Book of Common Prayer

Psalm 40

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹ I waited patiently and expectantly for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry.

² He drew me up out of a horrible pit [a pit of tumult and of destruction], out of the miry clay (froth and slime), and set my feet upon a rock, steadying my steps and establishing my goings.

³ And He has put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many shall see and fear (revere and worship) and put their trust and confident reliance in the Lord.^(A)

⁴ Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man who makes the Lord his refuge and trust, and turns not to the proud or to followers of false gods.

⁵ Many, O Lord my God, are the wonderful works which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us; no one can compare with You! If I should declare and speak of them, they are too many to be numbered.

⁶ Sacrifice and offering You do not desire, nor have You delight in them; You have given me the capacity to hear and obey [Your law, a more valuable service than] burnt offerings and sin offerings [which] You do not require.

⁷ Then said I, Behold, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me;

⁸ I delight to do Your will, O my God; yes, Your law is within my heart.^(B)

⁹ I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great assembly [tidings of uprightness and right standing with God]. Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as You know, O Lord.

¹⁰ I have not concealed Your righteousness within my heart; I have proclaimed Your faithfulness and Your salvation. I have not hid away Your steadfast love and Your truth from the great assembly.^(C)

¹¹ Withhold not Your tender mercy from me, O Lord; let Your loving-kindness and Your truth continually preserve me!

¹² For innumerable evils have compassed me about; my iniquities have taken such hold on me that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart has failed me and forsaken me.

¹³ Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me!

¹⁴ Let them be put to shame and confounded together who seek and require my life to destroy it; let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor who wish me evil and delight in my hurt!

¹⁵ Let them be desolate by reason of their shame who say to me, Aha, aha!

¹⁶ Let all those that seek and require You rejoice and be glad in You; let such as love Your salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified!

¹⁷ [As for me] I am poor and needy, yet the Lord takes thought and plans for me. You are my Help and my Deliverer. O my God, do not tarry!^(D)

Psalm 54

To the Chief Musician; with stringed instruments. A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem, of David, when the Ziphites went and told Saul, David is hiding among us.

¹ Save me, O God, by Your name; judge and vindicate me by Your mighty strength and power.

² Hear my pleading and my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.

³ For strangers and insolent men are rising up against me, and violent men and ruthless ones seek and demand my life; they do not set God before them. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

⁴ Behold, God is my helper and ally; the Lord is my upholder and is with them who uphold my life.

⁵ He will pay back evil to my enemies; in Your faithfulness [Lord] put an end to them.

⁶ With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks and praise Your name, O Lord, for it is good.

⁷ For He has delivered me out of every trouble, and my eye has looked [in triumph] on my enemies.

Psalm 51

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David; when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had sinned with Bathsheba.

¹ Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your steadfast love; according to the multitude of Your tender mercy and loving-kindness blot out my transgressions.

² Wash me thoroughly [and repeatedly] from my iniquity and guilt and cleanse me and make me wholly pure from my sin!

³ For I am conscious of my transgressions and I acknowledge them; my sin is ever before me.

⁴ Against You, You only, have I sinned and done that which is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified in Your sentence and faultless in Your judgment.^(A)

⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in [a state of] iniquity; my mother was sinful who conceived me [and I too am sinful].^(B)

⁶ Behold, You desire truth in the inner being; make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart.

⁷ Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean [ceremonially]; wash me, and I shall [in reality] be whiter than snow.

⁸ Make me to hear joy and gladness and be satisfied; let the bones which You have broken rejoice.

⁹ Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my guilt and iniquities.

¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right, persevering, and steadfast spirit within me.

¹¹ Cast me not away from Your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.

¹² Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.

¹³ Then will I teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted and return to You.

¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodguiltiness and death, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness (Your rightness and Your justice).

¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise.

¹⁶ For You delight not in sacrifice, or else would I give it; You find no pleasure in burnt offering.^(C)

¹⁷ My sacrifice [the sacrifice acceptable] to God is a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart [broken down with sorrow for sin and humbly and thoroughly penitent], such, O God, You will not despise.

¹⁸ Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

¹⁹ Then will You delight in the sacrifices of righteousness, justice, and right, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then bullocks will be offered upon Your altar.

²⁰ So Ahab sent to all the Israelites and assembled the prophets at Mount Carmel.

²¹ Elijah came near to all the people and said, How long will you halt and limp between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him! But if Baal, then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word.

²² Then Elijah said to the people, I, I only, remain a prophet of the Lord, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men.

²³ Let two bulls be given us; let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood but put no fire to it. I will dress the other bull, lay it on the wood, and put no fire to it.

