Book of Common Prayer
David wrote this psalm for the music leader.
It was when the prophet Nathan came to him, after David had sex with Bathsheba.
Please forgive me, Lord[a]
51 Please forgive me, God,
because of your faithful love.
Because you are so kind,
please clean away my sins.
2 I have done bad things,
so wash me to make me clean again.[b]
3 I know that I have not obeyed you.
I cannot forget that I am guilty.
4 It is you that I have done bad things against,
only you![c]
I have done things that are evil,
as you know.
And so you are fair when you speak against me.
You are right when you say that I am guilty.
5 Yes, even from the day I was born
I have done bad things.
I have always been guilty of sin.
6 But you want me to be completely good and honest.
You want to teach me to be wise
in the way that I live.
7 Splash water over me with a hyssop plant,
and I will be really clean.[d]
Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.[e]
8 Please forgive me so that I can be happy.
Then my whole body will feel well again.
9 Hide your face from my sins.
Clean away all the bad things that I have done.[f]
10 God, please make my heart new and clean.
And make my spirit strong and true,
deep inside me.
11 Do not send me away from you.
Do not take your Holy Spirit away from me.
12 Give me joy again,
because you have made me safe.
Make me strong and ready to obey you.
13 Then I will teach your ways
to people who have turned against you.
Then sinners will turn back
and they will obey you.
14 God, I am guilty of murder.
Please forgive me!
You are the one who saves me.
When you rescue me,
I will sing aloud about your righteousness.
15 My Lord, help me to speak,
and then I will praise you.
16 I would be happy to offer sacrifices to you,
but that is not what you really want.
You do not want a burnt offering from me.
17 You want me to be humble and sorry.
That is the sacrifice that you want.
When people are humble
and they turn away from their sins,
you will not refuse them.
18 God, please be kind and help Zion.
Make the walls of Jerusalem strong again.
19 Then you will accept our proper sacrifices.
Our burnt offerings and sacrifices of whole animals
will make you happy.
Once again, people will offer bulls to you,
on your altar.[g]
David wrote this song for the music leader. Use special music.
Trust God for help
69 Please rescue me, God,
because the deep water has come up to my neck.
2 I will soon sink into deep mud.
There is no safe place to put my feet.
I am now in deep water,
and the floods pour over me.
3 I have shouted so much for help
that I am tired and weak.
My mouth is so dry that it hurts.
I have looked so long for help from you, my God,
that my eyes have become weak.
4 Very many people hate me with no good reason.
They are more than the number of hairs on my head!
My enemies are too strong for me.
They want to destroy me with their lies.
They make me give back to them
things that I did not take from them!
5 You know, God, that I do foolish things.
I cannot hide my sins from you.
6 My Lord, Almighty Lord, Israel's God,
do not let anyone who trusts you
become ashamed because of me.
Do not let anyone who serves you
become ashamed because of me.
7 Because I belong to you,
people insult me.
They make me feel ashamed.
8 I have become like a stranger to my brothers.
I am like a foreigner to my family.
9 My love for your house burns inside me like a fire.
Anybody who insults you,
is also insulting me!
10 When I weep and I stop eating food,
it causes people to insult me.
11 When I wear rough clothes to show that I am sad,
people laugh at me.
12 People who sit at the city gate talk about me.[a]
People who are drunk make songs
to sing about me.
13 But as for me, Lord,
I continue to pray to you.
Please answer me at the right time.
Be kind to me, God,
because of your faithful love.
Save me, as you have promised to do.
14 Save me out of the mud
and do not let me sink down into it.
Rescue me from the people that hate me.
Save me from the deep water.
15 Do not let the floods pour over me.
Do not let the deep sea cause me to drown.
Do not let me fall into the deep hole of death.
16 Please answer me, Lord,
because your faithful love is great.
Turn to hear me,
because you are so very kind.
17 Do not turn away from me, your servant.
I am in great trouble,
so please answer me very soon.
18 Come very near to me,
and make me safe.
Rescue me from my enemies.
19 God, you know that people are insulting me.
They laugh at me
to make me feel ashamed.
You can see what all my enemies are doing.
20 When they insult me,
it makes me very upset.
I feel helpless.
I hoped that someone would be kind and help me,
but there was nobody.
I wanted someone to comfort me,
but I did not find anyone.
21 Instead, my enemies put poison in my food.
When I was thirsty,
they gave me vinegar to drink.[b]
22 Please God, cause their feasts to become a trap for them.
Let it bring trouble to them and their friends.
23 Let their eyes be in the dark
so that they cannot see.
