Book of Common Prayer
A song of David written when he was in the desert of Judah.
63 God, you are my God.
I am searching so hard to find you.
Body and soul, I thirst for you
in this dry and weary land without water.
2 Yes, I have seen you in your Temple.[a]
I have seen your strength and glory.
3 Your faithful love is better than life,
so my lips praise you.
4 By my life, I will praise you.
In your name, I lift my hands in prayer.
5 When I sit down to satisfy my hunger,
my joyful lips hunger to praise you!
6 I remember you while lying on my bed.
I think about you in the middle of the night.
7 That is because you are the one who helps me.
It makes me happy to be under your protection!
8 I stay close to you,
and you hold me with your powerful arm.
9 Those who are trying to kill me will be destroyed.
They will go down to their graves.
10 They will be killed with swords.
Wild dogs will eat their dead bodies.
11 But the king will be happy with his God,
and those who promised to obey him will praise him when he defeats those liars.
A song of praise.
98 Sing a new song[a] to the Lord,
because he has done amazing things!
His powerful and holy right arm[b]
has brought him another victory.
2 The Lord showed the nations his power to save.
He showed them his goodness.
3 He has kept his promise of love and loyalty to the people of Israel.
People everywhere have seen our God’s power to save.
4 Everyone on earth, shout with joy to the Lord.
Start singing happy songs of praise!
5 Praise the Lord with harps.
Yes, praise him with music from the harps.
6 Blow the pipes and horns,
and shout for joy to the Lord our King!
7 Let the sea and everything in it,
the earth and all who live in it shout his praise!
8 Rivers, clap your hands!
All together now, mountains sing out!
9 Sing before the Lord
because he is coming to judge the world.
He will rule the world fairly.
He will rule the people with goodness.
A song of David.
103 My soul, praise the Lord!
Every part of me, praise his holy name!
2 My soul, praise the Lord
and never forget how kind he is!
3 He forgives all our sins
and heals all our sicknesses.
4 He saves us from the grave,
and he gives us love and compassion.
5 He gives us plenty of good things.
He makes us young again,
like an eagle that grows new feathers.
6 The Lord does what is fair.
He brings justice to all who have been hurt by others.
7 He taught his laws to Moses.
He let Israel see the powerful things he can do.
8 The Lord is kind and merciful.
He is patient and full of love.
9 He does not always criticize.
He does not stay angry with us forever.
10 We sinned against him,
but he didn’t give us the punishment we deserved.
11 His love for his followers is
as high above us as heaven is above the earth.
12 And he has taken our sins
as far away from us as the east is from the west.
13 The Lord is as kind to his followers
as a father is to his children.
14 He knows all about us.
He knows we are made from dust.
15 He knows our lives are short, that they are like grass.
He knows we are like a little wildflower that grows so quickly,
16 but when the hot wind blows, it dies.
Soon, you cannot even see where the flower was.
17 But the Lord has always loved his followers,
and he will continue to love them forever and ever!
He will be good to all their descendants,
18 to those who are faithful to his agreement
and who remember to obey his commands.
19 The Lord set his throne up in heaven,
and he rules over everything.
20 Angels, praise the Lord!
You angels are the powerful soldiers who obey his commands.
You listen to him and obey his commands.
21 Praise the Lord, all his armies.[a]
You are his servants,
and you do what he wants.
22 Everything the Lord has made should praise him
throughout the world that he rules!
My soul, praise the Lord!
God’s Message to Babylon
47 “Fall down and sit in the dirt, Virgin Daughter Babylon.
You have no throne, so sit on the ground, daughter of the Chaldeans.[a]
You are not the ruler now.
You are no longer the beautiful young princess that people said you were.
2 Get the millstones ready
and grind the grain into flour.
Take off your veil and fancy clothes.
Lift your skirt and get ready to cross the rivers.[b]
3 Men will see your naked body
and use you for sex.
I will make you pay for the bad things you did,
and I will not let anyone help you.
4 “My people say, ‘God saves us.
His name is the Lord All-Powerful, the Holy One of Israel.’”
5 “So Babylon, sit down and shut up.
Daughter of the Chaldeans, go into the dark prison.
You will no longer be ‘The Queen of the Kingdoms.’
6 “I was angry with my people.
They were mine, but I turned against them.
I let you punish them,
but you showed them no mercy.
Even for those who were old
you made the work hard.
