Book of Common Prayer
To the director: A song of David.
40 I called[a] to the Lord, and he heard me.
He heard my cries.
2 He lifted me out of the grave.[b]
He lifted me from that muddy place.[c]
He picked me up, put me on solid ground,
and kept my feet from slipping.
3 He put a new song[d] in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see what he did and worship him.
They will put their trust in the Lord.
4 Great blessings belong to those who trust in the Lord,
for those who do not turn to demons and false gods[e] for help.
5 Lord my God, you have done many amazing things!
You have made great plans for us—too many to list.
I could talk on and on about them,
because there are too many to count.
6 Lord, you made me understand this:[f]
You don’t really want sacrifices and grain offerings.
You don’t want burnt offerings and sin offerings.
7 So I said, “Here I am,
ready to do what was written about me in the book.
8 My God, I am happy to do whatever you want.
I never stop thinking about your teachings.”
9 I told the good news of victory[g] to the people in the great assembly.
And, Lord, you know that I will never stop telling that good news.
10 I told about the good things you did.
I did not hide these things in my heart.
I spoke of how you can be trusted to save us.
I did not hide your love and loyalty from those in the great assembly.
11 Lord, do not hide your mercy from me.
Let your love and loyalty always protect me.
12 Troubles have surrounded me.
They are too many to count!
My sins have caught me,
and I cannot escape them.
They are more than the hairs on my head.
I have lost my courage.
13 Please, Lord, rescue me!
Lord, hurry and help me!
14 People are trying to kill me.
Please disappoint them.
Humiliate them completely!
They wanted to hurt me.
Make them run away in shame!
15 May those who make fun of me
be too embarrassed to speak!
16 But may those who come to you be happy and rejoice.
May those who love being saved by you always be able to say, “Praise the Lord!”[h]
17 My Lord, I am only a poor, helpless man,
but please pay attention to me.
You are my helper, the one who can save me.
My God, don’t be too late.
To the director: With instruments. A maskil of David written when the Ziphites went to Saul and told him, “We think David is hiding among our people.”
54 God, use your power and save me.
Use your great power to set me free.[a]
2 God, listen to my prayer.
Listen to what I say.
3 Strangers who don’t even think about God have turned against me.
Those powerful men are trying to kill me. Selah
4 Look, my God will help me.
My Lord will support me.
5 He will punish the people who turned against me.
God, be faithful to me and destroy them.
6 Lord, I will give freewill offerings to you.
I will praise your good name.
7 You saved me from all my troubles.
I saw my enemies defeated.
To the director: A song of David written when Nathan the prophet came to him after David’s sin with Bathsheba.
51 God, be merciful to me
because of your faithful love.
Because of your great compassion,
erase all the wrongs I have done.
2 Scrub away my guilt.
Wash me clean from my sin.
3 I know I have done wrong.
I remember that sin all the time.
4 I did what you said is wrong.
You are the one I have sinned against.
I say this so that people will know
that I am wrong and you are right.
What you decided is fair.
5 I was born to do wrong,
a sinner before I left my mother’s womb.
6 You want me to be completely loyal,
so put true wisdom deep inside of me.
7 Remove my sin and make me pure.[a]
Wash me until I am whiter than snow!
8 Let me hear sounds of joy and happiness again.
Let the bones you crushed be happy again.
9 Don’t look at my sins.
Erase them all.
10 God, create a pure heart in me,
and make my spirit strong again.
11 Don’t push me away
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Your help made me so happy.
Give me that joy again.
Make my spirit strong and ready to obey you.
13 I will teach the guilty how you want them to live,
and the sinners will come back to you.
14 God, spare me from the punishment of death.[b]
My God, you are the one who saves me!
Let me sing about all the good things you do for me!
15 My Lord, I will open my mouth and sing your praises!
16 You don’t really want sacrifices,
or I would give them to you.
17 The sacrifice that God wants is a humble spirit.
God, you will not turn away someone who comes with a humble heart and is willing to obey you.[c]
18 God, please be good to Zion.
Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you can enjoy the kind of sacrifices you want.[d]
You will receive whole burnt offerings,
and people will again offer bulls on your altar.
