Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 78
A contemplative song[a] of Asaph.
1 O my people, listen to me!
Hear my instruction; soak up every word of what I am about to tell you.
2 I will open my mouth in parables;
I will speak of ancient mysteries—
3 Things that we have heard about, things that we have known,
things which our ancestors declared to us again and again.
4 We will not keep these things secret from their children;
rather, we will tell the coming generation
All about the praise that is due to the Eternal One.
We will tell them all about His strength, power, and wonders.
5 He gave His holy law to Jacob,
His teaching to the people of Israel,
Which He instructed our fathers
to pass down to their children
6 So that the coming generation would know them by heart,
even the children who are not yet born,
So that they might one day stand up and teach them to their children,
7 tell them to put their confidence and hope in God,
And never forget the wondrous things He has done.
They should obey His commandments always
8 And avoid following in the footsteps of their parents,
a hard-headed and rebellious generation—
A generation of uncultivated hearts,
whose spirits were unfaithful to God.
9 The sons of Ephraim were master archers, armed with all the necessary equipment,
yet when the battle hour arrived, they ran away.
10 They were not loyal to their covenant with God;
they turned away and refused to walk in it;
11 They did not remember all the wondrous things He had done,
even the great miracles He had revealed to them.
12 He did miraculous things in the presence of their ancestors
as they made their way out of Egypt, through the fields of Zoan.
13 He split the sea and made them pass through it;
He made the waters to rise, forming a wall of water.
14 Every day He led them with a cloud;
every night, with a fiery light.
15 He cracked open rocks in the wilderness
and provided them with all the water they needed, as plentiful as the depths of the ocean.
16 He caused streams to burst forth from the rock,
waters to rush in like a river.
17 Even after witnessing all of these miracles, they still chose to sin against God,
to act against the will of the Most High in the desert!
18 They tested God in their stubborn hearts
by demanding whatever food they happened to be craving.
19 Then they challenged God:
“Can God fill a table with food in the middle of the desert?
20 He split open the rock, and water gushed out;
streams and rivers were overflowing!
But can He also provide us with bread?
Can He supply meat to His sons and daughters?”
21 When the Eternal heard these words, He was furious;
His fiery anger erupted against Jacob;
His wrath grew against Israel.
22 This all happened because they did not trust God;
they did not have faith in His power to save them.
23 Nevertheless, He gave instructions to the clouds in the sky
and swung open heaven’s doors;
24 He showered them with manna to soothe their hungry bellies
and provided them with the bread of heaven.
25 (In that day mortals ate the bread of heavenly messengers.)
God provided them with plenty of food.
26 He stirred up the east wind and blew it through the sky.
With His might, He whipped the south wind into a storm;
27 Like dust from the sky, He caused meat to fall on them.
Birds, like sand on the seashore, fell to the earth.
28 They landed all about the camp,
all around their tents.
29 God’s people feasted on the food-blessings, and their stomachs were filled;
He gave them exactly what they desired.
30 But before their bellies were soothed,
while their mouths were still full of food,
31 God’s wrath came at them like a tidal wave
and swallowed some of the bravest, strongest among them
and quieted the youth of Israel.
32 Even after all this, they continued to sin
and still did not trust in Him
or in the incredible things He did.
33 So He abruptly ended their time; they vanished like a breath;
He ended their years suddenly, with terror.
34 After He took some of their lives,
those left turned back and sought God wholeheartedly.
35 After all they had endured, they remembered that God, the Most High,
was their Rock, their Redeemer,
36 But even then they tried to deceive Him with their words
and fool Him with a web of lies.
37 They were not consistently faithful to Him,
and they were untrue to their covenant with Him.
38 Yet by His great compassion,
He forgave them
and decided not to put an end to them.
Most of the time, He held back His anger
and did not unleash His wrath against them.
39 He was mindful that they were human, frail and fleeting,
like a wind that touches one’s skin for a moment, then vanishes.
