Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 25
A song of David.
1 ALWAYS I will lift up my soul to You, Eternal One,
2 BECAUSE You are my God and I put my trust in You.
Do not let me be humiliated.
Do not let my enemies celebrate at my expense.
3 CERTAINLY none of the people who rely on You will be shamed,
but those who are unfaithful, who intentionally deceive,
they are the ones who will be disgraced.
4 DEMONSTRATE Your ways, O Eternal One.
Teach me to understand so I can follow.
5 EASE me down the path of Your truth.
FEED me Your word
because You are the True God who has saved me.
I wait all day long, hoping, trusting in You.
6 GRACIOUS Eternal One, remember Your compassion; rekindle Your concern and love,
which have always been part of Your actions toward those who are Yours.
7 Do not HOLD against me the sins I committed when I was young;
instead, deal with me according to Your mercy and love.
Then Your goodness may be demonstrated in all the world, Eternal One.
8 IMMENSELY good and honorable is the Eternal;
that’s why He teaches sinners the way.
9 With JUSTICE, He directs the humble in all that is right,
and He shows them His way.
10 KIND and true are all the ways of the Eternal
to the people who keep His covenant and His words.
11 O LORD, the Eternal, bring glory to Your name,
and forgive my sins because they are beyond number.
12 MAY anyone who fears the Eternal
be shown the path he should choose.
13 His soul will NOT only live in goodness,
but his children will inherit the land.
14 ONLY those who stand in awe of the Eternal will have intimacy with Him,
and He will reveal His covenant to them.
15 PERPETUALLY my focus takes me to the Eternal
because He will set me free from the traps laid for me.
16 QUIETLY turn Your eyes to me and be compassionate toward me
because I am lonely and persecuted.
17 RAPIDLY my heart beats as troubles build on the horizon.
Come relieve me from these threats.
18 SEE my troubles and my misery,
and forgive all my sins.
19 TAKE notice of my enemies.
See how there are so many of them
who hate me and would seek my violent destruction.
20 Watch over my soul,
and let me face shame and defeat
UNASHAMED because You are my refuge.
21 May honor and strong character keep me safe.
VIGILANTLY I wait for You, hoping, trusting.
22 Save Israel from all its troubles,
O True God.
Psalm 9[a]
For the worship leader. A song of David to the tune “Death of a Son.”[b]
In the Hebrew manuscripts, Psalms 9 and 10 work as a unit because together they form an acrostic poem, meaning each stanza begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This literary device has several functions. First, it provides a mnemonic device for easier memorization. Second, it is inherently beautiful; the rigid structure is a showcase for the author’s literary talents. Finally, it conveys the idea of completion by describing the reasons God is to be praised “from A to Z.” Psalm 9 offers David’s thanks and praise to God for defeating his enemies. Psalm 10, on the other hand, is a lament complaining that God is far off while the poor and helpless suffer.
1 All my heart will give thanks to You, Eternal One.
I will tell others about Your amazing works.
2 I will be glad and celebrate You!
I will praise You, O Most High!
3 When my adversaries turned and fled,
they fell and died right in front of You,
4 For You supported my just cause.
From Your throne, You have judged wisely.
5 You confronted the nations; You have destroyed the wicked.
You have erased their names from history.
6 The enemy is finished, their time is up;
their cities will lie in ruin forever;
all memory of them is gone.
7 Still the Eternal remains and will reign forever;
He has taken His place on His throne for judgment.
8 So He will judge the world rightly.
He shall execute that judgment equally on all people.
9 For the Eternal will be a shelter for those who know misery,
a refuge during troubling times.
10 Those who know Your name will rely on You,
for You, O Eternal One, have not abandoned those who search for You.
11 Praise Him who lives on Zion’s holy hill.
Tell the story of His great acts among the people!
12 For He remembers the victims of violence and avenges their blood;
He does not turn a deaf ear to the cry of the needy.
13 Be gracious to me, O Eternal One.
Notice the harm I have suffered because of my enemies,
You who carry me safely away from death’s door,
14 So that I may rehearse Your deeds, declare Your praise,
and rejoice in Your rescue
when I take my stand in the gates of Zion.
15 The nations have fallen into the pit they dug for others,
their own feet caught, snared by the net they hid.
16 The Eternal is well known, for He has taken action and secured justice;
He has trapped the wicked through the work of their own hands.
[pause with music][c]
17 The wicked are headed for death and the grave;
all the nations who forget the True God will share a similar fate.
18 For those in need shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor will never die.
19 Eternal One, arise! Do not allow mere mortals to win the day.
Judge the nations Yourself.
20 Put the fear of God in them, Eternal One!
Remind the nations they are mere men, not gods.
[pause][d]
Psalm 15
A song of David.
A recurring theme in the psalms is the dwelling place of God and its importance in worship. This Davidic psalm considers the moral qualities of the person who wishes to approach God.
1 Eternal One, who is invited to stay in Your dwelling?
Who is granted passage to Your holy mountain?
2 Here is the answer: The one who lives with integrity, does what is right,
and speaks honestly with truth from the heart.
3 The one who doesn’t speak evil against others
or wrong his neighbor,
or slander his friends.
4 The one who loathes the loathsome,
honors those who fear the Eternal,
And keeps all promises no matter the cost.
