Book of Common Prayer
God’s Love for Israel
105 Give thanks to the Lord and pray to him.
Tell the nations what he has done.
2 Sing to him; sing praises to him.
Tell about all his miracles.
3 Be glad that you are his;
let those who seek the Lord be happy.
4 Depend on the Lord and his strength;
always go to him for help.
5 Remember the miracles he has done;
remember his wonders and his decisions.
6 You are descendants of his servant Abraham,
the children of Jacob, his chosen people.
7 He is the Lord our God.
His laws are for all the world.
8 He will keep his agreement forever;
he will keep his promises always.
9 He will keep the agreement he made with Abraham
and the promise he made to Isaac.
10 He made it a law for the people of Jacob;
he made it an agreement with Israel to last forever.
11 The Lord said, “I will give you the land of Canaan,
and it will belong to you.”
12 Then God’s people were few in number.
They were strangers in the land.
13 They went from one nation to another,
from one kingdom to another.
14 But the Lord did not let anyone hurt them;
he warned kings not to harm them.
15 He said, “Don’t touch my chosen people,
and don’t harm my prophets.”
16 God ordered a time of hunger in the land,
and he destroyed all the food.
17 Then he sent a man ahead of them—
Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
18 They put chains around his feet
and an iron ring around his neck.
19 Then the time he had spoken of came,
and the Lord’s words proved that Joseph was right.
20 The king of Egypt sent for Joseph and freed him;
the ruler of the people set him free.
21 He made him the master of his house;
Joseph was in charge of his riches.
22 He could order the princes as he wished.
He taught the older men to be wise.
23 Then his father Israel came to Egypt;
Jacob[a] lived in Egypt.[b]
24 The Lord made his people grow in number,
and he made them stronger than their enemies.
25 He caused the Egyptians to hate his people
and to make plans against his servants.
26 Then he sent his servant Moses,
and Aaron, whom he had chosen.
27 They did many signs among the Egyptians
and worked wonders in Egypt.
28 The Lord sent darkness and made the land dark,
but the Egyptians turned against what he said.
29 So he changed their water into blood
and made their fish die.
30 Then their country was filled with frogs,
even in the bedrooms of their rulers.
31 The Lord spoke and flies came,
and gnats were everywhere in the country.
32 He made hail fall like rain
and sent lightning through their land.
33 He struck down their grapevines and fig trees,
and he destroyed every tree in the country.
34 He spoke and grasshoppers came;
the locusts were too many to count.
35 They ate all the plants in the land
and everything the earth produced.
36 The Lord also killed all the firstborn sons in the land,
the oldest son of each family.
37 Then he brought his people out,
and they carried with them silver and gold.
Not one of his people stumbled.
38 The Egyptians were glad when they left,
because the Egyptians were afraid of them.
39 The Lord covered them with a cloud
and lit up the night with fire.
40 When they asked, he brought them quail
and filled them with bread from heaven.
41 God split the rock, and water flowed out;
it ran like a river through the desert.
42 He remembered his holy promise
to his servant Abraham.
43 So God brought his people out with joy,
his chosen ones with singing.
44 He gave them lands of other nations,
so they received what others had worked for.
45 This was so they would keep his orders
and obey his teachings.
Praise the Lord!
Absalom Plans to Take David’s Kingdom
15 After this, Absalom got a chariot and horses for himself and fifty men to run before him. 2 Absalom would get up early and stand near the city gate.[a] Anyone who had a problem for the king to settle would come here. When someone came, Absalom would call out and say, “What city are you from?”
The person would answer, “I’m from one of the tribes of Israel.”
3 Then Absalom would say, “Look, your claims are right, but the king has no one to listen to you.” 4 Absalom would also say, “I wish someone would make me judge in this land! Then people with problems could come to me, and I could help them get justice.”
5 People would come near Absalom to bow to him. When they did, Absalom would reach out his hand and take hold of them and kiss them. 6 Absalom did that to all the Israelites who came to King David for decisions. In this way, Absalom stole the hearts of all Israel.
