Book of Common Prayer
16 Save me, O God, because I have come to you for refuge. 2 I said to him, “You are my Lord; I have no other help but yours.” 3 I want the company of the godly men and women in the land; they are the true nobility. 4 Those choosing other gods shall all be filled with sorrow; I will not offer the sacrifices they do or even speak the names of their gods.
5 The Lord himself is my inheritance, my prize. He is my food and drink, my highest joy! He guards all that is mine. 6 He sees that I am given pleasant brooks and meadows as my share![a] What a wonderful inheritance! 7 I will bless the Lord who counsels me; he gives me wisdom in the night. He tells me what to do.
8 I am always thinking of the Lord; and because he is so near, I never need to stumble or fall.
9 Heart, body, and soul are filled with joy. 10 For you will not leave me among the dead; you will not allow your beloved one to rot in the grave. 11 You have let me experience the joys of life and the exquisite pleasures of your own eternal presence.
17 I am pleading for your help, O Lord; for I have been honest and have done what is right, and you must listen to my earnest cry! 2 Publicly acquit me, Lord, for you are always fair. 3 You have tested me and seen that I am good. You have come even in the night and found nothing amiss and know that I have told the truth. 4 I have followed your commands and have not gone along with cruel and evil men. 5 My feet have not slipped from your paths.
6 Why am I praying like this? Because I know you will answer me, O God! Yes, listen as I pray. 7 Show me your strong love in wonderful ways, O Savior of all those seeking your help against their foes. 8 Protect me as you would the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings as you hover over me.
9 My enemies encircle me with murder in their eyes. 10 They are pitiless and arrogant. Listen to their boasting. 11 They close in upon me and are ready to throw me to the ground. 12 They are like lions eager to tear me apart, like young lions hiding and waiting their chance.
13-14 Lord, arise and stand against them. Push them back! Come and save me from these men of the world whose only concern is earthly gain—these men whom you have filled with your treasures so that their children and grandchildren are rich and prosperous.
15 But as for me, my contentment is not in wealth but in seeing you and knowing all is well between us. And when I awake in heaven, I will be fully satisfied, for I will see you face-to-face.
22 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why do you refuse to help me or even to listen to my groans? 2 Day and night I keep on weeping, crying for your help, but there is no reply— 3-4 for you are holy.
The praises of our fathers surrounded your throne; they trusted you and you delivered them. 5 You heard their cries for help and saved them; they were never disappointed when they sought your aid.
6 But I am a worm, not a man, scorned and despised by my own people and by all mankind. 7 Everyone who sees me mocks and sneers and shrugs. 8 “Is this the one who rolled his burden on the Lord?” they laugh. “Is this the one who claims the Lord delights in him? We’ll believe it when we see God rescue him!”
9-11 Lord, how you have helped me before![a] You took me safely from my mother’s womb and brought me through the years of infancy. I have depended upon you since birth; you have always been my God. Don’t leave me now, for trouble is near and no one else can possibly help.
12 I am surrounded by fearsome enemies, strong as the giant bulls from Bashan. 13 They come at me with open jaws, like roaring lions attacking their prey. 14 My strength has drained away like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart melts like wax; 15 my strength has dried up like sun-baked clay; my tongue sticks to my mouth, for you have laid me in the dust of death. 16 The enemy, this gang of evil men, circles me like a pack of dogs; they have pierced my hands and feet. 17 I can count every bone in my body. See these men of evil gloat and stare; 18 they divide my clothes among themselves by a toss of the dice.
19 O Lord, don’t stay away. O God my Strength, hurry to my aid. 20 Rescue me from death; spare my precious life from all these evil men.[b] 21 Save me from these lions’ jaws and from the horns of these wild oxen. Yes, God will answer me and rescue me.
22 I will praise you to all my brothers; I will stand up before the congregation and testify of the wonderful things you have done. 23 “Praise the Lord, each one of you who fears him,” I will say. “Each of you[c] must fear and reverence his name. Let all Israel sing his praises, 24 for he has not despised my cries of deep despair; he has not turned and walked away. When I cried to him, he heard and came.”
25 Yes, I will stand and praise you[d] before all the people. I will publicly fulfill my vows in the presence of all who reverence your name.
26 The poor[e] shall eat and be satisfied; all who seek the Lord shall find him and shall praise his name. Their hearts shall rejoice with everlasting joy. 27 The whole earth shall see it and return to the Lord; the people of every nation shall worship him.
28 For the Lord is King and rules the nations. 29 Both proud and humble together, all who are mortal—born to die—shall worship him. 30 Our children too shall serve him, for they shall hear from us about the wonders of the Lord; 31 generations yet unborn shall hear of all the miracles he did for us.
5 Sadly I sing this song of grief for you, O Israel:
2 “Beautiful Israel lies broken and crushed upon the ground and cannot rise. No one will help her. She is left alone to die.” 3 For the Lord God says, “The city that sends a thousand men to battle, a hundred will return. The city that sends a hundred, only ten will come back alive.”
