Book of Common Prayer
69 1-2 Save me, O my God. The floods have risen. Deeper and deeper I sink in the mire; the waters rise around me. 3 I have wept until I am exhausted; my throat is dry and hoarse; my eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to act. 4 I cannot even count all those who hate me without cause. They are influential men, these who plot to kill me though I am innocent. They demand that I be punished for what I didn’t do.
5 O God, you know so well how stupid I am, and you know all my sins. 6 O Lord God of the armies of heaven, don’t let me be a stumbling block to those who trust in you. O God of Israel, don’t let me cause them to be confused, 7 though I am mocked and cursed and shamed for your sake. 8 Even my own brothers pretend they don’t know me! 9 My zeal for God and his work[a] burns hot within me. And because I advocate your cause, your enemies insult me even as they insult you. 10 How they scoff and mock me when I mourn and fast before the Lord! 11 How they talk about me when I wear sackcloth to show my humiliation and sorrow for my sins! 12 I am the talk of the town and the song of the drunkards. 13 But I keep right on praying to you, Lord. For now is the time—you are bending down to hear! You are ready with a plentiful supply of love and kindness. Now answer my prayer and rescue me as you promised.[b] 14 Pull me out of this mire. Don’t let me sink in. Rescue me from those who hate me, and from these deep waters I am in.
15 Don’t let the floods overwhelm me or the ocean swallow me; save me from the pit that threatens me. 16 O Jehovah, answer my prayers, for your loving-kindness is wonderful; your mercy is so plentiful, so tender and so kind. 17 Don’t hide from me,[c] for I am in deep trouble. Quick! Come and save me. 18 Come, Lord, and rescue me. Ransom me from all my enemies. 19 You know how they talk about me, and how they so shamefully dishonor me. You see them all and know what each has said.
20 Their contempt has broken my heart; my spirit is heavy within me. If even one would show some pity, if even one would comfort me! 21 For food they gave me gall; for my awful thirst they offered vinegar. 22 Let their joys[d] turn to ashes and their peace disappear; 23 let darkness, blindness, and great feebleness be theirs. 24 Pour out your fury upon them; consume them with the fierceness of your anger. 25 Let their homes be desolate and abandoned. 26 For they persecute the one you have smitten and scoff at the pain of the one you have pierced. 27 Pile their sins high and do not overlook them. 28 Let these men be blotted from the list of the living;[e] do not give them the joys of life with the righteous.
29 But rescue me, O God, from my poverty and pain. 30 Then I will praise God with my singing! My thanks will be his praise— 31 that will please him more than sacrificing a bullock or an ox. 32 The humble shall see their God at work for them. No wonder they will be so glad! All who seek for God shall live in joy. 33 For Jehovah hears the cries of his needy ones and does not look the other way.
34 Praise him, all heaven and earth! Praise him, all the seas and everything in them! 35 For God will save Jerusalem;[f] he rebuilds the cities of Judah. His people shall live in them and not be dispossessed. 36 Their children shall inherit the land; all who love his name shall live there safely.
73 How good God is to Israel—to those whose hearts are pure. 2 But as for me, I came so close to the edge of the cliff! My feet were slipping and I was almost gone. 3 For I was envious of the prosperity of the proud and wicked. 4 Yes, all through life their road is smooth![a] They grow sleek and fat. 5 They aren’t always in trouble and plagued with problems like everyone else, 6 so their pride sparkles like a jeweled necklace, and their clothing is woven of cruelty! 7 These fat cats have everything their hearts could ever wish for! 8 They scoff at God and threaten his people. How proudly they speak! 9 They boast against the very heavens, and their words strut through the earth.
10 And so God’s people are dismayed and confused and drink it all in. 11 “Does God realize what is going on?” they ask. 12 “Look at these men of arrogance; they never have to lift a finger—theirs is a life of ease; and all the time their riches multiply.”
13 Have I been wasting my time? Why take the trouble to be pure? 14 All I get out of it is trouble and woe—every day and all day long! 15 If I had really said that, I would have been a traitor to your people. 16 Yet it is so hard to explain it—this prosperity of those who hate the Lord. 17 Then one day I went into God’s sanctuary to meditate and thought about the future of these evil men. 18 What a slippery path they are on—suddenly God will send them sliding over the edge of the cliff and down to their destruction: 19 an instant end to all their happiness, an eternity of terror. 20 Their present life is only a dream! They will awaken to the truth as one awakens from a dream of things that never really were!
