Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 106
Israel Forgets
Introduction
1 Praise the Lord.[a]
Give thanks to the Lord,
for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
2 Who can tell about the mighty deeds of the Lord?
Who can cause all his praise to be heard?
3 Blessed are those who defend justice,
who do what is right all the time.
4 Remember me, O Lord,
when you show favor to your people.
Visit me with your salvation,
5 so that I may experience the good that belongs to your chosen ones,
so that I may rejoice in the joy of your nation,
so that I may join in praise with the people that belongs to you.
Rebellion in Egypt
6 We have sinned along with our fathers.
We have become guilty. We have acted wickedly.
7 Our fathers in Egypt did not reflect on your wonders.
They did not remember your abundant mercies,
so they rebelled beside the sea, by the Red Sea.
God’s Grace
8 Nevertheless, he saved them for his name’s sake,
to make his might known.
9 Then he rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up.
He caused them to go through the deep sea as if it were a desert.
10 He saved them from the hand of the one who hated them.
He redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
11 Then the waters covered their foes.
Not one of them remained.
12 Then they believed his words. They sang his praise.
Rebellions in the Wilderness
13 They quickly forgot his deeds.
They did not wait for his plan.
14 Because they were filled with craving in the wilderness,
they challenged God in the wasteland.
15 So he gave them what they asked for,
but he made them sick so they wasted away.
16 Then they grew jealous of Moses in the camp
and of Aaron, who was holy to the Lord.
17 The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan,
and it closed over the followers of Abiram.
18 Then fire burned up their followers.
Flames consumed the wicked.
19 They made a calf at Horeb,
and they bowed down to a thing cast from metal.
20 So they exchanged their Glory for a model of an ox that eats grass.
21 They forgot the God who saved them
by doing great things in Egypt,
22 wonders in the land of Ham,
awesome deeds beside the Red Sea.
God’s Grace
23 So he said he would destroy them.
But Moses, his chosen one, stood between God and the people
to turn aside his wrath, so it did not destroy them.
More Rebellions in the Wilderness
24 Then they refused the pleasant land.
They did not believe his word.
25 They grumbled in their tents.
They did not listen to the voice of the Lord.
26 So he lifted up his hand and swore to them
that he would make them fall in the wilderness,
27 and make their descendants fall among the nations,
and he would scatter them throughout the lands.
28 Then they yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor,
and they ate sacrifices offered to dead gods.
29 They provoked the Lord by their actions,
and a plague broke out among them.
30 But Phinehas stood up and interceded for them,
and the plague was restrained.
31 So this was credited to him as righteousness
for generation after generation, to eternity.
32 Again by the waters of Meribah they provoked the Lord,
and trouble came on Moses because of them.
33 Because they rebelled against his Spirit,[b]
Moses spoke recklessly with his lips.
Rebellion Continues in the Land
34 They did not destroy the peoples
as the Lord had commanded them,
35 but they mixed with the nations,
and they learned to do what the nations did.
36 They also served their idols,
and the idols became a snare for them.
37 They also sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons.
38 They shed innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan.
So the land was polluted by their children’s blood,
39 and they made themselves unclean by what they did.
They prostituted themselves by their actions.
The Judgment
40 Therefore the Lord burned with anger against his people,
and he loathed the people who belonged to him.
41 So he handed them over to the nations,
and those who hated them ruled over them.
42 Then their enemies oppressed them,
and they had to submit to their power.
43 Many times he delivered them,
but they deliberately rebelled,
and they sank down in their guilt.
God’s Grace
44 But he looked on them in their distress when he heard their outcry.
45 So for their sake he remembered his covenant.
Because of his great mercy, he changed his course.
46 Then he caused all their captors to have pity on them.
Closing Prayer
47 Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from the nations,
so that we may give thanks to your holy name and praise you confidently.
Closing Doxology
48 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from eternity to eternity,
and all the people say, “Amen!”
Praise the Lord.
Balak Hires Balaam
22 The Israelites set out and camped on the Plains of Moab along the Jordan across from Jericho. 2 Balak son of Zippor saw everything that Israel had done to the Amorites. 3 So Moab was afraid of the people, because they were so numerous. Moab was terrified because of the Israelites. 4 Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now this assembly will eat up everything around us, just as cattle eat up the grass in the field.”
Balak son of Zippor was king of Moab at that time. 5 He sent messengers to summon Balaam, the son of Beor, from Pethor by the Euphrates River, in the land of his own people.[a]
He said, “Look, a people came out of Egypt. They cover the surface of the land, and they are settling right across from me. 6 Please come now. Curse this people for me, for they are more powerful than I am. Perhaps I will succeed and strike them down, driving them out of the land, for I know that whomever you bless is blessed, and whomever you curse is cursed.”
7 The elders of Moab and the elders of Midian went with payments for his occult practices[b] in their hand. They came to Balaam and told him what Balak said.
8 Balaam said to them, “Spend the night here, and I will report to you what the Lord says to me.” So the Moabite officials stayed with Balaam.
9 God came to Balaam and said, “Who are these men with you?”
10 Balaam said to God, “Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, sent messengers to me, who said, 11 ‘Look, the people that has come out of Egypt covers the surface of the land. Now, come, curse them for me. Perhaps I will be able to fight against them and drive them out.’”
12 God said to Balaam, “You are not to go with them. You are not to curse the people, for they are blessed.”
13 Balaam got up in the morning and said to Balak’s officials, “Go back to your land, because the Lord has refused to let me go with you.”
14 The officials of Moab got up and went back to Balak. They said, “Balaam refuses to come with us.”
15 So Balak again sent other officials, more numerous and more prestigious than the others. 16 They went to Balaam and said to him, “This is what Balak son of Zippor says, ‘Do not let anything prevent you from coming to me, 17 for I will reward you very richly. Also I will do whatever you tell me. Just come and curse this people for me.’”
18 Balaam responded to Balak’s servants, “Even if Balak would give to me his house full of silver and gold, I would not be able to go against the command of the Lord my God to do anything small or great. 19 But please, stay and spend the night here, and I will find out what else the Lord might say to me.”
20 God came to Balaam at night and said to him, “If the men have come to summon you, get up and go with them. However, do only what I tell you.” 21 Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the officials of Moab.
Serve God, Not Sin, in Your Life
12 Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. 13 Do not offer the members of your body to sin as tools of unrighteousness. Instead, offer yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and offer the members of your body to God as tools of righteousness. 14 Indeed, sin will not continue to control you, because you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! 16 Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness?
17 Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. 18 After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. 19 (I am speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your flesh.) Indeed, just as you offered your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer your members in the same way as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21 So what kind of fruit did you have then? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death. 22 But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus Cleanses His Father’s House
12 Jesus entered the temple courts[a] and drove out all those who were selling and buying in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[b] but you are making it a den of robbers!”[c]
14 The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the experts in the law saw the wonders he performed and heard the children calling out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant. 16 They said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?”
“Yes,” Jesus told them, “Have you never read,
From the lips of little children and nursing babies
you have prepared praise?”[d]
17 He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
The Withered Fig Tree
18 As he returned to the city early in the morning, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. He said to it, “May there never be fruit from you again!”
Immediately the fig tree withered away. 20 When the disciples saw it, they were amazed and asked, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?”
21 Jesus answered them, “Amen I tell you: If you have faith, and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it would be done. 22 Whatever you ask for in prayer, as you believe, you will receive.”
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.