4 The Lord says to the people of Israel, “Seek me—and live. 5 Don’t seek the idols of Bethel, Gilgal, or Beersheba; for the people of Gilgal will be carried off to exile, and those of Bethel shall surely come to grief.”
6 Seek the Lord and live, or else he will sweep like fire through Israel and consume her, and none of the idols in Bethel can put it out.
7 O evil men, you make “justice” a bitter pill for the poor and oppressed. “Righteousness” and “fair play” are meaningless fictions to you!
8 Seek him who created the Seven Stars and the constellation Orion, who turns darkness into morning and day into night, who calls forth the water from the ocean and pours it out as rain upon the land. The Lord, Jehovah, is his name. 9 With blinding speed and violence he brings destruction on the strong, breaking all defenses.
10 How you hate honest judges! How you despise people who tell the truth! 11 You trample the poor and steal their smallest crumb by all your taxes, fines, and usury; therefore, you will never live in the beautiful stone houses you are building, nor drink the wine from the lush vineyards you are planting.
12 For many and great are your sins. I know them all so well. You are the enemies of everything good; you take bribes; you refuse justice to the poor. 13 Therefore, those who are wise will not try to interfere with the Lord in the dread day of your punishment.
14 Be good, flee evil—and live! Then the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will truly be your Helper, as you have claimed he is. 15 Hate evil and love the good; remodel your courts into true halls of justice. Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Hosts will have mercy on his people who remain.
16 Therefore the Lord God says this: “There will be crying in all the streets and every road. Call for the farmers to weep with you too; call for professional mourners to wail and lament. 17 There will be sorrow and crying in every vineyard, for I will pass through and destroy.
1 From: Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and a brother of James.
To: Christians everywhere—beloved of God and chosen by him. 2 May you be given more and more of God’s kindness, peace, and love.
3 Dearly loved friends, I had been planning to write you some thoughts about the salvation God has given us, but now I find I must write of something else instead, urging you to stoutly defend the truth that God gave once for all to his people to keep without change through the years. 4 I say this because some godless teachers have wormed their way in among you, saying that after we become Christians we can do just as we like without fear of God’s punishment. The fate of such people was written long ago, for they have turned against our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5 My answer to them is: Remember this fact—which you know already—that the Lord saved a whole nation of people out of the land of Egypt and then killed every one of them who did not trust and obey him. 6 And I remind you of those angels who were once pure and holy but turned to a life of sin.[a] Now God has them chained up in prisons of darkness, waiting for the judgment day. 7 And don’t forget the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns, all full of lust of every kind, including lust of men for other men. Those cities were destroyed by fire and continue to be a warning to us that there is a hell in which sinners are punished.
8 Yet these false teachers carelessly go right on living their evil, immoral lives, degrading their bodies and laughing at those in authority over them, even scoffing at the Glorious Ones. 9 Yet Michael, one of the mightiest of the angels, when he was arguing with Satan about Moses’ body, did not dare to accuse even Satan, or jeer at him, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” 10 But these men mock and curse at anything they do not understand, and like animals, they do whatever they feel like, thereby ruining their souls.
11 Woe upon them! For they follow the example of Cain who killed his brother; and like Balaam, they will do anything for money; and like Korah, they have disobeyed God and will die under his curse.
12 When these men join you at the love feasts of the church, they are evil smears among you, laughing and carrying on, gorging and stuffing themselves without a thought for others. They are like clouds blowing over dry land without giving rain, promising much, but producing nothing. They are like fruit trees without any fruit at picking time. They are not only dead, but doubly dead, for they have been pulled out, roots and all, to be burned.
13 All they leave behind them is shame and disgrace like the dirty foam left along the beach by the wild waves. They wander around looking as bright as stars, but ahead of them is the everlasting gloom and darkness that God has prepared for them.
14 Enoch, who lived seven generations after Adam, knew about these men and said this about them: “See, the Lord is coming with millions of his holy ones. 15 He will bring the people of the world before him in judgment, to receive just punishment and to prove the terrible things they have done in rebellion against God, revealing all they have said against him.” 16 These men are constant gripers, never satisfied, doing whatever evil they feel like; they are loudmouthed “show-offs,” and when they show respect for others, it is only to get something from them in return.
22 1-2 Jesus told several other stories to show what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
“For instance,” he said, “it can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding dinner for his son. 3 Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent messengers to notify everyone that it was time to come. But all refused! 4 So he sent other servants to tell them, ‘Everything is ready and the roast is in the oven. Hurry!’
5 “But the guests he had invited merely laughed and went on about their business, one to his farm, another to his store; 6 others beat up his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them.
7 “Then the angry king sent out his army and destroyed the murderers and burned their city. 8 And he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. 9 Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’
10 “So the servants did, and brought in all they could find, good and bad alike; and the banquet hall was filled with guests. 11 But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the wedding robe provided for him.[a]
12 “‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how does it happen that you are here without a wedding robe?’ And the man had no reply.
13 “Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.