Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 78
A maskil[a] of Asaph.
78 Listen, my people, to my teaching;
tilt your ears toward the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth with a proverb.
I’ll declare riddles from days long gone—
3 ones that we’ve heard and learned about,
ones that our ancestors told us.
4 We won’t hide them from their descendants;
we’ll tell the next generation
all about the praise due the Lord and his strength—
the wondrous works God has done.
5 He established a law for Jacob
and set up Instruction for Israel,
ordering our ancestors
to teach them to their children.
6 This is so that the next generation
and children not yet born will know these things,
and so they can rise up and tell their children
7 to put their hope in God—
never forgetting God’s deeds,
but keeping God’s commandments—
8 and so that they won’t become like their ancestors:
a rebellious, stubborn generation,
a generation whose heart wasn’t set firm
and whose spirit wasn’t faithful to God.
9 The children of Ephraim, armed with bows,
retreated on the day of battle.
10 They didn’t keep God’s covenant;
they refused to walk in his Instruction.
11 They forgot God’s deeds
as well as the wondrous works he showed them.
12 But God performed wonders in their ancestors’ presence—
in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
13 God split the sea and led them through,
making the waters stand up like a wall.
14 God led them with the cloud by day;
by the lightning all through the night.
15 God split rocks open in the wilderness,
gave them plenty to drink—
as if from the deep itself!
16 God made streams flow from the rock,
made water run like rivers.
17 But they continued to sin against God,
rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
18 They tested God in their hearts,
demanded food for their stomachs.
19 They spoke against God!
“Can God set a dinner table in the wilderness?” they asked.
20 “True, God struck the rock
and water gushed and streams flowed,
but can he give bread too?
Can he provide meat for his people?”
21 When the Lord heard this, he became furious.
A fire was ignited against Jacob;
wrath also burned against Israel
22 because they had no faith in God,
because they didn’t trust his saving power.
23 God gave orders to the skies above,
opened heaven’s doors,
24 and rained manna on them so they could eat.
He gave them the very grain of heaven!
25 Each person ate the bread of the powerful ones;[b]
God sent provisions to satisfy them.
26 God set the east wind moving across the skies
and drove the south wind by his strength.
27 He rained meat on them as if it were dust in the air;
he rained as many birds as the sand on the seashore!
28 God brought the birds down in the center of their camp,
all around their dwellings.
29 So they ate and were completely satisfied;
God gave them exactly what they had craved.
30 But they didn’t stop craving—
even with the food still in their mouths!
31 So God’s anger came up against them:
he killed the most hearty of them;
he cut down Israel’s youth in their prime.
32 But in spite of all that, they kept sinning
and had no faith in God’s wondrous works.
33 So God brought their days to an end,
like a puff of air,
and their years in total ruin.
34 But whenever God killed them, they went after him!
They would turn and earnestly search for God.
35 They would remember that God was their rock,
that the Most High was their redeemer.
36 But they were just flattering him with lip service.
They were lying to him with their tongues.
37 Their hearts weren’t firmly set on him;
they weren’t faithful to his covenant.
38 But God, being compassionate,
kept forgiving their sins,
kept avoiding destruction;
he took back his anger so many times,
wouldn’t stir up all his wrath!
39 God kept remembering that they were just flesh,
just breath that passes and doesn’t come back.
40 How often they rebelled against God in the wilderness
and distressed him in the desert!
41 Time and time again they tested God,
provoking the holy one of Israel.
42 They didn’t remember God’s power—
the day when he saved them from the enemy;
43 how God performed his signs in Egypt,
his marvelous works in the field of Zoan.
44 God turned their rivers into blood;
they couldn’t drink from their own streams.
45 God sent swarms against them to eat them up,
frogs to destroy them.
46 God handed over their crops to caterpillars,
their land’s produce to locusts.
47 God killed their vines with hail,
their sycamore trees with frost.
48 God delivered their cattle over to disease,[c]
their herds to plagues.
49 God unleashed his burning anger against them—
fury, indignation, distress,
a troop of evil messengers.
50 God blazed a path for his wrath.
He didn’t save them from death,
but delivered their lives over to disease.
51 God struck down all of Egypt’s oldest males;
in Ham’s tents, he struck their pride and joy.
52 God led his own people out like sheep,
guiding them like a flock in the wilderness.
53 God led them in safety—they were not afraid!
But the sea engulfed their enemies!
54 God brought them to his holy territory,
to the mountain that his own strong hand had acquired.
55 God drove out the nations before them
and apportioned property for them;
he settled Israel’s tribes in their tents.
56 But they tested and defied the Most High God;
they didn’t pay attention to his warnings.
57 They turned away, became faithless just like their ancestors;
they twisted away like a defective bow.
58 They angered God with their many shrines;
they angered him with their idols.
59 God heard and became enraged;
he rejected Israel utterly.
60 God abandoned the sanctuary at Shiloh,
the tent where he had lived with humans.
61 God let his power be held captive,
let his glory go to the enemy’s hand.
62 God delivered his people up to the sword;
he was enraged at his own possession.
63 Fire devoured his young men,
and his young women had no wedding songs.
64 God’s priests were killed by the sword,
and his widows couldn’t even cry.
65 But then my Lord woke up—
as if he’d been sleeping!
Like a warrior shaking off wine,
66 God beat back his foes;
he made them an everlasting disgrace.
67 God rejected the tent of Joseph
and didn’t choose the tribe of Ephraim.
68 Instead, he chose the tribe of Judah,
the mountain of Zion, which he loves.
69 God built his sanctuary like the highest heaven
and like the earth, which he established forever.
70 And God chose David, his servant,
taking him from the sheepfolds.
71 God brought him from shepherding nursing ewes
to shepherd his people Jacob,
to shepherd his inheritance, Israel.
72 David shepherded them with a heart of integrity;
he led them with the skill of his hands.
Against wealth and overconfidence
11 But watch yourself! Don’t forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now. 12 When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, 13 and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, 14 don’t become arrogant, forgetting the Lord your God:
the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery;
15 the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water;
the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock;
16 the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end.
17 Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. 18 Remember the Lord your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors—and that’s how things stand right now. 19 But if you do, in fact, forget the Lord your God and follow other gods, serving and bowing down to them, I swear to you right now that you will be completely destroyed. 20 Just like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, that’s exactly how you will be destroyed—all because you didn’t obey the Lord your God’s voice.
16 Don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all. 18 He chose to give us birth by his true word, and here is the result: we are like the first crop from the harvest of everything he created.
Welcoming and doing the word
19 Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. 20 This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. 21 Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you.
22 You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. 23 Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.
26 If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. 27 True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.
Teaching the disciples to pray
11 Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
2 Jesus told them, “When you pray, say:
‘Father, uphold the holiness of your name.
Bring in your kingdom.
3 Give us the bread we need for today.
4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who has wronged us.
And don’t lead us into temptation.’”
5 He also said to them, “Imagine that one of you has a friend and you go to that friend in the middle of the night. Imagine saying, ‘Friend, loan me three loaves of bread 6 because a friend of mine on a journey has arrived and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7 Imagine further that he answers from within the house, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.’ 8 I assure you, even if he wouldn’t get up and help because of his friendship, he will get up and give his friend whatever he needs because of his friend’s brashness. 9 And I tell you: Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 Everyone who asks, receives. Whoever seeks, finds. To everyone who knocks, the door is opened.
11 “Which father among you would give a snake to your child if the child asked for a fish? 12 If a child asked for an egg, what father would give the child a scorpion? 13 If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible