Book of Common Prayer
The Lord's Goodness to His People
106 (A)Praise the Lord!
Give thanks to the Lord, because he is good;
his love is eternal.
2 Who can tell all the great things he has done?
Who can praise him enough?
3 Happy are those who obey his commands,
who always do what is right.
4 Remember me, Lord, when you help your people;
include me when you save them.
5 Let me see the prosperity of your people
and share in the happiness of your nation,
in the glad pride of those who belong to you.
6 We have sinned as our ancestors did;
we have been wicked and evil.
7 (B)Our ancestors in Egypt did not understand God's wonderful acts;
they forgot the many times he showed them his love,
and they rebelled against the Almighty[a] at the Red Sea.
8 But he saved them, as he had promised,
in order to show his great power.
9 (C)He gave a command to the Red Sea,
and it dried up;
he led his people across on dry land.
10 He saved them from those who hated them;
he rescued them from their enemies.
11 But the water drowned their enemies;
not one of them was left.
12 (D)Then his people believed his promises
and sang praises to him.
13 But they quickly forgot what he had done
and acted without waiting for his advice.
14 (E)They were filled with craving in the desert
and put God to the test;
15 so he gave them what they asked for,
but also sent a terrible disease among them.
16 (F)There in the desert they were jealous of Moses
and of Aaron, the Lord's holy servant.
17 Then the earth opened up and swallowed Dathan
and buried Abiram and his family;
18 fire came down on their followers
and burned up those wicked people.
19 (G)They made a gold bull-calf at Sinai
and worshiped that idol;
20 they exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an animal that eats grass.
21 They forgot the God who had saved them
by his mighty acts in Egypt.
22 What wonderful things he did there!
What amazing things at the Red Sea!
23 When God said that he would destroy his people,
his chosen servant, Moses, stood up against God
and kept his anger from destroying them.
24 (H)Then they rejected the pleasant land,
because they did not believe God's promise.
25 They stayed in their tents and grumbled
and would not listen to the Lord.
26 So he have them a solemn warning
that he would make them die in the desert
27 (I)and scatter their descendants among the heathen,
letting them die in foreign countries.
28 (J)Then at Peor, God's people joined in the worship of Baal
and ate sacrifices offered to dead gods.
29 They stirred up the Lord's anger by their actions,
and a terrible disease broke out among them.
30 But Phinehas stood up and punished the guilty,
and the plague was stopped.
31 This has been remembered in his favor ever since
and will be for all time to come.
32 (K)At the springs of Meribah the people made the Lord angry,
and Moses was in trouble on their account.
33 They made him so bitter
that he spoke without stopping to think.
34 (L)They did not kill the heathen,
as the Lord had commanded them to do,
35 but they intermarried with them
and adopted their pagan ways.
36 God's people worshiped idols,
and this caused their destruction.
37 (M)They offered their own sons and daughters
as sacrifices to the idols of Canaan.
38 (N)They killed those innocent children,
and the land was defiled by those murders.
39 They made themselves impure by their actions
and were unfaithful to God.
40 (O)So the Lord was angry with his people;
he was disgusted with them.
41 He abandoned them to the power of the heathen,
and their enemies ruled over them.
42 They were oppressed by their enemies
and were in complete subjection to them.
43 Many times the Lord rescued his people,
but they chose to rebel against him
and sank deeper into sin.
44 Yet the Lord heard them when they cried out,
and he took notice of their distress.
45 For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and because of his great love he relented.
46 He made all their oppressors
feel sorry for them.
47 (P)Save us, O Lord our God,
and bring us back from among the nations,
so that we may be thankful
and praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, the God of Israel;
praise him now and forever!
Let everyone say, “Amen!”
Praise the Lord!
Micah's Idols
17 There was once a man named Micah, who lived in the hill country of Ephraim. 2 He told his mother, “When someone stole those eleven hundred pieces of silver from you, you put a curse on the robber. I heard you do it. Look, I have the money. I am the one who took it.”