Job Continues His Speech
29 Job continued to speak:
24 “I have never trusted in riches.
I never said even to pure gold, ‘You are my hope.’
25 I have been wealthy,
but that didn’t make me proud.
I earned a lot of money,
but that is not what made me happy.
26 I have never worshiped the bright sun
or the beautiful moon.
27 I was never foolish enough
to worship the sun and the moon.
28 This is also a sin that must be punished.
If I had worshiped them, I would have been unfaithful to God All-Powerful.
29 “I have never been happy
when my enemies were destroyed.
I have never laughed at my enemies
when bad things happened to them.
30 I have never let my mouth sin by cursing my enemies
and wishing for them to die.
31 The people in my house know that
I have never let anyone go hungry.
32 I always invited strangers into my home
so that they would not have to sleep in the streets.
33 I have not tried to hide my sins as some people do.
I have never hidden my guilt.
34 I was never so afraid of what people might say or of making enemies
that I kept my sins secret and avoided going out.
35 “How I wish someone would listen to me!
I will sign my name to all I have said.
Now let God All-Powerful answer me.
Let him make a list of what he thinks I did wrong.
36 I would wear it around my neck.
I would put it on my head like a crown.
37 Then I could explain everything I have done.
I could come to God with my head held high like a prince.
38 “I did not use my land in a wrong way.
I never caused it to suffer.
39 I always paid the workers for the food I got from the land.
I never let any of them starve.
40 If I ever did any of these bad things,
let thorns and weeds grow in my fields instead of wheat and barley!”
Job’s words are finished.
12 Then the whole group became quiet. They listened while Paul and Barnabas told about all the miraculous signs and wonders that God had done through them among the non-Jewish people. 13 When they finished speaking, James said, “My brothers, listen to me. 14 Simon Peter has told us how God showed his love for the non-Jewish people. For the first time, God accepted them and made them his people. 15 The words of the prophets agree with this too:
16 ‘I will return after this.
I will build David’s house again.
It has fallen down.
I will build again the parts of his house that have been pulled down.
I will make his house new.
17 Then the rest of the world will look for the Lord God—
all those of other nations who are my people too.
The Lord said this.
And he is the one who does all these things.’ (A)
18 ‘All this has been known from the beginning of time.’[a]
19 “So I think we should not make things hard for those who have turned to God from among the non-Jewish people. 20 Instead, we should send a letter telling them only the things they should not do:
Don’t eat food that has been given to idols. This makes the food unclean.
Don’t be involved in sexual sin.
Don’t eat meat from animals that have been strangled or any meat that still has the blood in it.
21 They should not do any of these things, because there are still men in every city who teach the Law of Moses. The words of Moses have been read in the synagogue every Sabbath day for many years.”
30 He had not yet come into the village. He was still at the place where Martha met him. 31 The Jews who were in the house comforting Mary saw her get up and leave quickly. They thought she was going to the tomb to cry there. So they followed her. 32 Mary went to the place where Jesus was. When she saw him, she bowed at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw Mary crying and the people with her crying too, he was very upset and deeply troubled. 34 He asked, “Where did you put him?”
They said, “Lord, come and see.”
35 Jesus cried.
36 And the Jews said, “Look! He loved Lazarus very much!”
37 But some of them said, “Jesus healed the eyes of the blind man. Why didn’t he help Lazarus and stop him from dying?”
Jesus Raises Lazarus From Death
38 Again feeling very upset, Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave with a large stone covering the entrance. 39 He said, “Move the stone away.”
Martha said, “But, Lord, it has been four days since Lazarus died. There will be a bad smell.” Martha was the sister of the dead man.
40 Then Jesus said to her, “Remember what I told you? I said that if you believed, you would see God’s divine greatness.”
41 So they moved the stone away from the entrance. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you heard me. 42 I know that you always hear me. But I said these things because of the people here around me. I want them to believe that you sent me.” 43 After Jesus said this he called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with pieces of cloth. He had a handkerchief covering his face.
Jesus said to the people, “Take off the cloth and let him go.”
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International