²⁴ Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the One Who answers by fire, let Him be God. And all the people answered, It is well spoken.

²⁵ Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose one bull for yourselves and dress it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it.

²⁶ So they took the bull given them, dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, hear and answer us! But there was no voice; no one answered. And they leaped upon or limped about the altar they had made.

²⁷ At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.

²⁸ And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with knives and lances until the blood gushed out upon them.

²⁹ Midday passed, and they played the part of prophets until the time for offering the evening sacrifice, but there was no voice, no answer, no one who paid attention.

³⁰ Then Elijah said to all the people, Come near to me. And all the people came near him. And he repaired the [old] altar of the Lord that had been broken down [by Jezebel].^(A)

³¹ Then Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be your name.^(B)

³² And with the stones Elijah built an altar in the name [and self-revelation] of the Lord. He made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two measures of seed.

³³ He put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood and said, Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and the wood.

³⁴ And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

³⁵ The water ran round about the altar, and he filled the trench also with water.

³⁶ At the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and that I have done all these things at Your word.

³⁷ Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You, the Lord, are God, and have turned their hearts back [to You].

³⁸ Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust, and also licked up the water that was in the trench.

³⁹ When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!

⁴⁰ And Elijah said, Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one escape. They seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and [as God’s law required] slew them there.^(C)

3 For the rest, my brethren, delight yourselves in the Lord and continue to rejoice that you are in Him. To keep writing to you [over and over] of the same things is not irksome to me, and it is [a precaution] for your safety.

² Look out for those dogs [Judaizers, legalists], look out for those mischief-makers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.

³ For we [Christians] are the true circumcision, who worship God in spirit and by the Spirit of God and exult and glory and pride ourselves in Jesus Christ, and put no confidence or dependence [on what we are] in the flesh and on outward privileges and physical advantages and external appearances—

⁴ Though for myself I have [at least grounds] to rely on the flesh. If any other man considers that he has or seems to have reason to rely on the flesh and his physical and outward advantages, I have still more!

⁵ Circumcised when I was eight days old, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew [and the son] of Hebrews; as to the observance of the Law I was of [the party of] the Pharisees,

⁶ As to my zeal, I was a persecutor of the church, and by the Law’s standard of righteousness (supposed justice, uprightness, and right standing with God) I was proven to be blameless and no fault was found with me.

⁷ But whatever former things I had that might have been gains to me, I have come to consider as [^[a]one combined] loss for Christ’s sake.

⁸ Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]. For His sake I have lost everything and consider it all to be mere rubbish (refuse, dregs), in order that I may win (gain) Christ (the Anointed One),

⁹ And that I may [actually] be found and known as in Him, not having any [self-achieved] righteousness that can be called my own, based on my obedience to the Law’s demands (ritualistic uprightness and supposed right standing with God thus acquired), but possessing that [genuine righteousness] which comes through faith in Christ (the Anointed One), the [truly] right standing with God, which comes from God by [saving] faith.

¹⁰ [For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [^[b]which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope]

¹¹ That if possible I may attain to the [^[c]spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body].

¹² Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own.

¹³ I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.

¹⁵ So let those [of us] who are spiritually mature and full-grown have this mind and hold these convictions; and if in any respect you have a different attitude of mind, God will make that clear to you also.

¹⁶ Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that.

3 In those days there appeared John the Baptist, preaching in the Wilderness (Desert) of Judea

² And saying, Repent (^[a]think differently; change your mind, regretting your sins and changing your conduct), for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

³ This is he who was mentioned by the prophet Isaiah when he said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness (shouting in the desert), Prepare the road for the Lord, make His highways straight (level, ^[b]direct).^(A)

⁴ This same John’s garments were made of camel’s hair, and he wore a leather girdle about his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey.^(B)

⁵ Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the country round about the Jordan went out to him;

⁶ And they were baptized in the Jordan by him, confessing their sins.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee and escape from the wrath and indignation [of God against disobedience] that is coming?

⁸ Bring forth fruit that is consistent with repentance [let your lives prove your change of heart];

⁹ And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham for our forefather; for I tell you, God is able to raise up descendants for Abraham from these stones!

¹⁰ And already the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹ I indeed baptize you ^[c]in (with) water ^[d]because of repentance [that is, because of your ^[e]changing your minds for the better, heartily amending your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins]. But He Who is coming after me is mightier than I, Whose sandals I am not worthy or fit to take off or carry; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

¹² His winnowing fan (shovel, fork) is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear out and clean His threshing floor and gather and store His wheat in His barn, but the chaff He will burn up with fire that cannot be put out.