Book of Common Prayer
QOPH
145 With my whole being, I call to you,
‘Answer me, Lord!
I will obey your commands.’
146 I say to you, ‘Save me,
so that I can obey your rules.’
147 I wake up before dawn
and I cry to you for help.
I trust your promises to be true.
148 I am awake during each night,
and I think carefully about your message.
149 You love me with a faithful love,
so please listen to me!
Lord, do what is right,
and keep my life safe.
150 People who love to do evil things
are ready to attack me.
They have no interest in your Law.
151 Lord, you are near to me,
and I can trust all your commands.
152 I have studied your teaching since long ago.
I know that you have made it to remain for ever.
RESH
153 Look at my pain and trouble!
Please save me,
because I do not forget your Law.
154 Stand with me and make me free.
Keep me safe,
as you have promised to do.
155 Wicked people do not obey your rules,
so their lives will never be safe.
156 Lord, you are very kind.
Please do what is right,
and keep my life safe!
157 I have many enemies
who are ready to hurt me.
But I do not turn away from your teaching.
158 When I see people who have turned against you,
they make me very upset.
They do not obey your commands.
159 See how I love your teaching, Lord!
Please keep my life safe,
because of your faithful love for your people.
160 I can trust that your message is true.
All your righteous rules will continue for ever.
SHIN
161 Rulers want to hurt me for no good reason.
But it is your message that I respect with fear.
162 Your teaching makes me very happy.
I am like someone who has found great riches.
163 I hate all kinds of lies,
but I love your Law.
164 I praise you seven times each day,
because of your righteous rules.
165 People who love your Law have peace in their minds.
Nothing will cause them to fall down.
166 Lord, I trust you to save me,
as I obey your commands.
167 I will continue to obey your rules,
because I love them so much.
168 I obey your commands and your teaching,
because you know everything that I do.
TAW
169 Listen to me, Lord,
as I call to you for help!
Help me to understand your word.
170 I ask you to be kind to me,
so please listen!
Keep me safe,
as you have promised to do.
171 I will always speak aloud to praise you,
because you teach me your rules.
172 I will sing about your message,
because all your commands are righteous.
173 Please be ready to help me,
because I choose to obey your teaching.
174 Lord, I am waiting for you to save me.
Please do it soon!
Your Law makes me very happy.
175 Keep my life safe,
so that I can praise you.
Use your laws to give me help.
176 I have left the right way.
Come to make me safe again,
like a shepherd looks for his lost sheep.
Help me, your servant,
because I have not forgotten your commands.
A song to sing as we climb.
A happy family
128 If people respect the Lord
and they obey his commands,
God has blessed them!
2 You will eat the food that you have worked hard to grow.
You will have everything that you need.
You will be happy!
3 Your wife will be like a vine that grows in your home,
and it gives many grapes.
Your children will sit around your table,
like the branches of an olive tree that are around you.[a]
4 Yes, if a man respects the Lord,
that is how God blesses him.
5 The Lord rules from Zion,
and I pray that he will bless you.[b]
Then you will see that Jerusalem is a good place to live in
for as long as you live.
6 I pray that you will live to see your grandchildren.
May Israel have peace!
A song to sing as we climb.
129 Since I was young, my enemies have often attacked me.
Israel's people now answer:
2 ‘They have often attacked me since I was young,
but they have not won against me.
3 They hit my back with whips.
They made long marks on it,
like farmers who are ploughing their fields.
4 But the Lord is righteous.
He has made me free from those cruel people.’
5 I pray that everyone who hates Zion's people will be ashamed.
Then they will have to turn around and go back.
6 May they be useless, like grass that grows on a roof.
It dies before it can grow tall!
7 A gardener cannot use it.
A farmer will not keep it.[c]
8 People that go past will not say to them,
‘We will ask the Lord to bless you!’
Nobody will say to those who hate Zion's people,
‘Receive our blessing in the name of the Lord!’
A song to sing as we climb.
I have great trouble
130 Lord, I am crying aloud to you
because I have great trouble.
2 My Lord, please listen to me!
I am asking you to be kind and help me.
3 Lord, if you should write down all our sins,
nobody could stand as a righteous person.
4 But you forgive people for their sins,
and so we give you honour.
5 I will wait for the Lord to help me.
I trust him completely.
So I wait for him to do what he has promised.
6 I want my Lord to come and help me,
more than a guard at night wants the morning to come.
Yes, I want my Lord to come quickly, even more than that.
7 Israel's people, trust the Lord to help you.
The Lord has faithful love for his people.
He is always ready to save them.
8 He will save Israel's people from all their sins.
41 The next day, Balak took Balaam to Bamoth-Baal. From there, Balaam could see some of the big group of the Israelites.
Balaam's first message from God
23 Balaam said to King Balak, ‘Build seven altars here for me. Prepare seven bulls and seven male sheep.’ 2 Balak did this. Balaam and Balak then offered a bull and a male sheep on each altar as a sacrifice.