5 The one who does not lend money with gain in mind
and cannot be bought to harm an innocent name.
If you live this way, you will not be shaken and will live together with the Lord.
10 The proverbs of Solomon:
A wise son makes his father glad,
but a foolish one fills his mother with sorrow.
Solomon’s proverbs were originally short, pithy, easily remembered sayings brought together around certain themes. They started as oral traditions and were eventually written in a Hebrew poetic form known as parallelism. Chapters 10–15 are dominated by antithetical parallelism, meaning a statement is made in line 1 and then contrasted in line 2. Chapters 16–22 contain both synonymous and synthetic parallelism. In synonymous parallelism, the ideas in line 1 are repeated in line 2 using different words. In synthetic parallelism, later lines serve to expand, define, and elaborate the first lines.
2 Riches gained through dishonest means will eventually vanish,
but doing what is right avoids a deadly consequence.
3 The Eternal does not allow the right-living to go hungry,
but He will frustrate the plans of the wicked.
4 A slack hand produces nothing but poverty,
but an industrious hand soon takes hold of riches.
5 A wise son stores up for the winter months while it is still summer,
but a shameful son lies around even during the harvest.
6 Blessings come to those who do what is right,
but words spoken by the wicked cover up violent schemes.
7 The memory of one who lived with integrity brings joy,
but the legacy of a wrongdoer will rot away.
8 The wise at heart will gladly obey direction,
but one who fills the air with meaningless talk will fall into ruin.
9 The path of integrity is always safe,
but a person who follows a crooked way will be exposed.
10 Whoever winks his eye signals trouble,
and whoever fills the air with meaningless talk will fall into ruin.
11 The mouth of the righteous is a spring of life,
but words spoken by the wicked cover up violent schemes.
12 Hatred fuels dissension,
but love calms all rebellions.
1 Paul, an emissary[a] of Jesus the Anointed commissioned by order of God our Savior and Jesus the Anointed, our living and certain hope), 2 to you, Timothy, my true son in the faith.
May the grace, mercy, and peace that come only from God the Father and our Lord Jesus the Anointed mark your life.
3 As I said that day I left for Macedonia, stay in Ephesus and instruct the unruly people in the church, once and for all, to stop teaching a different doctrine. 4 Tell them to turn away from fables and endless genealogies. These activities just cause more arguments and confusion. Instead, they should concern themselves with welcoming in and bringing about the reign of God, which is all about faith. 5 Our teaching about this journey is intended to bring us to a single destination—a place where self-giving love reigns from a pure heart, a clean conscience, and a genuine faith. 6 Yes, some have walked away from these traits and have fallen into a life of endless blabber and nonsense— 7 they wish to become scholars of the law, but they don’t know what they are talking about, and they make these grand pronouncements but clearly don’t understand what they just said.
8 You and I know the law is good (if used in the right way), and 9 we also know the law was not designed for law-abiding people but for lawbreakers and criminals, the ungodly and sin-filled, the unholy and worldly, the father killers and mother killers, the murderers, 10 the sexually immoral and homosexuals, slave dealers, liars, perjurers, and anyone else who acts against the sound doctrine 11 laid out in the glorious, holy, and pure good news of the blessed God that has been entrusted to me.
12 I thank our Lord Jesus the Anointed who empowers me, because He saw me as faithful and appointed me to this ministry. 13 Despite the fact that at one time I was slandering the things of God, persecuting and attacking His people, He was still merciful to me because I acted in ignorance apart from faith. 14 But He poured His grace over me, and I was flooded in an abundance of the grace and faith and love that can only be found in Jesus the Anointed.
15 Here’s a statement worthy of trust: Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King, came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them all. 16 But it is for this reason I was given mercy: by displaying His perfect patience in me, the very worst of all sinners, Jesus the Anointed could show that patience to all who would believe in Him and gain eternal life. 17 May the King eternal, immortal, and invisible—the one and only God—now be honored and glorified forever and ever. Amen.
22 Some of the faithful brought Jesus a man who was possessed by a demon, who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him. The man could see and talk, and demons no longer crawled around in him.
People (astonished): 23 Could this be the Son of David?
Pharisees: 24 It is only through Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this Jesus can cast out demons.
25 Jesus knew what the Pharisees were thinking.
Jesus: That would be like a father splitting his own household down the middle or a king cutting his kingdom in half—the household and the kingdom would fall apart. 26 So, too, if Satan imbued people with the power to drive out demons, Satan’s kingdom would collapse. 27 And you should think about this too: you have friends who drive out demons. If I am working as a tool of Beelzebul, whom are your people working for? 28 When I come to you and drive out demons by the Spirit of your Father in heaven—for the glory of your Father in heaven—you should recognize and rejoice that the kingdom of God has come to you.
29 Imagine you wanted to break into the house of your neighbor, a strong brawny man, and steal his furniture. First, you’d have to tie up your neighbor, yes? Once he was bound and tied, you could take whatever you wanted. 30 Similarly—he who is not with Me is against Me, and he who is not doing the Father’s work of gathering up the flock may as well be scattering the flock.
31-32 It is one thing for you to speak ill of the Son of Man. People will be forgiven for every sin they commit and blasphemy they utter. But those who call the work of God the work of Satan utterly remove themselves from God, and those who blaspheme God’s Spirit will not be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.