Book of Common Prayer
93 Jehovah is King! He is robed in majesty and strength. The world is his throne.[a]
2 O Lord, you have reigned from prehistoric times, from the everlasting past. 3 The mighty oceans thunder your praise. 4 You are mightier than all the breakers pounding on the seashores of the world! 5 Your royal decrees cannot be changed. Holiness is forever the keynote of your reign.
96 Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing it everywhere around the world! 2 Sing out his praises! Bless his name. Each day tell someone that he saves.
3 Publish his glorious acts throughout the earth. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. 4 For the Lord is great beyond description and greatly to be praised. Worship only him among the gods! 5 For the gods of other nations are merely idols, but our God made the heavens! 6 Honor and majesty surround him; strength and beauty are in his Temple.
7 O nations of the world, confess that God alone is glorious and strong. 8 Give him the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him.[a] 9 Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives.[b] Let the earth tremble before him. 10 Tell the nations that Jehovah reigns! He rules the world. His power can never be overthrown. He will judge all nations fairly.
11 Let the heavens be glad, the earth rejoice; let the vastness of the roaring seas demonstrate his glory. 12 Praise him for the growing fields, for they display his greatness. Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise. 13 For the Lord is coming to judge the earth; he will judge the nations fairly and with truth!
34 I will praise the Lord no matter what happens. I will constantly speak of his glories and grace.[a] 2 I will boast of all his kindness to me. Let all who are discouraged take heart. 3 Let us praise the Lord together and exalt his name.
4 For I cried to him and he answered me! He freed me from all my fears. 5 Others too were radiant at what he did for them. Theirs was no downcast look of rejection! 6 This poor man cried to the Lord—and the Lord heard him and saved him out of his troubles. 7 For the Angel of the Lord guards and rescues all who reverence him.
8 Oh, put God to the test and see how kind he is! See for yourself the way his mercies shower down on all who trust in him. 9 If you belong to the Lord, reverence him; for everyone who does this has everything he needs. 10 Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those of us who reverence the Lord will never lack any good thing.
11 Sons and daughters, come and listen and let me teach you the importance of trusting and fearing the Lord. 12 Do you want a long, good life? 13 Then watch your tongue! Keep your lips from lying. 14 Turn from all known sin and spend your time in doing good. Try to live in peace with everyone; work hard at it.
15 For the eyes of the Lord are intently watching all who live good lives, and he gives attention when they cry to him. 16 But the Lord has made up his mind to wipe out even the memory of evil men from the earth. 17 Yes, the Lord hears the good man when he calls to him for help and saves him out of all his troubles.
18 The Lord is close to those whose hearts are breaking; he rescues those who are humbly sorry for their sins. 19 The good man does not escape all troubles—he has them too. But the Lord helps him in each and every one. 20 Not one of his bones is broken.
21 Calamity will surely overtake the wicked; heavy penalties are meted out to those who hate the good. 22 But as for those who serve the Lord, he will redeem them; everyone who takes refuge in him will be freely pardoned.
9 Disaster on disaster shall befall you. Even the few who remain in Israel shall be gleaned again, the Lord Almighty has said; for as a grape-gatherer checks each vine to pick what he has missed, so the remnant of my people shall be destroyed again.
10 But who will listen when I warn them? Their ears are closed, and they refuse to hear. The word of God has angered them; they don’t want it at all.
11 For all this I am full of the wrath of God against them. I am weary of holding it in. I will pour it out over Jerusalem, even upon the children playing in the streets, upon the gatherings of young men, and on husbands and wives and grandparents. 12 Their enemies shall live in their homes and take their fields and wives. For I will punish the people of this land, the Lord has said. 13 They are swindlers and liars, from the least of them right to the top! Yes, even my prophets and priests! 14 You can’t heal a wound by saying it’s not there! Yet the priests and prophets give assurances of peace when all is war. 15 Were my people ashamed when they worshiped idols? No, not at all—they didn’t even blush. Therefore they shall lie among the slain. They shall die beneath my anger.
12 I can do anything I want to if Christ has not said no,[a] but some of these things aren’t good for me. Even if I am allowed to do them, I’ll refuse to if I think they might get such a grip on me that I can’t easily stop when I want to. 13 For instance, take the matter of eating. God has given us an appetite for food and stomachs to digest it. But that doesn’t mean we should eat more than we need. Don’t think of eating as important because someday God will do away with both stomachs and food.
But sexual sin is never right: our bodies were not made for that but for the Lord, and the Lord wants to fill our bodies with himself. 14 And God is going to raise our bodies from the dead by his power just as he raised up the Lord Jesus Christ. 15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts and members of Christ? So should I take part of Christ and join him to a prostitute? Never! 16 And don’t you know that if a man joins himself to a prostitute she becomes a part of him and he becomes a part of her? For God tells us in the Scripture that in his sight the two become one person. 17 But if you give yourself to the Lord, you and Christ are joined together as one person.
18 That is why I say to run from sex sin. No other sin affects the body as this one does. When you sin this sin it is against your own body. 19 Haven’t you yet learned that your body is the home of the Holy Spirit God gave you, and that he lives within you? Your own body does not belong to you. 20 For God has bought you with a great price. So use every part of your body to give glory back to God because he owns it.
5 1-2 When they arrived at the other side of the lake, a demon-possessed man ran out from a graveyard, just as Jesus was climbing from the boat.
3-4 This man lived among the gravestones and had such strength that whenever he was put into handcuffs and shackles—as he often was—he snapped the handcuffs from his wrists and smashed the shackles and walked away. No one was strong enough to control him. 5 All day long and through the night he would wander among the tombs and in the wild hills, screaming and cutting himself with sharp pieces of stone.
6 When Jesus was still far out on the water, the man had seen him and had run to meet him, and fell down before him.
7-8 Then Jesus spoke to the demon within the man and said, “Come out, you evil spirit.”
It gave a terrible scream, shrieking, “What are you going to do to me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? For God’s sake, don’t torture me!”
9 “What is your name?” Jesus asked, and the demon replied, “Legion, for there are many of us here within this man.”
10 Then the demons begged him again and again not to send them to some distant land.
11 Now as it happened there was a huge herd of hogs rooting around on the hill above the lake. 12 “Send us into those hogs,” the demons begged.
13 And Jesus gave them permission. Then the evil spirits came out of the man and entered the hogs, and the entire herd plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned.
14 The herdsmen fled to the nearby towns and countryside, spreading the news as they ran. Everyone rushed out to see for themselves. 15 And a large crowd soon gathered where Jesus was; but as they saw the man sitting there, fully clothed and perfectly sane, they were frightened. 16 Those who saw what happened were telling everyone about it, 17 and the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone! 18 So he got back into the boat. The man who had been possessed by the demons begged Jesus to let him go along. 19 But Jesus said no.
“Go home to your friends,” he told him, “and tell them what wonderful things God has done for you; and how merciful he has been.”
20 So the man started off to visit the Ten Towns[a] of that region and began to tell everyone about the great things Jesus had done for him; and they were awestruck by his story.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.