Book of Common Prayer
16 Save me, O God, because I have come to you for refuge. 2 I said to him, “You are my Lord; I have no other help but yours.” 3 I want the company of the godly men and women in the land; they are the true nobility. 4 Those choosing other gods shall all be filled with sorrow; I will not offer the sacrifices they do or even speak the names of their gods.
5 The Lord himself is my inheritance, my prize. He is my food and drink, my highest joy! He guards all that is mine. 6 He sees that I am given pleasant brooks and meadows as my share![a] What a wonderful inheritance! 7 I will bless the Lord who counsels me; he gives me wisdom in the night. He tells me what to do.
8 I am always thinking of the Lord; and because he is so near, I never need to stumble or fall.
9 Heart, body, and soul are filled with joy. 10 For you will not leave me among the dead; you will not allow your beloved one to rot in the grave. 11 You have let me experience the joys of life and the exquisite pleasures of your own eternal presence.
17 I am pleading for your help, O Lord; for I have been honest and have done what is right, and you must listen to my earnest cry! 2 Publicly acquit me, Lord, for you are always fair. 3 You have tested me and seen that I am good. You have come even in the night and found nothing amiss and know that I have told the truth. 4 I have followed your commands and have not gone along with cruel and evil men. 5 My feet have not slipped from your paths.
6 Why am I praying like this? Because I know you will answer me, O God! Yes, listen as I pray. 7 Show me your strong love in wonderful ways, O Savior of all those seeking your help against their foes. 8 Protect me as you would the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings as you hover over me.
9 My enemies encircle me with murder in their eyes. 10 They are pitiless and arrogant. Listen to their boasting. 11 They close in upon me and are ready to throw me to the ground. 12 They are like lions eager to tear me apart, like young lions hiding and waiting their chance.
13-14 Lord, arise and stand against them. Push them back! Come and save me from these men of the world whose only concern is earthly gain—these men whom you have filled with your treasures so that their children and grandchildren are rich and prosperous.
15 But as for me, my contentment is not in wealth but in seeing you and knowing all is well between us. And when I awake in heaven, I will be fully satisfied, for I will see you face-to-face.
22 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why do you refuse to help me or even to listen to my groans? 2 Day and night I keep on weeping, crying for your help, but there is no reply— 3-4 for you are holy.
The praises of our fathers surrounded your throne; they trusted you and you delivered them. 5 You heard their cries for help and saved them; they were never disappointed when they sought your aid.
6 But I am a worm, not a man, scorned and despised by my own people and by all mankind. 7 Everyone who sees me mocks and sneers and shrugs. 8 “Is this the one who rolled his burden on the Lord?” they laugh. “Is this the one who claims the Lord delights in him? We’ll believe it when we see God rescue him!”
9-11 Lord, how you have helped me before![a] You took me safely from my mother’s womb and brought me through the years of infancy. I have depended upon you since birth; you have always been my God. Don’t leave me now, for trouble is near and no one else can possibly help.
12 I am surrounded by fearsome enemies, strong as the giant bulls from Bashan. 13 They come at me with open jaws, like roaring lions attacking their prey. 14 My strength has drained away like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart melts like wax; 15 my strength has dried up like sun-baked clay; my tongue sticks to my mouth, for you have laid me in the dust of death. 16 The enemy, this gang of evil men, circles me like a pack of dogs; they have pierced my hands and feet. 17 I can count every bone in my body. See these men of evil gloat and stare; 18 they divide my clothes among themselves by a toss of the dice.
19 O Lord, don’t stay away. O God my Strength, hurry to my aid. 20 Rescue me from death; spare my precious life from all these evil men.[b] 21 Save me from these lions’ jaws and from the horns of these wild oxen. Yes, God will answer me and rescue me.
22 I will praise you to all my brothers; I will stand up before the congregation and testify of the wonderful things you have done. 23 “Praise the Lord, each one of you who fears him,” I will say. “Each of you[c] must fear and reverence his name. Let all Israel sing his praises, 24 for he has not despised my cries of deep despair; he has not turned and walked away. When I cried to him, he heard and came.”
