Book of Common Prayer
The Lord is good![a]
106 Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Thank the Lord, because he is good.
His faithful love will always be with us.
2 The great things that the Lord has done
are too many to tell!
Nobody can praise him enough.
3 God has blessed the people who obey his commands.
They always do what is right.
4 Lord, when you help your people,
please remember me!
Do not forget to help me,
when you come to rescue them.
5 I want to enjoy the good things
that you give to the people that you have chosen.
I want to be happy together with them.
I want to join with the people who belong to you,
and praise you as you deserve.
6 We have done bad things,
as our ancestors also did.
We have done things that are wicked and evil.
7 When our ancestors were in Egypt,
they did not understand your miracles.
They forgot the many ways that you showed them your faithful love.
When they arrived at the Red Sea,
they turned against you, Lord.
8 But the Lord rescued them,
to show that his name is great.
He showed that he was very powerful.
9 He shouted at the Red Sea,
and it became dry.
He led his people through the middle of the deep water,
as if they walked in a desert!
10 He rescued them from the people who hated them.
He saved them from their enemy's power.
11 The water of the sea drowned their enemies,
so that none of them remained alive.[b]
12 Then God's people believed his promises.
They sang songs to praise him.[c]
13 But they soon forgot
what the Lord had done to help them.
They did not wait for him to tell them what to do.
14 In the wilderness they wanted better food.
They tested God to see what he would do.
15 He gave them the food that they asked for,
but he also sent a bad disease on them.[d]
16 The people became jealous of Moses,
and Aaron, the Lord's special priest.
17 So God made the earth break open,
so that Dathan fell into it.
It also destroyed Abiram and his people.
18 Fire burned all their group,
and it killed those wicked people.[e]
19 At Horeb, the Israelites used gold to make a cow,
and they worshipped it.
20 They turned away from their great God.
Instead, they worshipped the statue of a cow,
an animal that eats grass![f]
21 They forgot the God who had saved them,
when he did great miracles in Egypt.
22 He had done powerful things in the land of Ham's descendants,
and at the shore of the Red Sea.
His people forgot about all that!
23 So God said that he would destroy them.
But God's servant, Moses, spoke on their behalf.
He asked God not to be angry with his people,
and God agreed.
24 Later, they did not believe God's promise
to take them safely into the beautiful land of Canaan.
25 They spoke against the Lord in their tents,
and they did not obey him.
26 So he made a strong promise
that he would cause them to die in the desert.
27 He promised that he would chase their descendants away,
so that they died in foreign countries.[g]
28 After that, they started to worship the false god, Baal of Peor.
They ate the food from sacrifices
that people gave to dead idols.
29 The Lord became angry
because of what his people did.
He sent a bad disease among them.
30 Then Phinehas punished the guilty people,
so that the disease stopped killing people.[h]
31 So we remember that Phinehas was a righteous man,
and that will be true for ever.
32 At Meribah springs, the Israelites made God angry.
What they did there caused Moses to have trouble.
33 Moses was so upset that he spoke in a careless way.[i]
34 The Lord commanded his people
to destroy the nations of Canaan,
But they did not obey the Lord's command.
35 Instead, they mixed with those nations
and they learned their way of life.
36 They worshipped their idols
which caught them in a trap.
37 They even killed their sons and their daughters
as sacrifices for those idols of demons!
38 Their sons and their daughters did not deserve to die,
but they killed them as sacrifices for the idols of Canaan.
Those murders made the land unclean.
39 The things that the Lord's people did
made them unclean.
They were not faithful to the Lord,
like a wife who is not faithful to her husband.
40 So the Lord became angry with his people.
They belonged to him
but he turned away from them.
41 He let other nations have power over them.
Their enemies ruled over them.
42 Their enemies had power to hurt them,
and they were cruel to them.
43 Many times, the Lord rescued his people,
but they had decided not to obey him.
Their sins made them weaker and weaker.
44 But the Lord still saw when they were in trouble.
He answered them when they called to him for help.
45 He remembered the covenant that he had made with them.
Because of his faithful love for his people,
he stopped punishing them.
46 He caused all their enemies to be kind to them.
47 Lord, our God, please save us!
Bring us safely home from among the other nations.[j]
Then we will thank you!
We will shout aloud to praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, Israel's God,
as he deserves!
Praise him now and for ever!
Let everybody say, ‘Amen! We agree!’
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord![k]
The Lord will watch over Judah
10 Ask the Lord for rain in spring.
It is the Lord who makes the clouds and the storms.
He gives the rain to men.
He gives the plants of the field to everyone.
2 People ask idols for help,
but the idols do not speak true words.
Some people explain what a dream means.
But they do not speak true words.
The help that they give is not good.
So the people move from place to place like sheep.
They are not safe. They have no leaders.
3 ‘I am angry with the leaders.
I will cause them to be sorry.
Judah's people are mine,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘I will watch over them.