3 Then Balaam said to Balak, ‘Stand next to your burnt offering. I will go to see if the Lord will come to meet me. If he shows something to me, I will tell you about it.’ Then Balaam went to the top of a hill where there were no trees.
4 Balaam said to the Lord, ‘I made seven altars. On each altar, I have offered a bull and a male sheep.’
5 God told Balaam the message that he should speak to Balak.
6 So Balaam returned to Balak. Balak was still standing by his burnt offering with all the Moabite officers.
7 Then Balaam started to speak his message from God. He said, ‘Balak, the king of Moab, has brought me from Syria. He brought me from the mountains in the east. He said “Come and curse Jacob's descendants for me. Say bad things against the Israelites!”
8 But I cannot curse these people, because God has not cursed them. I cannot speak against people that the Lord does not speak against.
9 When I stand on the rocks, I can see the Israelites. I can watch them from the hills. They are people who are separate from other nations.
10 Nobody can count Jacob's descendants. They are as many as the dust on the ground! It would be too difficult to count even a quarter of the Israelites. I would like to die in peace like those righteous people!’
11 Balak said to Balaam, ‘You have not done what I wanted you to do! I brought you here to curse my enemies. But you have blessed them!’
12 Balaam answered, ‘I can only speak the message that the Lord has told me.’
13 But someone might say, ‘This means that something good brought death to you.’ No! God's Law did not do that! It was sin that brought death to me. Sin used God's good Law to show that I was guilty. Because of that, we can see that sin is really very bad. The commands in God's Law help to show that sin is completely bad.
The power of sin in our lives
14 We understand that God's Law is spiritual. But I am weak and human. I am like a slave that has sin as my master. 15 I do not understand the things that I do. I do not do the good things that I want to do. Instead, I do the things that I hate to do. 16 But I do not want to do those wrong things. So I am agreeing that God's Law is good. 17 So it is not really I myself who am doing those wrong things. Instead, sin has power in my life. It is sin that causes me to do wrong things.
18 I know that there is nothing good in me. I am weak and human. I want to do what is good. But I am unable to do it. 19 I do not do the good things that I want to do. Instead, I continue to do the bad things that I do not want to do. 20 So, when I do bad things that I do not want to do, it is not really I myself who do them. It is sin that causes me to do wrong things, because it has power in my life.
21 So I understand what is happening in me. Whenever I want to do something good, I can only choose something bad. 22 Deep inside myself, I really love God's laws. 23 So my mind tells me to obey God's laws. But my body wants to make me do something else. Every part of me fights against what my mind tells me to do. Sin has power over my body so that I am like a prisoner. 24 This makes me very sad! My body is leading me to death. I need someone to make me free from the power of sin over my body. 25 I thank God! He has made me free, because of what Jesus Christ has done.
So with my mind I want to obey God's laws. But, at the same time, I serve sin as my master, because I am weak and human.
Jesus tells a story about a farmer
33 Then Jesus said again to the Jewish leaders, ‘Listen to another story that I will tell you. There was a man who had his own farm. He planted vines in a garden to grow grapes there. He built a wall around the garden. He dug a hole in the ground for a winepress to make wine. He also built a tall building to watch over the garden.[a]
The man then found some farmers to work in the garden for him. Then he went away to another country. 34 When it was nearly time for the harvest, the master sent his servants to speak to the farmers. He wanted them to give him the fruit that was his. 35 But the farmers took hold of the servants. They hit one of them with sticks. They killed another one. They threw stones at another servant and killed him. 36 So the master sent other servants to go to the farmers. He sent more servants than the first time. But the farmers did the same thing to those servants too. 37 After that, the master sent his own son to the farmers. He thought, “The farmers will surely respect my son.”
38 The farmers saw the master's son coming. They said to each other, “This is the master's own son. The garden will belong to him when his father dies. So we should kill the son and then the garden will be ours.” 39 Then the farmers took hold of the son. They threw him out of the garden and they killed him.’
40 Jesus then said, ‘One day, the master will return to his garden. What do you think he will do then to those farmers?’
41 The Jewish leaders said to Jesus, ‘The master will completely destroy those bad people. Then he will give the garden to other farmers to take care of it. Those new farmers will give the master the fruit that he should have at the time of harvest.’
42 Jesus said to them, ‘I am sure that you have read this in the Bible:
“The builders refused to use a certain stone.
They thought that it had no value.
But now that stone has become the most important stone at the corner of the building.[b]
The Lord God did this.
And we can see that he did something great.”[c]
43 I tell you this: Because you do not believe in me, God will take his kingdom away from you. He will give it to people who show that they obey him.
44 When a person falls onto that stone, it will break his body into pieces. When that stone falls on top of someone, it will destroy him completely.’[d]
45 The leaders of the priests and the Pharisees heard what Jesus said in his stories. They knew that he was speaking against them. 46 They wanted to take hold of him and put him in prison. But they did not try to do it because they were afraid of the people. The people thought that Jesus was a prophet from God.
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