7 You said, ‘I will live forever.
I will always be the queen.’
You didn’t care what you did to my people.
You didn’t think about what might happen later.
8 So now listen, you who love only pleasure!
Feeling so safe, you tell yourself,
‘I alone am important, and no one else matters.
I will never be a widow or lose my children.’
9 These two things will happen to you:
First, you will lose your children and then your husband.
And none of your magic spells will help you.
10 You do bad things but still feel safe.[c]
You say to yourself, ‘No one sees the wrong I do.’
You thought that your wisdom and knowledge would save you.
You tell yourself, ‘I alone am important,
and no one else matters.’
11 “But disaster is coming your way.
You don’t know when it will happen, but disaster is coming.
And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
12 You worked hard all your life
learning magic and spells.
So start using that magic.
Maybe those spells will help you.
Maybe you will be able to frighten someone.
13 You have many advisors.
Are you tired of the advice they give?
Then send out your men who read the stars.
They can tell when the month starts,
so maybe they can tell you when your troubles will come.
14 But they cannot even save themselves.
They will burn like straw.
They will burn so fast that there will be no coals left to cook bread.
There will be no fire left to sit by.
15 That’s what will happen to those you have worked with,
the people you did business with all your life.
They will all go their own way.
There will be no one left to save you.”
Come Near to God
19 And so, brothers and sisters, we are completely free to enter the Most Holy Place.[a] We can do this without fear because of the blood sacrifice of Jesus. 20 We enter through a new way that Jesus opened for us. It is a living way that leads through the curtain—Christ’s body. 21 And we have a great priest who rules the house of God. 22 Sprinkled with the blood of Christ, our hearts have been made free from a guilty conscience, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. So come near to God with a sincere heart, full of confidence because of our faith in Christ. 23 We must hold on to the hope we have, never hesitating to tell people about it. We can trust God to do what he promised.
Help Each Other Be Strong
24 We should think about each other to see how we can encourage each other to show love and do good works. 25 We must not quit meeting together, as some are doing. No, we need to keep on encouraging each other. This becomes more and more important as you see the Day getting closer.
Don’t Turn Away From God’s Son
26 If we decide to continue sinning after we have learned the truth, then there is no other sacrifice that will take away sins. 27 If we continue sinning, all that is left for us is a fearful time of waiting for the judgment and the angry fire that will destroy those who live against God. 28 Whoever refused to obey the Law of Moses was found guilty from the testimony given by two or three witnesses. Such people were not forgiven. They were killed. 29 So think how much more punishment people deserve who show their hate for the Son of God—people who show they have no respect for the blood sacrifice that began the new agreement and once made them holy or who insult the Spirit of God’s grace. 30 We know that God said, “I will punish people for the wrongs they do; I will repay them.”[b] And he also said, “The Lord will judge his people.”[c] 31 It is a terrible thing to face punishment from the living God.
2 In Jerusalem there is a pool with five covered porches. In Aramaic it is called Bethzatha.[a] This pool is near the Sheep Gate. 3 Many sick people were lying on the porches beside the pool. Some of them were blind, some were crippled, and some were paralyzed.[b] 4 [c] 5 One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years. 6 Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been sick for a very long time. So he asked him, “Do you want to be well?”
7 The sick man answered, “Sir, there is no one to help me get into the water when it starts moving. I try to be the first one into the water. But when I try, someone else always goes in before I can.”
8 Then Jesus said, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 Immediately the man was well. He picked up his mat and started walking.
The day all this happened was a Sabbath day. 10 So some Jews said to the man who had been healed, “Today is the Sabbath. It is against our law for you to carry your mat on the Sabbath day.”
11 But he answered, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12 They asked him, “Who is the man who told you to pick up your mat and walk?”
13 But the man who had been healed did not know who it was. There were many people there, and Jesus had left.
14 Later, Jesus found the man at the Temple and said to him, “See, you are well now. But stop sinning or something worse may happen to you!”
15 Then the man left and went back to the Jews who questioned him. He told them that Jesus was the one who made him well.
16 Jesus was doing all this on the Sabbath day. So these Jews began trying to make him stop. 17 But he said to them, “My Father never stops working, and so I work too.”
18 This made them even more determined to kill him. They thought it was bad enough that he was breaking the law about the Sabbath day. And now he was saying that God is his Father, making himself equal with God!
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International