I will make them as strong as horses that are ready for war.
4 From Judah's descendants will come a strong leader.
He is like a strong stone at the corner of a building.
He is like a strong peg in a wall.
He is like a bow that is ready to shoot arrows.
Every strong ruler will come from Judah's descendants.
5 Together they will be like brave soldiers
who march through the mud in the streets of their enemies.
The Lord is with them and they will fight their enemies.
They will pull down the soldiers from their horses.
6 I will make Judah's people strong,
and I will make Israel's people become free.
I will bring them back to me,
because I am sorry for them.
I am their God,
and I will answer them.
It will be as if I had never turned away from them.
7 Israel's people will become like strong men.
They will be as happy as men that drink wine.
Their children will see their happy fathers
and so the children will be happy.
They will sing to the Lord.
8 I will cause my people to come to me and I will bring them all together.
I will buy them and I will make them free people.
And there will be as many people as there were before.
9 I will send them to foreign countries among foreign people.
But, in these far countries, they will remember me.
They and their children will not die.
They will return to Jerusalem.
10 I will bring my people back from Egypt,
and I will bring them here together from Assyria.
I will bring them to Gilead and to Lebanon.
There will not be enough room for them all.
11 And he will come to the difficult sea.
But it will be no trouble to him.
He will stop the waves in the sea.
He will make the river Nile dry.[a]
Proud Assyria will have nothing to be proud about and
the power of Egypt's people will finish.’
12 ‘I will make my people strong.
They will obey me because they love my name.’
Be kind and good to each other
6 My friends, if you see that someone among you is doing a wrong thing, you must warn that person. Those of you who have help from God's Spirit should tell that person how to live in a good way. But you must be patient and respect him. Be very careful yourselves, so that you do not also want to do wrong things. 2 When anyone among you has troubles, you must help each other. If you do that, you will be obeying Christ's rule.[a] 3 You must not think that you are too important to help other people. If you are not really so important, you are thinking a false thought. 4 Everyone should think carefully about the things that they themselves do. If those things are good, that is a reason to be proud. A person like that does not need to think about whether he is better than anyone else. 5 Each person must live in a way that they know is right for them.
6 Everyone who is learning about God's message from a teacher should help his teacher. The student should share all the good things that he has with his teacher.
7 Nobody can hide the things that he does from God. Do not think a false thought like that! It is like a farmer who plants seeds in his field. The same kind of crops will grow as the seeds which he plants. That will be his harvest. 8 A person may do things only to make himself happy. That person's harvest will be God's punishment and death. Or a person may do the things that God's Spirit wants. That person will receive a harvest from God's Spirit. The harvest will be life with God for ever. 9 We must continue to do things that are good and we should not get tired. If we do not feel weak and stop doing good things, then we will receive a good harvest at the proper time.
10 Because of all that, we must help everyone when we have the chance. Certainly we must do good things to help our friends who believe in Christ, as we do.
Little children come to Jesus
15 People were also bringing babies to Jesus. They wanted him to put his hands on each child's head. But Jesus' disciples did not like this. They told the people that they should not do it.
16 Then Jesus told the children to come to him. He said to his disciples, ‘Let the children come to me. Do not try to stop them. People must become like these children so that God can rule their lives. That is what the kingdom of God is like. 17 I tell you this: A person must become like a little child for God to rule in his life. If he does not become like a child, he will not come into the kingdom of God.’
Jesus meets a rich ruler
18 A Jewish ruler came to Jesus and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do so that I can live with God for ever?’
19 Jesus asked him, ‘Why do you say that I am good? Only God is good. Nobody else. 20 You know God's rules: “Do not have sex with anyone who is not your wife. Do not kill anyone. Do not rob anyone. Do not say things that are not true about people. Love your father and your mother, and obey them.” ’
21 The man replied, ‘I have obeyed all these laws since I was a young man.’
22 Jesus heard what he said and he replied, ‘There is still just one thing that you must do. You must sell everything that you have. Then give the money to poor people. If you do that, you will have many valuable things in heaven. Then come back and be my disciple.’
23 When the ruler heard this, he became very sad. This was because he was a very rich man.
24 Jesus saw that the ruler had become sad. He said, ‘It is very difficult for rich people to let God rule in their lives. 25 The hole in a needle is very small. A camel cannot go through it! But it is even more difficult than that for a rich person to let God rule in their life.’
26 The people who were listening to Jesus said, ‘So perhaps God will not save anyone!’ 27 Jesus replied, ‘God can do things that are impossible for people to do.’
28 Peter then said to Jesus, ‘Look! We have left everything that we had. Now we are your disciples.’
29 Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you this: Some people have left their homes. Or they may have left their wife or their brothers. Or they may have left their parents or their children. They have done this to work for the kingdom of God. 30 Now, in this world, God will give these people many more things than they have left behind. And in the future world they will live for ever with God.’
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