Book of Common Prayer
106 Hallelujah! Thank you, Lord! How good you are! Your love for us continues on forever. 2 Who can ever list the glorious miracles of God? Who can ever praise him half enough?
3 Happiness comes to those who are fair to others and are always just and good.
4 Remember me too, O Lord, while you are blessing and saving your people. 5 Let me share in your chosen ones’ prosperity and rejoice in all their joys, and receive the glory you give to them.
6 Both we and our fathers have sinned so much. 7 They weren’t impressed by the wonder of your miracles in Egypt and soon forgot your many acts of kindness to them. Instead they rebelled against you at the Red Sea. 8 Even so you saved them—to defend the honor of your name and demonstrate your power to all the world. 9 You commanded the Red Sea to divide, forming a dry road across its bottom. Yes, as dry as any desert! 10 Thus you rescued them from their enemies. 11 Then the water returned and covered the road and drowned their foes; not one survived.
12 Then at last his people believed him. Then they finally sang his praise.
13 Yet how quickly they forgot again! They wouldn’t wait for him to act 14 but demanded better food,[a] testing God’s patience to the breaking point. 15 So he gave them their demands but sent them leanness in their souls.[b] 16 They were envious of Moses, yes, and Aaron too, the man anointed[c] by God as his priest. 17 Because of this, the earth opened and swallowed Dathan, Abiram, and his friends; 18 and fire fell from heaven to consume these wicked men. 19-20 For they preferred a statue of an ox that eats grass to the glorious presence of God himself. 21-22 Thus they despised their Savior who had done such mighty miracles in Egypt and at the Red Sea. 23 So the Lord declared he would destroy them. But Moses, his chosen one, stepped into the breach between the people and their God and begged him to turn from his wrath and not destroy them.
24 They refused to enter the Promised Land, for they wouldn’t believe his solemn oath to care for them. 25 Instead, they pouted in their tents and mourned and despised his command. 26 Therefore he swore that he would kill them in the wilderness 27 and send their children away to distant lands as exiles. 28 Then our fathers joined the worshipers of Baal at Peor and even offered sacrifices to the dead![d] 29 With all these things they angered him—and so a plague broke out upon them 30 and continued until Phinehas executed those whose sins had caused the plague to start. 31 (For this good deed Phinehas will be remembered forever.)
32 At Meribah, too, Israel angered God, causing Moses serious trouble, 33 for he became angry and spoke foolishly.
34 Nor did Israel destroy the nations in the land as God had told them to, 35 but mingled in among the heathen and learned their evil ways, 36 sacrificing to their idols, and were led away from God. 37-38 They even sacrificed their little children to the demons—the idols of Canaan—shedding innocent blood and polluting the land with murder. 39 Their evil deeds defiled them, for their love of idols was adultery in the sight of God. 40 That is why Jehovah’s anger burned against his people, and he abhorred them. 41-42 That is why he let the heathen nations crush them. They were ruled by those who hated them and oppressed by their enemies.
43 Again and again he delivered them from their slavery, but they continued to rebel against him and were finally destroyed by their sin. 44 Yet, even so, he listened to their cries and heeded their distress; 45 he remembered his promises to them and relented because of his great love, 46 and caused even their enemies who captured them to pity them.
47 O Lord God, save us! Regather us from the nations so we can thank your holy name and rejoice and praise you.
48 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, “Amen!” Hallelujah!
22 The people of Israel now traveled to the plains of Moab and camped east of the Jordan River opposite Jericho. 2-3 When King Balak of Moab (the son of Zippor) realized how many of them there were, and when he learned what they had done to the Amorites, he and his people were terrified. 4 They quickly consulted with the leaders of Midian.
“This mob will eat us like an ox eats grass,” they exclaimed.
So King Balak 5-6 sent messengers to Balaam (son of Beor) who was living in his native land of Pethor, near the Euphrates River. He begged Balaam to come and help him.