21 When I saw this, what turmoil filled my heart! 22 I saw myself so stupid and so ignorant; I must seem like an animal to you, O God. 23 But even so, you love me! You are holding my right hand! 24 You will keep on guiding me all my life with your wisdom and counsel, and afterwards receive me into the glories of heaven![b] 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And I desire no one on earth as much as you! 26 My health fails; my spirits droop, yet God remains! He is the strength of my heart; he is mine forever!
27 But those refusing to worship God will perish, for he destroys those serving other gods.
28 But as for me, I get as close to him as I can! I have chosen him, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful ways he rescues me.
6 In due season Joseph and each of his brothers died, ending that generation. 7 Meanwhile, their descendants were very fertile, increasing rapidly in numbers; there was a veritable population explosion so that they soon became a large nation, and they filled the land of Goshen.
8 Then, eventually, a new king came[a] to the throne of Egypt who felt no obligation to the descendants of Joseph.
9 He told his people, “These Israelis are becoming dangerous to us because there are so many of them. 10 Let’s figure out a way to put an end to this. If we don’t, and war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us and escape out of the country.”
11 So the Egyptians made slaves of them and put brutal taskmasters over them to wear them down under heavy burdens while building the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. 12 But the more the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed them, the more the Israelis seemed to multiply! The Egyptians became alarmed 13-14 and made the Hebrew slavery more bitter still, forcing them to toil long and hard in the fields and to carry heavy loads of mortar and brick.
15-16 Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, instructed the Hebrew midwives (their names were Shiphrah and Puah) to kill all Hebrew boys as soon as they were born, but to let the girls live. 17 But the midwives feared God and didn’t obey the king—they let the boys live too.
18 The king summoned them before him and demanded, “Why have you disobeyed my command and let the baby boys live?”
19 “Sir,” they told him, “the Hebrew women have their babies so quickly that we can’t get there in time! They are not slow like the Egyptian women!”
20 And God blessed the midwives because they were God-fearing women.[b] So the people of Israel continued to multiply and to become a mighty nation. 21 And because the midwives revered God, he gave them children of their own. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all of his people to throw the newborn Hebrew boys into the Nile River. But the girls, he said, could live.
12 Our bodies have many parts, but the many parts make up only one body when they are all put together. So it is with the “body” of Christ. 13 Each of us is a part of the one body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But the Holy Spirit has fitted us all together into one body. We have been baptized into Christ’s body by the one Spirit, and have all been given that same Holy Spirit.
14 Yes, the body has many parts, not just one part. 15 If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And what would you think if you heard an ear say, “I am not part of the body because I am only an ear and not an eye”? Would that make it any less a part of the body? 17 Suppose the whole body were an eye—then how would you hear? Or if your whole body were just one big ear, how could you smell anything?
18 But that isn’t the way God has made us. He has made many parts for our bodies and has put each part just where he wants it. 19 What a strange thing a body would be if it had only one part! 20 So he has made many parts, but still there is only one body.
21 The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”
22 And some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary. 23 Yes, we are especially glad to have some parts that seem rather odd! And we carefully protect from the eyes of others those parts that should not be seen, 24 while of course the parts that may be seen do not require this special care. So God has put the body together in such a way that extra honor and care are given to those parts that might otherwise seem less important. 25 This makes for happiness among the parts, so that the parts have the same care for each other that they do for themselves. 26 If one part suffers, all parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.
27 Jesus and his disciples now left Galilee and went out to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along he asked them, “Who do the people think I am? What are they saying about me?”
28 “Some of them think you are John the Baptist,” the disciples replied, “and others say you are Elijah or some other ancient prophet come back to life again.”
29 Then he asked, “Who do you think I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.” 30 But Jesus warned them not to tell anyone!
31 Then he began to tell them about the terrible things he would suffer,[a] and that he would be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the other Jewish leaders—and be killed, and that he would rise again three days afterwards. 32 He talked about it quite frankly with them, so Peter took him aside and chided him.[b] “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he told Jesus.
33 Jesus turned and looked at his disciples and then said to Peter very sternly, “Satan, get behind me! You are looking at this only from a human point of view and not from God’s.”
34 Then he called his disciples and the crowds to come over and listen. “If any of you wants to be my follower,” he told them, “you must put aside your own pleasures and shoulder your cross, and follow me closely. 35 If you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live.
36 “And how does a man benefit if he gains the whole world and loses his soul in the process? 37 For is anything worth more than his soul? 38 And anyone who is ashamed of me and my message in these days of unbelief and sin, I, the Messiah,[c] will be ashamed of him when I return in the glory of my Father, with the holy angels.”
9 Jesus went on to say to his disciples, “Some of you who are standing here right now will live to see the Kingdom of God arrive in great power!”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.