Book of Common Prayer
78 Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,
3 which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done.
5 For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded to our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;
6 that the generation to come might know them, even the children who should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children,
7 that they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments;
8 and so might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
9 The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle.
10 They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in His law;
11 they forgot His works and His wonders that He had shown them.
12 Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea and caused them to pass through; and He made the waters to stand as a heap.
14 In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.
15 He cleaved the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.
16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
17 And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness.
18 And they tempted God in their heart by asking for meat for their lust.
19 Yea, they spoke against God: they said, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
20 Behold, He smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? Can He provide flesh for His people?”
21 Therefore the Lord heard this and was wroth; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also rose up against Israel,
22 because they believed not in God and trusted not in His salvation,
23 though He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven,
24 and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.
25 Man ate angels’ food; He sent them meat to the full.
26 He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven, and by His power He brought in the south wind.
27 He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls as the sand of the sea.
28 And He let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations.
29 So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them their own desire.
30 But they were not estranged from their lust; but while their meat was yet in their mouths,
31 the wrath of God came upon them and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.
32 For all this, they sinned still and believed not in His wondrous works.
33 Therefore their days did He consume in vanity, and their years in trouble.
34 When He slew them, then they sought Him; and they returned and inquired early after God.
35 And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God, their redeemer.
36 Nevertheless they flattered Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues.
37 For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they steadfast in His covenant.
38 But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not. Yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath;
39 for He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again.
40 How oft did they provoke Him in the wilderness, and grieve Him in the desert!
41 Yea, they turned back and tested God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.
42 They remembered not His hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy,
43 how He had wrought His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the field of Zoan,
44 and had turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, that they could not drink.
45 He sent divers sorts of flies among them which devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them.
46 He gave also their harvest unto the caterpillar, and their labor unto the locust.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost.
48 He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.
49 He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them.
50 He made a path to His anger; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence,
51 and smote all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham.
52 But He made His own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
53 And He led them on safely, so that they feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
54 And He brought them to the border of His sanctuary, even to this mountain, which His right hand had purchased.
55 He cast out the heathen also before them, and apportioned them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
56 Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God and kept not His testimonies,
57 but turned back and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers; they were turned aside like a deceitful bow.
58 For they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and loved Him to jealousy with their graven images.
59 When God heard this, He was wroth and greatly abhorred Israel,
60 so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He had placed among men,
61 and delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.
62 He gave His people over also unto the sword, and was wroth with His inheritance.
63 The fire consumed their young men, and their maidens were not given to marriage.
64 Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.
65 Then the Lord awakened as one out of sleep, like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine.
66 And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts, and laid upon them a perpetual reproach.
67 Moreover He refused the tabernacle of Joseph and chose not the tribe of Ephraim,
68 but chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which He loved.
69 And He built His sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which He hath established for ever.
70 He also chose David His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds;
71 from following the ewes great with young He brought him to feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance.
72 So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.
59 Behold, the Lord’S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth; they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
5 They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
6 Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.
7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
8 The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings; they have made them crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us; we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.
10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.
11 We all roar like bears, and mourn sore like doves; we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.
12 For our transgressions are multiplied before Thee, and our sins testify against us. For our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them:
13 in transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
14 And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
15 Yea, truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. And the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no judgment.
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus,
2 To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
3 I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that I have thee in remembrance in my prayers night and day without ceasing.
4 I greatly desire to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy
5 when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice and,I am persuaded, is in thee also.
6 Therefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee through the putting on of my hands.
7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner; but be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to the power of God,
9 who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but in accordance with His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began,
10 but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
11 For this I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles,
12 for which cause I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed. For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that Day.
13 Hold fast to the form of sound words, which thou hast heard from me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.
14 That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep, by the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us.
42 And whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in Me to fall, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.
43 And if thy hand cause thee to fall, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed than, having two hands, to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched,
44 where ‘their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’
45 And if thy foot cause thee to fall, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter halt into life than, having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched,
46 where ‘their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’
47 And if thine eye cause thee to fall, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire,
48 where ‘their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’
49 For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.
50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost his saltness, with what will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”
Copyright © 1994 by Deuel Enterprises, Inc.