stay here tonight, as the other men did. I will talk to the Lord and see if he has anything more to tell me.’
20 That night, God said to Balaam, ‘These men have asked you to go with them, so go with them. But only do what I tell you.’
Balaam and his donkey
21 In the morning, Balaam prepared his donkey to travel. He went with the officers to Moab.
12 So do not let sin rule your life in this world. Do not do the wrong things that your body wants to do. 13 Sin can use your body to do things that are wrong. So do not let any parts of your body serve sin as their master. Instead, be ready to serve God as your Master. You can do that because you now have a new life. Your old life is dead. So give every part of your body to God. Then he will use you to do right things. 14 Sin will no longer have authority over you. You do not have a new life because you obey the Law which God gave to Moses. You have a new life because God is very kind to you.
Be careful to do what is right
15 Someone might say: ‘So we have a new life because God is kind to us. God's Law that he gave to Moses does not rule us any more. Then maybe we should continue to do wrong things. It will not make any difference.’ No, that is not true! 16 Remember this: When you agree to serve someone as a slave, you have to obey that person as your master. You may choose to serve sin as your master. If you do that, you will die.[a] Or you may choose to obey God. If you do that, you will live in a way that is right. 17 At one time, you were slaves to sin. But then you received God's true message, and you were happy to obey it. I thank God because of that! 18 As a result, God has made you free from the power of sin. You are now like slaves who serve everything that is right and good.
19 It is difficult for you to understand these things, because you are still weak. So I am using a human picture of slaves to help you to understand better. At one time, you agreed to serve bad things as your master. You let your body do wrong and disgusting things. You continued to do more and more bad things. So now, you must use your body to serve what is right and good. Then you will do more and more good things which show that you belong to God.
20 When you were slaves to sin, you did not even have to think about what was right and good. 21 You did things that you are ashamed about now. Nothing good came from them. In the end, the result of those things is death. 22 But now God has made you free from the power of sin. You have become God's slaves. Many good things come from that, because God is helping you to live in a good way. In the end, the result will be that you will live with him for ever.
23 If you serve sin as your master, it will pay you with death. But if you belong to our Lord Jesus Christ, God gives you a gift! That gift is life with God for ever.
Jesus visits the temple
12 Jesus then went into the yard of the temple.[a] People were buying and selling things there. Jesus made them all leave that place. He pushed over the tables of the men who changed coins.[b] He also pushed over the seats of the men who sold birds.
13 Jesus spoke to them all. He said, ‘The Bible says, “God's house will be a place where people come together to pray.” But you have changed it into a place where robbers meet.’[c]
14 Blind people went to meet Jesus in the yard of the temple. People who could not walk very well also went there. Jesus caused them all to become well. 15 The leaders of the priests and teachers of God's Law saw all the powerful things that Jesus did. They also saw children in the yard of the temple who were shouting, ‘Welcome! We pray that God will be good to you, Son of David!’ All these things caused the important Jews to become very angry.
16 They asked Jesus, ‘Can you hear what these children are saying?’
Jesus replied, ‘Yes, I can hear them. I am sure that you have read this in the Bible:
“Lord God, babies and children praise you.
You yourself have taught them to do that.” ’[d]
17 Then Jesus left everyone and he went out of Jerusalem. He stayed that night in Bethany, a village near the city.[e]
Jesus causes a fruit tree to die
18 On the next day, early in the morning, Jesus left Bethany to return to Jerusalem. On the way there, he was hungry. 19 He saw a fig tree near to the road. He went to see if it had fruit on it. But there were only leaves on the tree, and no fruit. Jesus said to the tree, ‘No fruit will ever grow on you again!’ Then, immediately, the tree became dry and it died.
20 The disciples saw it happen and they were very surprised. And they asked Jesus, ‘How did the tree die so quickly?’
21 Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you this: You must believe in God. You must not have other ideas in your mind. If you believe in God, then you could also do the same thing to this fig tree. You could even say to this mountain, “Move away and throw yourself into the sea!” Then it would really happen. 22 So when you pray to ask God for something, believe in him. Then God will give you whatever you ask for.’
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