40 Oh, how often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness
and frustrated Him during their time in the desert!
41 Over and over again, they tested God’s patience
and caused great pain for Israel’s Holy One.
42 They failed to be mindful of His great strength.
They forgot all about the day He saved them from the enemy,
43 When He displayed all sorts of signs and wonders in Egypt,
and all the amazing things He did in the region of Zoan[b]
44 When He transformed their rivers into blood
so that they could not drink from their streams.
45 He sent armies of flies to bite and torment them
and hordes of frogs to ruin and devastate them;
46 He handed over all of their crops to grasshoppers
and the fruit of all their labor to locusts;
47 He sent violent hailstorms, which smashed all their vines,
and ruined their sycamore-fig trees with biting frost.
48 He handed over all of their cattle to the hailstorms as well
and struck all their herds with lightning.
49 He poured His burning wrath upon them—
anger, resentment, and trouble—
sending a company of heavenly warriors to destroy them.
50 He carved out a road for His wrath;
He did not spare any from the sting of death
but handed them over to the fangs of the plague.
51 He killed all the firstborn of Egypt,
the first products of their manhood in the tents of Ham, the Egyptians’ ancestor.
52 But then He guided His people like sheep to safety
and led them like a flock into the desert to freedom;
53 He took them on a safe route so that they would not be afraid,
and He allowed the hungry sea to swallow all of their enemies.
54 He led them to His sacred land—
to this holy hill, which He had won by the power of His right hand.
55 He forced out the other nations which were living there before them,
and He redistributed the lands as an inheritance to His people;
He settled the tribes and families of Israel peaceably in their tents.
56 Even after all this, they disobeyed the Most High God
and tested His patience
and did not live by His commands.
57 Rather, they regressed to their fathers’ ways and lived faithlessly—disloyal traitors!
They were as undependable and untrustworthy as a defective bow,
58 For they triggered His wrath by setting up high places,
altars to strange gods in His land;
they aroused His jealousy by bowing down to idols in the shadow of His presence.
59 God boiled with wrath when He witnessed what they were doing;
He totally rejected Israel.
60 He deserted His own sanctuary at Shiloh,
the tent where He had lived in the midst of His people.
61 He handed His strength over to captivity;
He put His splendor under the enemy’s control.
62 He handed His people over to the sword,
and He was filled with anger toward His chosen ones;
He was burning with wrath!
63 A great fire consumed all the young men,
and the virgin girls were without the joy of their wedding songs.
64 Priests met their doom by the blade of a sword,
and widows had no tears to cry;
they could not weep.
65 Then the Lord awoke like a man who has been asleep,
like a warrior who has been overcome with wine.
66 He forced all His enemies back;
He defeated them, weighing them down with everlasting disgrace.
67 He even rejected the tent of Joseph as His home
and showed no favor toward the tribe of Ephraim.
68 Instead, He favored the tribe of Judah—
Mount Zion, the place He adored.
69 He built His sanctuary like the mountain heights;
like the earth, He created it to last forever.
70 He chose His servant David,
and called Him out of the sheep pastures.
71 From caring for the ewes, who gently nurse their young,
He called him to shepherd His people Jacob
and to look after Israel, His inheritance.
72 David shepherded them with the honor and integrity of his heart;
he led them in wisdom with strong and skillful hands.
11 But then be very careful! Don’t forget the Eternal your God and disobey the commands and decrees and rules I’m giving you today. 12 When your stomachs are full, when you’ve built comfortable houses to live in, 13 when you have large herds and flocks, when you possess plenty of silver and gold, and when you have more things than you imagined possible; 14 then don’t become proud and puffed up and forget Him. He brought you out of the land of Egypt where you were slaves; 15 and He led you through that awful, vast wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, through that desert where there was no water. He made water come out of a hard rock; 16 and He fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food your ancestors had never heard of. He did all this to humble you and test you, but it was all intended for your good in the end. 17 If He hadn’t, you might have believed, “I’ve gotten all this wealth by my own power and strength!” 18 Remember the Eternal One your God. He’s the One who gives you the power to get wealth, so He can keep the covenant promises He made to your ancestors, as He is doing now. 19 I testify against you today that if you do forget Him and pursue other gods, if you worship them and bow down to them; then you will certainly be destroyed. 20 Just like the nations the Eternal is now destroying ahead of you, you’ll be destroyed yourselves because you wouldn’t listen to His voice.
