Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 18(A)
For the Music Director. A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord. He spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said:
1 I love You, O Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my pillar, and my fortress, and my deliverer;
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.
3 I will call on the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I will be saved from my enemies.
4 The cords of death encircled me,
and the torrents of destruction terrified me.
5 The cords of Sheol surrounded me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called on the Lord,
and cried for help to my God;
He heard my voice from His temple,
and my cry for help came before Him to His ears.
7 Then the earth shook and quaked;
the foundations of the hills also moved;
they reeled because His anger burned.
8 Smoke went up out of His nostrils,
and fire from His mouth devoured;
coals were kindled by it.
9 He bent the heavens and came down,
and darkness was under His feet.
10 He rode on a cherub, and flew;
He flew swiftly on the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness His secret place;
His pavilion was surrounding Him,
dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
12 At the brightness before Him His thick clouds passed by,
hailstones and coals of fire.
13 The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High gave His voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
14 He sent out His arrows and scattered them,
and He shot out lightning and distressed them.
15 Then the channels of waters appeared,
and the foundations of the world were discovered
at Your rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.
16 He sent from above, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
17 He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from those who hated me,
for they were too strong for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
19 He also brought me forth into a large place;
He delivered me because He delighted in me.
20 The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands He has repaid me.
21 For I have kept the ways of the Lord,
and have not wickedly departed from my God.
22 For all His judgments were before me,
and I did not put away His statutes from me.
23 I was also upright before Him,
and I kept myself from my iniquity.
24 Therefore the Lord has repaid me according to my righteousness,
according to the cleanness of my hands in His view.
25 With the merciful You will show Yourself merciful;
with the blameless man You will show Yourself blameless;
26 with the pure You will show Yourself pure;
and with the crooked You will show Yourself crooked.
27 For You will save the afflicted people,
but will bring down prideful eyes.
28 For You will cause my lamp to shine;
the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.
29 For by You I can run through a troop,
and by my God I can leap a wall.
30 As for God, His way has integrity;
the word of the Lord is proven;
He is a shield
to all those who take refuge in Him.
31 For who is God except the Lord?
Or who is a rock besides our God?
32 It is God who clothes me with strength,
and gives my way integrity.
33 He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and causes me to stand on my high places.
34 He trains my hands for war,
so that my arms bend a bow of bronze.
35 You have given me the shield of Your salvation,
and Your right hand has held me up,
and Your gentleness has made me great.
36 You have lengthened my stride under me,
so that my feet did not slip.
37 I pursued my enemies and overtook them;
I did not return until they were destroyed.
38 I wounded them, and they were not able to rise;
they are fallen under my feet.
39 For You clothed me with strength for the battle;
You subdued under me those who rose up against me.
40 You gave me the necks of my enemies,
and I destroyed those who hate me.
41 They cried for help, but there was none to save them;
even to the Lord, but He did not answer them.
42 Then I beat them small as the dust before the wind;
I cast them out as the dirt in the streets.
43 You have delivered me from the hostilities of the people,
and You have made me the head of nations;
a people whom I have not known serve me.
44 At hearing a report, they obey me;
foreigners come cringing to me.
45 Foreigners fade away,
and come quaking out of their prisons.
46 The Lord lives! And blessed be my Rock!
May the God of my salvation be exalted.
47 It is God who avenges me
and subdues the people under me;
48 He delivers me from my enemies.
You lift me up above those who rise up against me;
You have delivered me from the violent man.
49 Therefore I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the nations,
and sing praises to Your name.
50 He gives great deliverance to His king,
and shows lovingkindness to His anointed,
to David and to his descendants for evermore.
Jonah Preaches at Nineveh
3 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”
3 So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three-day journey across. 4 Jonah began to enter the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “In forty days’ time, Nineveh will be overthrown!” 5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast. And everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he made a proclamation in Nineveh:
“By decree of the king and his nobles:
No man or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not eat or drink water. 8 Both man and animals shall cover themselves with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change His mind. He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw their actions, that they turned from their evil ways, He changed His mind about the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
Jonah’s Anger and the Lord’s Compassion
4 Now this greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is this not what I said while I was still in my own land? This is the reason that I fled before to Tarshish, because I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in faithfulness, and ready to relent from punishment. 3 Therefore, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 Then the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 So Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made for himself a booth there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to provide shade over his head, to provide comfort from his grief. And Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day, God appointed a worm to attack the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he became faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
9 Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
And Jonah replied, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death.”
10 The Lord said, “You are troubled about the plant for which you did not labor and did not grow. It came up in a night and perished in a night. 11 Should I not, therefore, be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people, who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
27 When the fourteenth night came, while we were drifting in the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors supposed that they were approaching land. 28 They took soundings and found the water to be one hundred and twenty feet deep.[a] When they had gone a little farther, they took soundings again and found it to be ninety feet deep.[b] 29 Fearing that we might run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. 30 When the sailors strove to abandon ship and lowered the rowboat into the sea, under the pretext of lowering anchors out of the bow, 31 Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, “Unless these sailors remain in the ship, you cannot be saved.” 32 Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the rowboat and let her fall off.
33 As day was about to dawn, Paul asked them all to eat, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have waited and continued without food, having eaten nothing. 34 So I urge you to eat. This is for your preservation, for not a hair shall fall from your head.” 35 When he had said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of them all. And when he had broken it he began to eat. 36 Then they were all encouraged, and they also ate food themselves. 37 In all we were two hundred and seventy-six persons on the ship. 38 When they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship and threw the wheat into the sea.
The Shipwreck
39 When it was day, they did not recognize the land. But they noticed a bay with a shore, into which they were determined to run the ship if possible. 40 Casting off the anchors, they left them in the sea while loosening the ropes that secured the rudders. Then they hoisted the mainsail to the wind and made for shore. 41 But striking a sandbar where two seas met, they ran the ship aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, but the stern was broken up by the violent surf.
42 The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim away and escape. 43 But the centurion, wanting to save Paul, prevented them from their intent and ordered those who could swim to abandon ship first and get to land, 44 and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And in this way they all escaped safely to land.
Peter’s Declaration About Jesus(A)
18 As He was alone praying, His disciples were with Him. And He asked them, “Who do the people say that I am?”
19 They answered, “John the Baptist. But some say Elijah. And others say that one of the old prophets has risen.”
20 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”
Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection(B)
21 Jesus strictly commanded them to tell no one of this, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.”
23 Then He said to them all, “If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 For whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His own glory and in the glory of His Father and of the holy angels.
27 “But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.