His mother said, “May the Lord bless you, my son!” 3 He gave the money back to his mother, and she said, “To keep the curse from falling on my son, I myself am solemnly dedicating the silver to the Lord. It will be used to make a wooden idol covered with silver. So now I will give the pieces of silver back to you.” 4 Then he gave them back to his mother. She took two hundred of the pieces of silver and gave them to a metalworker, who made an idol, carving it from wood and covering it with the silver. It was placed in Micah's house.
5 This man Micah had his own place of worship. He made some idols and an ephod,[a] and appointed one of his sons as his priest. 6 (A)There was no king in Israel at that time; everyone did whatever they wanted.
7 At that same time there was a young Levite who had been living in the town of Bethlehem in Judah. 8 He left Bethlehem to find another place to live. While he was traveling, he came to Micah's house in the hill country of Ephraim. 9 Micah asked him, “Where do you come from?”
He answered, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah. I am looking for a place to live.”
10 Micah said, “Stay with me. Be my adviser and priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, some clothes, and your food.”[b] 11 The young Levite agreed to stay with Micah and became like a son to him. 12 Micah appointed him as his priest, and he lived in Micah's home. 13 Micah said, “Now that I have a Levite as my priest, I know that the Lord will make things go well for me.”
44 (A)“Our ancestors had the Tent of God's presence with them in the desert. It had been made as God had told Moses to make it, according to the pattern that Moses had been shown. 45 (B)Later on, our ancestors who received the tent from their fathers carried it with them when they went with Joshua and took over the land from the nations that God drove out as they advanced. And it stayed there until the time of David. 46 (C)He won God's favor and asked God to allow him to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.[a] 47 (D)But it was Solomon who built him a house.
48 “But the Most High God does not live in houses built by human hands; as the prophet says,
49 (E)‘Heaven is my throne, says the Lord,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house would you build for me?
Where is the place for me to live in?
50 Did not I myself make all these things?’
51 (F)“How stubborn you are!” Stephen went on to say. “How heathen your hearts, how deaf you are to God's message! You are just like your ancestors: you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit! 52 Was there any prophet that your ancestors did not persecute? They killed God's messengers, who long ago announced the coming of his righteous Servant. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. 53 You are the ones who received God's law, that was handed down by angels—yet you have not obeyed it!”
The Stoning of Stephen
54 As the members of the Council listened to Stephen, they became furious and ground their teeth at him in anger. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw God's glory and Jesus standing at the right side of God. 56 “Look!” he said. “I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!”
57 With a loud cry the Council members covered their ears with their hands. Then they all rushed at him at once, 58 threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses left their cloaks in the care of a young man named Saul. 59 They kept on stoning Stephen as he called out to the Lord, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 He knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord! Do not remember this sin against them!” He said this and died.
8 And Saul approved of his murder.
Saul Persecutes the Church
That very day the church in Jerusalem began to suffer cruel persecution. All the believers, except the apostles, were scattered throughout the provinces of Judea and Samaria.
The Authority of the Son
19 So Jesus answered them, “I tell you the truth: the Son can do nothing on his own; he does only what he sees his Father doing. What the Father does, the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. He will show him even greater things to do than this, and you will all be amazed. 21 Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, in the same way the Son gives life to those he wants to. 22 Nor does the Father himself judge anyone. He has given his Son the full right to judge, 23 so that all will honor the Son in the same way as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
24 “I am telling you the truth: those who hear my words and believe in him who sent me have eternal life. They will not be judged, but have already passed from death to life. 25 I am telling you the truth: the time is coming—the time has already come—when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life. 26 Just as the Father is himself the source of life, in the same way he has made his Son to be the source of life. 27 And he has given the Son the right to judge, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not be surprised at this; the time is coming when all the dead will hear his voice 29 (A)and come out of their graves: those who have done good will rise and live, and those who have done evil will rise and be condemned.
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.