Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 45
The Wedding of the Victorious King
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For the choir director. According to “Lilies.”[a]
By the Sons of Korah. A maskil. A love song.
Introduction
1 My heart is bubbling over with a beautiful theme.
I am reciting my works for the King.
My tongue is the pen of a rapid writer.
The Glory of the Royal Groom
2 You are the most beautiful of the sons of Adam.
Grace is poured out on your lips.
Therefore God has blessed you forever.
3 Strap your sword on your thigh, you mighty warrior,
in your splendor and your majesty.
4 In your majesty advance successfully.
Ride forward in the cause of truth, humility, and righteousness.
Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds.
5 Your arrows are sharpened.
Let peoples fall beneath you.
Your arrows are in the heart of the king’s enemies.
6 Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of justice.
7 You love righteousness and hate wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy
more than any of your companions.
8 Myrrh, aloes, and cassia perfume all your garments.
From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad.
9 Daughters of kings are among your honored attendants.
The royal wife[b] stands at your right hand in gold from Ophir.
The Beauty of the Bride
10 Hear, O daughter, look and listen.
Forget your people and your father’s house,
11 because the king desires your beauty.
Because he is your lord, bow down to him.
12 Then the daughter of Tyre will come with a gift.
The richest people will seek your favor.
13 The princess, who waits inside, is all glorious.
Her dress is interwoven with gold.
14 In embroidered garments she is led to the king.
Virgins who follow her as attendants are brought to you.
15 They are brought with joyful celebration.
They enter the palace of the king.
The Glory of the King’s Children
16 Your sons will take the place of your fathers.
You will make them princes in all the earth.
17 I will preserve the memory of your name through all generations.
Therefore peoples will praise you forever and ever.
Psalm 47
The King’s Empire
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For the choir director. By the Sons of Korah. A psalm.
Praise the Great King of All the Earth!
1 All you peoples, clap your hands!
Shout to God! Sing a loud song!
2 Yes, the Lord Most High is awesome.
He is the great King over all the earth!
3 He subdues peoples under us
and nations under our feet.
4 He chooses our inheritance for us.
It is the pride of Jacob, whom he loves. Interlude
5 God has ascended with a joyful shout.
The Lord goes up with the sound of the ram’s horn.
6 Make music for God! Make music!
Make music for our King! Make music!
7 For God is the King of all the earth.
Make music for him with a wise song.
8 God reigns as king over the nations.
God is seated on his holy throne.
9 The nobles of the peoples come together
as the people of the God of Abraham.
Yes, the shields of the earth[a] belong to God.
He is greatly exalted.
Psalm 48
The Security of the King’s Holy City
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A song. A psalm by the Sons of Korah.
Call to Praise
1 The Lord is great. He deserves to be praised
in the city of our God, on his holy mountain.
2 His mountain is lofty and beautiful, the joy of the whole earth.
Mount Zion, the northern mountain, is the city of the Great King.
3 God is in her citadels.
He is famous as her fortress.
Defeat of the Enemies
4 Look! See! The kings came together.
They advanced together.
5 They saw. Yes, they were amazed.
They were terrified. They were put to flight.
6 Trembling seized them there,
pain like a woman giving birth.
7 You shattered them with an east wind, like ships of Tarshish.
Thanksgiving
8 What we have heard, we now have also seen:
In the city of the Lord of Armies,
in the city of our God, Interlude
God establishes her forever.
9 Inside your temple, O God, we meditate on your mercy.
10 Your praise, O God, reaches to the ends of the earth,
just as your fame does.
Righteousness fills your right hand.
11 Mount Zion rejoices.
The daughters of Judah[b] celebrate because of your judgments.
12 Go around Zion. Yes, go all the way around her.
Count her towers. 13 Consider her rampart.[c]
View her citadels, so that you may tell the next generation about them.
14 For this God is our God forever and ever.
He will guide us beyond death.[d]
4 When the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say in your heart, “Because of my righteousness the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land,” when actually it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is handing over their land to you.
5 You are not entering to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart, but because of the wickedness of these nations. The Lord your God is handing over their land to you, in order to confirm the promise that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, because a stiff-necked people[a] is what you are. 7 Remember and do not forget how you made the Lord your God angry in the wilderness. From the day that you went out of the land of Egypt until your arrival at this place, you have been rebels against the Lord. 8 Even at Horeb you made the Lord angry. Yes, the Lord was angry enough at you to destroy you.
9 When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water. 10 Then the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you from the middle of the fire on the mountain, on the day of the assembly. 11 At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
12 Then the Lord said to me, “Get moving and go down quickly from here because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have acted corruptly. They have turned away quickly from the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a thing of molten metal.”
Christ Is Superior to Moses
3 Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, focus your attention on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in God’s whole house. 3 In fact, Jesus is worthy of greater glory than Moses, in the same way that the builder of a house has more honor than the house. 4 For every house is built by someone, and God is the one who built everything.
5 Moses was faithful as a servant within God’s whole house by testifying to the things that would be spoken. 6 But Christ is faithful as a Son over God’s house. We are his house, if we hold on firmly[a] to our confidence and the hope about which we boast until the end.[b]
Do Not Harden Your Hearts
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts
as in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness.
9 Your fathers tested and tried me,
even though they saw my works 10 for forty years.
That is why I was angry with that generation
and said, “In their heart they are always going astray,
and they did not learn my ways.”
11 So I swore an oath in my wrath,
“They will never enter my rest.”[c]
Jesus Clears Out the Temple
13 The Jewish Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money changers sitting at tables. 15 He made a whip of cords and drove everyone out of the temple courts, along with the sheep and oxen. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those selling doves he said, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a place of business!”
17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”[a]
18 So the Jews responded, “What sign are you going to show us to prove you can do these things?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”
20 The Jews said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple! And you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When Jesus was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this. Then they believed the Scripture and what Jesus had said.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.