Book of Common Prayer
26 Dismiss all the charges against me, Lord, for I have tried to keep your laws and have trusted you without wavering. 2 Cross-examine me, O Lord, and see that this is so; test my motives and affections too. 3 For I have taken your loving-kindness and your truth as my ideals. 4 I do not have fellowship with tricky, two-faced men; they are false and hypocritical. 5 I hate the sinners’ hangouts and refuse to enter them. 6 I wash my hands to prove my innocence and come before your altar, 7 singing a song of thanksgiving and telling about your miracles.
8 Lord, I love your home, this shrine where the brilliant, dazzling splendor of your presence lives.
9-10 Don’t treat me as a common sinner or murderer who plots against the innocent and demands bribes.
11 No, I am not like that, O Lord; I try to walk a straight and narrow path of doing what is right; therefore in mercy save me.
12 I publicly praise the Lord for keeping me from slipping and falling.
28 I plead with you to help me, Lord, for you are my Rock of safety. If you refuse to answer me, I might as well give up and die. 2 Lord, I lift my hands to heaven[a] and implore your help. Oh, listen to my cry.
3 Don’t punish me with all the wicked ones who speak so sweetly to their neighbors while planning to murder them. 4 Give them the punishment they so richly deserve! Measure it out to them in proportion to their wickedness; pay them back for all their evil deeds. 5 They care nothing for God or what he has done or what he has made; therefore God will dismantle them like old buildings, never to be rebuilt again.
6 Oh, praise the Lord, for he has listened to my pleadings! 7 He is my strength, my shield from every danger. I trusted in him, and he helped me. Joy rises in my heart until I burst out in songs of praise to him. 8 The Lord protects his people and gives victory to his anointed king.
9 Defend your people, Lord; defend and bless your chosen ones. Lead them like a shepherd and carry them forever in your arms.
36 Sin lurks deep in the hearts of the wicked, forever urging them on to evil deeds. They have no fear of God to hold them back. 2 Instead, in their conceit, they think they can hide their evil deeds and not get caught. 3 Everything they say is crooked and deceitful; they are no longer wise and good. 4 They lie awake at night to hatch their evil plots instead of planning how to keep away from wrong.
5 Your steadfast love, O Lord, is as great as all the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. 6 Your justice is as solid as God’s mountains. Your decisions are as full of wisdom as the oceans are with water. You are concerned[a] for men and animals alike. 7 How precious is your constant love, O God! All humanity takes refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 You feed them with blessings from your own table and let them drink from your rivers of delight.
9 For you are the Fountain of life; our light is from your light. 10 Pour out your unfailing love on those who know you! Never stop giving your blessings[b] to those who long to do your will.
11 Don’t let these proud men trample me. Don’t let their wicked hands push me around. 12 Look! They have fallen. They are thrown down and will not rise again.
39 I said to myself, I’m going to quit complaining! I’ll keep quiet, especially when the ungodly are around me. 2-3 But as I stood there silently the turmoil within me grew to the bursting point. The more I mused, the hotter the fires inside. Then at last I spoke and pled with God: 4 Lord, help me to realize how brief my time on earth will be. Help me to know that I am here for but a moment more. 5-6 My life is no longer than my hand! My whole lifetime is but a moment to you. Proud man! Frail as breath! A shadow! And all his busy rushing ends in nothing. He heaps up riches for someone else to spend. 7 And so, Lord, my only hope is in you.
8 Save me from being overpowered by my sins, for even fools will mock me then.
9 Lord, I am speechless before you. I will not open my mouth to speak one word of complaint, for my punishment is from you.[a]
10 Lord, don’t hit me anymore—I am exhausted beneath your hand. 11 When you punish a man for his sins, he is destroyed, for he is as fragile as a moth-infested cloth; yes, man is frail as breath.
12 Hear my prayer, O Lord; listen to my cry! Don’t sit back, unmindful of my tears. For I am your guest. I am a traveler passing through the earth, as all my fathers were.
13 Spare me, Lord! Let me recover and be filled with happiness again before my death.
65 The celebration lasted for fourteen days, and a great crowd came from one end of the land to the other. 66 Afterwards Solomon sent the people home, happy for all the goodness that the Lord had shown to his servant David and to his people Israel. And they blessed the king.
9 When Solomon had finished building the Temple and the palace and all the other buildings he had always wanted, 2-3 the Lord appeared to him the second time (the first time had been at Gibeon) and said to him, “I have heard your prayer. I have hallowed this Temple that you have built and have put my name here forever. I will constantly watch over it and rejoice in it. 4 And if you live in honesty and truth as your father David did, always obeying me, 5 then I will cause your descendants to be the kings of Israel forever, just as I promised your father David when I told him, ‘One of your sons shall always be upon the throne of Israel.’
6 “However, if you or your children turn away from me and worship other gods and do not obey my laws, 7 then I will take away the people of Israel from this land that I have given them. I will take them from this Temple which I have hallowed for my name, and I will cast them out of my sight; and Israel will become a joke to the nations and an example and proverb of sudden disaster. 8 This Temple will become a heap of ruins, and everyone passing by will be amazed and will whistle with astonishment, asking, ‘Why has the Lord done such things to this land and this Temple?’ 9 And the answer will be, ‘The people of Israel abandoned the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt; they worshiped other gods instead. That is why the Lord has brought this evil upon them.’”
14 Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone? 15 If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, 16 and you say to him, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty,” and then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do?
17 So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.
18 But someone may well argue, “You say the way to God is by faith alone, plus nothing; well, I say that good works are important too, for without good works you can’t prove whether you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith by the way I act.”
19 Are there still some among you who hold that “only believing” is enough? Believing in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe this too—so strongly that they tremble in terror! 20 Fool! When will you ever learn that “believing” is useless without doing what God wants you to? Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.
21 Don’t you remember that even our father Abraham was declared good because of what he did when he was willing to obey God, even if it meant offering his son Isaac to die on the altar? 22 You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to; his faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions, his good deeds. 23 And so it happened just as the Scriptures say, that Abraham trusted God, and the Lord declared him good in God’s sight, and he was even called “the friend of God.” 24 So you see, a man is saved by what he does, as well as by what he believes.
25 Rahab, the prostitute, is another example of this. She was saved because of what she did when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. 26 Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds.
66-67 Meanwhile Peter was below in the courtyard. One of the maids who worked for the high priest noticed Peter warming himself at the fire.
She looked at him closely and then announced, “You were with Jesus, the Nazarene.”
68 Peter denied it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said, and walked over to the edge of the courtyard.
Just then, a rooster crowed.[a]
69 The maid saw him standing there and began telling the others, “There he is! There’s that disciple of Jesus!”
70 Peter denied it again.
A little later others standing around the fire began saying to Peter, “You are, too, one of them, for you are from Galilee!”
71 He began to curse and swear. “I don’t even know this fellow you are talking about,” he said.
72 And immediately the rooster crowed the second time. Suddenly Jesus’ words flashed through Peter’s mind: “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he began to cry.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.