“A vast horde of people has arrived from Egypt, and they cover the face of the earth and are headed toward me,” he frantically explained. “Please come and curse them for me, so that I can drive them out of my land; for I know what fantastic blessings fall on those whom you bless, and I also know that those whom you curse are doomed.”
7 The messengers he sent were some of the top leaders of Moab and Midian. They went to Balaam with money in hand and urgently explained to him what Balak wanted.
8 “Stay here overnight,” Balaam said, “and I’ll tell you in the morning whatever the Lord directs me to say.” So they did.
9 That night God came to Balaam and asked him, “Who are these men?”
10 “They have come from King Balak of Moab,” he replied. 11 “The king says that a vast horde of people from Egypt has arrived at his border, and he wants me to go at once and curse them, in the hope that he can battle them successfully.”
12 “Don’t do it!” God told him. “You are not to curse them, for I have blessed them!”
13 The next morning Balaam told the men, “Go on home! The Lord won’t let me do it.”
14 So King Balak’s ambassadors returned without him and reported his refusal. 15 Balak tried again. This time he sent a larger number of even more distinguished ambassadors than the former group. 16-17 They came to Balaam with this message:
“King Balak pleads with you to come. He promises you great honors plus any payment you ask. Name your own figure! Only come and curse these people for us.”
18 But Balaam replied, “If he were to give me a palace filled with silver and gold, I could do nothing contrary to the command of the Lord my God. 19 However, stay here tonight so that I can find out whether the Lord will add anything to what he said before.”
20 That night God told Balaam, “You may get up and go with these men, but be sure to say only what I tell you to.”
21 So the next morning he saddled his donkey and started off with them.
12 Do not let sin control your puny body any longer; do not give in to its sinful desires. 13 Do not let any part of your bodies become tools of wickedness, to be used for sinning; but give yourselves completely to God—every part of you—for you are back from death and you want to be tools in the hands of God, to be used for his good purposes. 14 Sin need never again be your master,[a] for now you are no longer tied to the law where sin enslaves you, but you are free under God’s favor and mercy.
15 Does this mean that now we can go ahead and sin and not worry about it? (For our salvation does not depend on keeping the law but on receiving God’s grace!) Of course not!
16 Don’t you realize that you can choose your own master? You can choose sin (with death) or else obedience (with acquittal). The one to whom you offer yourself—he will take you and be your master, and you will be his slave. 17 Thank God that though you once chose to be slaves of sin, now you have obeyed with all your heart the teaching to which God has committed you. 18 And now you are free from your old master, sin; and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness.
19 I speak this way, using the illustration of slaves and masters, because it is easy to understand: just as you used to be slaves to all kinds of sin, so now you must let yourselves be slaves to all that is right and holy.
20 In those days when you were slaves of sin you didn’t bother much with goodness. 21 And what was the result? Evidently not good, since you are ashamed now even to think about those things you used to do, for all of them end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and are slaves of God, and his benefits to you include holiness and everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
12 Jesus went into the Temple, drove out the merchants, and knocked over the money changers’ tables and the stalls of those selling doves.
13 “The Scriptures say my Temple is a place of prayer,” he declared, “but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”
14 And now the blind and crippled came to him, and he healed them there in the Temple. 15 But when the chief priests and other Jewish leaders saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the little children in the Temple shouting, “God bless the Son of David,” they were disturbed and indignant and asked him, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”
16 “Yes,” Jesus replied. “Didn’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘Even little babies shall praise him!’”
17 Then he returned to Bethany, where he stayed overnight.
18 In the morning, as he was returning to Jerusalem, he was hungry 19 and noticed a fig tree beside the road. He went over to see if there were any figs, but there were only leaves. Then he said to it, “Never bear fruit again!” And soon[a] the fig tree withered up.
20 The disciples were utterly amazed and asked, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?”
21 Then Jesus told them, “Truly, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this Mount of Olives, ‘Move over into the ocean,’ and it will. 22
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.