7 After four years Absalom said to King David, “Please let me go to Hebron. I want to carry out my promise that I made to the Lord 8 while I was living in Geshur in Aram. I said, ‘If the Lord takes me back to Jerusalem, I will worship him in Hebron.’”
9 The king said, “Go in peace.”
So Absalom went to Hebron. 10 But he sent secret messengers through all the tribes of Israel. They told the people, “When you hear the trumpets, say this: ‘Absalom is the king at Hebron!’”
11 Absalom had invited two hundred men to go with him. So they went from Jerusalem with him, but they didn’t know what he was planning. 12 While Absalom was offering sacrifices, he sent for Ahithophel, one of the people who advised David, to come from his hometown of Giloh. So Absalom’s plans were working very well. More and more people began to support him.
13 A messenger came to David, saying, “The Israelites are giving their loyalty to Absalom.”
14 Then David said to all his officers who were with him in Jerusalem, “We must leave quickly! If we don’t, we won’t be able to get away from Absalom. We must hurry before he catches us and destroys us and kills the people of Jerusalem.”
15 The king’s officers said to him, “We will do anything you say.”
16 The king set out with everyone in his house, but he left ten slave women to take care of the palace. 17 The king left with all his people following him, and they stopped at a house far away. 18 All the king’s servants passed by him—the Kerethites and Pelethites,[b] all those from Gath, and the six hundred men who had followed him.
27 When the seven days were almost over, some of his people from Asia saw Paul at the Temple. They caused all the people to be upset and grabbed Paul. 28 They shouted, “People of Israel, help us! This is the man who goes everywhere teaching against the law of Moses, against our people, and against this Temple. Now he has brought some Greeks into the Temple and has made this holy place unclean!” 29 (They said this because they had seen Trophimus, a man from Ephesus, with Paul in Jerusalem. They thought that Paul had brought him into the Temple.)
30 All the people in Jerusalem became upset. Together they ran, took Paul, and dragged him out of the Temple. The Temple doors were closed immediately. 31 While they were trying to kill Paul, the commander of the Roman army in Jerusalem learned that there was trouble in the whole city. 32 Immediately he took some officers and soldiers and ran to the place where the crowd was gathered. When the people saw them, they stopped beating Paul. 33 The commander went to Paul and arrested him. He told his soldiers to tie Paul with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done wrong. 34 Some in the crowd were yelling one thing, and some were yelling another. Because of all this confusion and shouting, the commander could not learn what had happened. So he ordered the soldiers to take Paul to the army building. 35 When Paul came to the steps, the soldiers had to carry him because the people were ready to hurt him. 36 The whole mob was following them, shouting, “Kill him!”
Jesus Talks About His Death
32 As Jesus and the people with him were on the road to Jerusalem, he was leading the way. His followers were amazed, but others in the crowd who followed were afraid. Again Jesus took the twelve apostles aside and began to tell them what was about to happen in Jerusalem. 33 He said, “Look, we are going to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be turned over to the leading priests and the teachers of the law. They will say that he must die, and they will turn him over to the non-Jewish people, 34 who will laugh at him and spit on him. They will beat him with whips and crucify him. But on the third day, he will rise to life again.”
Two Followers Ask Jesus a Favor
35 Then James and John, sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want to ask you to do something for us.”
36 Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you?”
37 They answered, “Let one of us sit at your right side and one of us sit at your left side in your glory in your kingdom.”
38 Jesus said, “You don’t understand what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I must drink? And can you be baptized with the same kind of baptism that I must go through?”[a]
39 They answered, “Yes, we can.”
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the same cup that I will drink, and you will be baptized with the same baptism that I must go through. 40 But I cannot choose who will sit at my right or my left; those places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
41 When the other ten followers heard this, they began to be angry with James and John.
42 Jesus called them together and said, “The other nations have rulers. You know that those rulers love to show their power over the people, and their important leaders love to use all their authority. 43 But it should not be that way among you. Whoever wants to become great among you must serve the rest of you like a servant. 44 Whoever wants to become the first among you must serve all of you like a slave. 45 In the same way, the Son of Man did not come to be served. He came to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many people.”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.