Book of Common Prayer
20 In your day of trouble, may the Lord be with you! May the God of Jacob keep you from all harm. 2 May he send you aid from his sanctuary in Zion. 3 May he remember with pleasure the gifts you have given him, your sacrifices and burnt offerings. 4 May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans. 5 May there be shouts of joy when we hear the news of your victory, flags flying with praise to God for all that he has done for you. May he answer all your prayers!
6 “God save the king”—I know he does! He hears me from highest heaven and sends great victories. 7 Some nations boast of armies and of weaponry, but our boast is in the Lord our God. 8 Those nations will collapse and perish; we will arise to stand firm and sure!
9 Give victory to our king, O Lord; oh, hear our prayer.
21 How the king rejoices in your strength, O Lord! How he exults in your salvation. 2 For you have given him his heart’s desire, everything he asks you for!
3 You welcomed him to the throne with success and prosperity. You set a royal crown of solid gold upon his head. 4 He asked for a long, good life, and you have granted his request; the days of his life stretch on and on forever. 5 You have given him fame and honor. You have clothed him with splendor and majesty. 6 You have endowed him with eternal happiness. You have given him the unquenchable joy of your presence. 7 And because the king trusts in the Lord, he will never stumble, never fall; for he depends upon the steadfast love of the God who is above all gods.
8 Your hand, O Lord, will find your enemies, all who hate you. 9-10 When you appear, they will be destroyed in the fierce fire of your presence. The Lord will destroy them and their children. 11 For these men plot against you, Lord, but they cannot possibly succeed. 12 They will turn and flee when they see your arrows aimed straight at them.
13 Accept our praise, O Lord, for all your glorious power. We will write songs to celebrate your mighty acts!
110 Jehovah said to my Lord the Messiah,[a] “Rule as my regent—I will subdue your enemies and make them bow low before you.”
2 Jehovah has established your throne[b] in Jerusalem to rule over your enemies. 3 In that day of your power your people shall come to you willingly, dressed in holy altar robes.[c] And your strength shall be renewed day by day like morning dew. 4 Jehovah has taken oath and will not rescind his vow that you are a priest forever like[d] Melchizedek. 5 God stands beside you to protect you. He will strike down many kings in the day of his anger. 6 He will punish the nations and fill them with their dead. He will crush many heads. 7 But he himself shall be refreshed from springs along the way.
116 I love the Lord because he hears my prayers and answers them. 2 Because he bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I breathe!
3 Death stared me in the face—I was frightened and sad. 4 Then I cried, “Lord, save me!” 5 How kind he is! How good he is! So merciful, this God of ours! 6 The Lord protects the simple and the childlike; I was facing death, and then he saved me. 7 Now I can relax. For the Lord has done this wonderful miracle for me. 8 He has saved me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. 9 I shall live! Yes, in his presence—here on earth!
10-11 In my discouragement I thought, “They are lying when they say I will recover.”[a] 12 But now what can I offer Jehovah for all he has done for me? 13 I will bring him an offering of wine[b] and praise his name for saving me. 14 I will publicly bring him the sacrifice I vowed I would. 15 His loved ones are very precious to him, and he does not lightly let them die.[c]
16 O Lord, you have freed me from my bonds, and I will serve you forever. 17 I will worship you and offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving. 18-19 Here in the courts of the Temple in Jerusalem, before all the people, I will pay everything I vowed to the Lord. Praise the Lord.
117 Praise the Lord, all nations everywhere. Praise him, all the peoples of the earth. 2 For he loves us very dearly, and his truth endures. Praise the Lord.
9-10 He was the only truly righteous man living on the earth at that time. He tried always to conduct his affairs according to God’s will. And he had three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 Meanwhile, the crime rate was rising rapidly across the earth, and, as seen by God, the world was rotten to the core.
12-13 As God observed how bad it was, and saw that all mankind was vicious and depraved, he said to Noah, “I have decided to destroy all mankind; for the earth is filled with crime because of man. Yes, I will destroy mankind from the earth. 14 Make a boat from resinous wood, sealing it with tar; and construct decks and stalls throughout the ship. 15 Make it 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. 16 Construct a skylight all the way around the ship, eighteen inches below the roof; and make three decks inside the boat—a bottom, middle, and upper deck—and put a door in the side.
17 “Look! I am going to cover the earth with a flood and destroy every living being—everything in which there is the breath of life. All will die. 18 But I promise to keep you safe in the ship, with your wife and your sons and their wives. 19-20 Bring a pair of every animal—a male and a female—into the boat with you, to keep them alive through the flood. Bring in a pair of each kind of bird and animal and reptile. 21 Store away in the boat all the food that they and you will need.” 22 And Noah did everything as God commanded him.
4 Although God’s promise still stands—his promise that all may enter his place of rest—we ought to tremble with fear because some of you may be on the verge of failing to get there after all. 2 For this wonderful news—the message that God wants to save us—has been given to us just as it was to those who lived in the time of Moses. But it didn’t do them any good because they didn’t believe it. They didn’t mix it with faith. 3 For only we who believe God can enter into his place of rest. He has said, “I have sworn in my anger that those who don’t believe me will never get in,” even though he has been ready and waiting for them since the world began.
4 We know he is ready and waiting because it is written that God rested on the seventh day of creation, having finished all that he had planned to make.
5 Even so they didn’t get in, for God finally said, “They shall never enter my rest.” 6 Yet the promise remains and some get in—but not those who had the first chance, for they disobeyed God and failed to enter.
7 But he has set another time for coming in, and that time is now. He announced this through King David long years after man’s first failure to enter, saying in the words already quoted, “Today when you hear him calling, do not harden your hearts against him.”
8 This new place of rest he is talking about does not mean the land of Israel that Joshua led them into. If that were what God meant, he would not have spoken long afterwards about “today” being the time to get in. 9 So there is a full complete rest still waiting for the people of God. 10 Christ has already entered there. He is resting from his work, just as God did after the creation. 11 Let us do our best to go into that place of rest, too, being careful not to disobey God as the children of Israel did, thus failing to get in.
12 For whatever God says to us is full of living power: it is sharper than the sharpest dagger, cutting swift and deep into our innermost thoughts and desires with all their parts, exposing us for what we really are. 13 He knows about everyone, everywhere. Everything about us is bare and wide open to the all-seeing eyes of our living God; nothing can be hidden from him to whom we must explain all that we have done.
13 Then it was time for the annual Jewish Passover celebration, and Jesus went to Jerusalem.
14 In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices, and moneychangers behind their counters. 15 Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out, and drove out the sheep and oxen, scattering the moneychangers’ coins over the floor and turning over their tables! 16 Then, going over to the men selling doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here. Don’t turn my Father’s House into a market!”
17 Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures: “Concern for God’s House will be my undoing.”
18 “What right have you to order them out?” the Jewish leaders[a] demanded. “If you have this authority from God, show us a miracle to prove it.”
19 “All right,” Jesus replied, “this is the miracle I will do for you: Destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will raise it up!”
20 “What!” they exclaimed. “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can do it in three days?” 21 But by “this sanctuary” he meant his body. 22 After he came back to life again, the disciples remembered his saying this and realized that what he had quoted from the Scriptures really did refer to him, and had all come true!
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.