If you give in to temptation and desire, then sin is born. If you give in to sin long enough, it overpowers you and costs you your life.
16 My dearly loved brothers and sisters, don’t be misled. 17 Every good gift bestowed, every perfect gift received comes to us from above, courtesy of the Father of lights. He is consistent. He won’t change His mind or play tricks in the shadows. 18 We have a special role in His plan. He calls us to life by His message of truth so that we will show the rest of His creatures His goodness and love.
19 Listen, open your ears, harness your desire to speak, and don’t get worked up into a rage so easily, my brothers and sisters. 20 Human anger is a futile exercise that will never produce God’s kind of justice in this world. 21 So walk out on your corrupt liaison with smut and depraved living, and humbly welcome the word of truth that will blossom like the seed of salvation planted in your souls.
22 Put the word into action. If you think hearing is what matters most, you are going to find you have been deceived.
God the Father is the giver of all things and is looking for every opportunity to bless us. But many people have difficulty trusting and receiving good things, even when those things come from God. The problem is that we not only have trouble trusting God’s work in our lives, but we also don’t always respond to God’s voice. People often hear the Scriptures but don’t really listen. People store truths in their brains but never put them to use. For James, the only good religion is religion lived out every day.
23-24 If some fail to do what God requires, it’s as if they forget the word as soon as they hear it. One minute they look in the mirror, and the next they forget who they are and what they look like. 25 However, it is possible to open your eyes and take in the beautiful, perfect truth found in God’s law of liberty and live by it. If you pursue that path and actually do what God has commanded, then you will avoid the many distractions that lead to an amnesia of all true things and you will be blessed.
26 If you put yourself on a pedestal, thinking you have become a role model in all things religious, but you can’t control your mouth, then think again. Your mouth exposes your heart, and your religion is useless. 27 Real, true religion from God the Father’s perspective is about caring for the orphans and widows who suffer needlessly and resisting the evil influence of the world.
11 Another time Jesus was praying, and when He finished, one of His disciples approached Him.
Disciple: Teacher, would You teach us Your way of prayer? John taught his disciples his way of prayer, and we’re hoping You’ll do the same.
Jesus: 2 Here’s how to pray:
Father [in heaven], may Your name be revered.
May Your kingdom come.
[May Your will be accomplished on earth
as it is in heaven.]
3 Give us the food we need for tomorrow,
4 And forgive us for our wrongs,
for we forgive those who wrong us.
And lead us away from temptation.
[And save us from the evil one.][a]
5 Imagine that one of your friends comes over at midnight. He bangs on the door and shouts, “Friend, will you lend me three loaves of bread? 6 A friend of mine just showed up unexpectedly from a journey, and I don’t have anything to feed him.” 7 Would you shout out from your bed, “I’m already in bed, and so are the kids. I already locked the door. I can’t be bothered”? 8 You know this as well as I do: even if you didn’t care that this fellow was your friend, if he keeps knocking long enough, you’ll get up and give him whatever he needs simply because of his brash persistence!
9 So listen: Keep on asking, and you will receive. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened for you. 10 All who keep asking will receive, all who keep seeking will find, and doors will open to those who keep knocking.
11 Some of you are fathers, so ask yourselves this: if your son comes up to you and asks for a fish for dinner, will you give him a snake instead? 12 If your boy wants an egg to eat, will you give him a scorpion? 13 Look, all of you are flawed in so many ways, yet in spite of all your faults, you know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to all who ask!
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.