25 Yes, I will stand and praise you[d] before all the people. I will publicly fulfill my vows in the presence of all who reverence your name.
26 The poor[e] shall eat and be satisfied; all who seek the Lord shall find him and shall praise his name. Their hearts shall rejoice with everlasting joy. 27 The whole earth shall see it and return to the Lord; the people of every nation shall worship him.
28 For the Lord is King and rules the nations. 29 Both proud and humble together, all who are mortal—born to die—shall worship him. 30 Our children too shall serve him, for they shall hear from us about the wonders of the Lord; 31 generations yet unborn shall hear of all the miracles he did for us.
14 One day King Zedekiah sent for Jeremiah to meet him at the side entrance of the Temple.
“I want to ask you something,” the king said, “and don’t try to hide the truth.”
15 Jeremiah said, “If I tell you the truth, you will kill me. And you won’t listen to me anyway.”
16 So King Zedekiah swore before Almighty God his Creator that he would not kill Jeremiah or give him to the men who were after his life.
17 Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “The Almighty Lord, the God of Israel, says: If you will surrender to Babylon, you and your family shall live and the city will not be burned. 18 If you refuse to surrender, this city shall be set afire by the Babylonian army and you will not escape.”
19 “But I am afraid to surrender,” the king said, “for the Babylonians will hand me over to the Jews who have defected to them, and who knows what they will do to me?”
20 Jeremiah replied, “You won’t get into their hands if only you will obey the Lord; your life will be spared, and all will go well for you. 21-22 But if you refuse to surrender, the Lord has said that all the women left in your palace will be brought out and given to the officers of the Babylonian army; and these women will taunt you with bitterness. ‘Fine friends you have,’ they’ll say, ‘those Egyptians. They have betrayed you and left you to your fate!’ 23 All your wives and children will be led out to the Babylonians, and you will not escape. You will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned.”
24 Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “On pain of death, don’t tell anyone you told me this! 25 And if my officials hear that I talked with you and they threaten you with death unless you tell them what we discussed, 26 just say that you begged me not to send you back to the dungeon in Jonathan’s house, for you would die there.”
27 And sure enough, it wasn’t long before all the city officials came to Jeremiah and asked him why the king had called for him. So he said what the king had told him to, and they left without finding out the truth, for the conversation had not been overheard by anyone. 28 And Jeremiah remained confined to the prison yard until the day Jerusalem was captured.
15 Now let me remind you, brothers, of what the Gospel really is, for it has not changed—it is the same Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is squarely built upon this wonderful message; 2 and it is this Good News that saves you if you still firmly believe it, unless of course you never really believed it in the first place.
3 I passed on to you right from the first what had been told to me, that Christ died for our sins just as the Scriptures said he would, 4 and that he was buried, and that three days afterwards he arose from the grave just as the prophets foretold. 5 He was seen by Peter and later by the rest of “the Twelve.”[a] 6 After that he was seen by more than five hundred Christian brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. 7 Then James saw him, and later all the apostles. 8 Last of all I saw him too, long after the others, as though I had been born almost too late for this. 9 For I am the least worthy of all the apostles, and I shouldn’t even be called an apostle at all after the way I treated the church of God.
10 But whatever I am now it is all because God poured out such kindness and grace upon me—and not without results: for I have worked harder than all the other apostles, yet actually I wasn’t doing it, but God working in me, to bless me. 11 It makes no difference who worked the hardest, I or they; the important thing is that we preached the Gospel to you and you believed it.
11 When Jesus had finished giving these instructions to his twelve disciples, he went off preaching in the cities where they were scheduled to go.[a]
2 John the Baptist, who was now in prison, heard about all the miracles the Messiah was doing, so he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, 3 “Are you really the one we are waiting for, or shall we keep on looking?”
4 Jesus told them, “Go back to John and tell him about the miracles you’ve seen me do— 5 the blind people I’ve healed, and the lame people now walking without help, and the cured lepers, and the deaf who hear, and the dead raised to life; and tell him about my preaching the Good News to the poor. 6 Then give him this message, ‘Blessed are those who don’t doubt me.’”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.