Let their bodies become weak.
Jeremiah tells the Lord about his troubles
12 Lord, when I complain to you,
you always do what is right.
But I must ask you about your justice.
Why do wicked people have success in life?
Why do people who cheat their friends
live in comfort?
2 They are like trees that you have planted.
They have strong roots.
They produce good fruits.
Those people like to talk about you a lot,
but they do not really love you.
3 But you know everything about me, Lord.
You watch me carefully to test me.
You know what I am thinking.
You should kill those wicked men, as they deserve!
Take them away like sheep,
to kill them when the time is right.
4 Our land has been dry for a long time.
The grass everywhere is dying.
How long will this continue?
The animals and the birds are dying.
This has happened because the people who live in this land do wicked things.
They like to boast,
‘God will not see what happens to us.’
The Lord answers Jeremiah
5 ‘Jeremiah, you are running a race against people,
and you are already tired!
So you will never be able to run a race against horses.
You are walking in flat fields,
and you still fall over!
So it will be much worse when you try to run
through the trees and bushes near the Jordan River.[a]
6 Even your own brothers and family have turned against you.
They join with other people to attack you.
So do not trust them,
even when they say kind words to you.
7 I have decided to turn away from my nation.
I will leave the people that I chose to belong to me.
I will put the people that I love
under the power of their enemies.
8 The people that belong to me
have turned against me.
They are like a lion that hides in the forest.
It roars and is ready to attack me.
Because of that,
I have turned against my people.
9 They attack me like hyenas,
but vultures are ready to attack them.
Tell all the wild animals to come,
so that they can eat their dead bodies!
10 Many foreign leaders will come.
They will destroy the land where my people live.
It was a beautiful garden where I planted my people.
But enemies will make it become like a desert.
11 They will make it a dry and empty place,
where nobody lives and nothing grows.
The whole land will be like a desert.
There will be nobody to take care of it.
12 Soldiers will march over the hills in the wilderness.
They will come to destroy the whole land.
I, the Lord, will use them as my weapon.
I will punish everyone.
Nobody will be safe.
13 My people will plant seeds of wheat,
but they will only have weeds at harvest time.
They will work very hard,
but they will get nothing.
At harvest time,
they will have no crops to be proud of.
Because I am very angry,
they will not have any food.’
14 This is what the Lord says: ‘I will punish the wicked nations that came to attack the land of my people. It was the land that I gave to Israel's people to be their home. But those enemies destroyed it. So I will remove them from their own lands. I will rescue the people of Judah from among them. 15 But after I have removed those nations, I will return to help them. I will be kind to them. I will bring them back to the countries where they belong. Each nation will return to live in its own land. 16 But they must learn to live in the way that my people live. At one time they taught my people to use Baal's name when they made promises. But now they must give honour to me as the true God. When they make a promise, they must say, “I promise to do this, as surely as the Lord lives.” If they do these things, they will belong among my people.
Christ is more important than anything
3 My Christian friends, there are a few more things that I want to say. You belong to the Lord, so be happy! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again. And it will help to keep you safe.
2 Be very careful! Some people are teaching bad things. They say that you must cut your bodies. They are like dangerous dogs. Do not believe them! 3 But we are truly God's people. And it is not because someone has circumcised us. It is God's own Spirit that leads us to worship God. We thank God because of what Christ Jesus has done for us. We know that it is not human ideas that can save us.[a]
4 For myself, I could have trusted those human ideas. Perhaps somebody may think that they could trust in those things to save them. Then I would have an even better reason to trust in them. 5 I belong to Israel's people, to Benjamin's tribe. I am a true Jew. They circumcised me when I was eight days old. I was a Pharisee, and I obeyed the Jewish rules very carefully. 6 I tried very much to please God. So I caused a lot of trouble and pain for the Christians. I obeyed the rules of God's Law, and nobody could say that I did anything wrong.
7 All those ideas seemed very important to me then. But now they are worth nothing to me, because I trust in Christ. 8 Yes, now that I know Christ Jesus as my Lord, that is the most valuable thing. Nothing else is important at all. I have thrown everything else away, so that I can serve Christ. All those other things are like dirt to me. I think about them like that, so that I can have Christ. 9 I want to be united with him. Because I believe in Christ, God accepts me as right with him. I know that I cannot become right in any other way, even if I obey all of God's Law. When I trust in Christ, God accepts me as right because of my faith.
10 Yes, I want to know Christ better and better. I want to know the power which God showed when Christ rose from death. I want to have the same kind of troubles that he did. I want to obey God like he did in his death. 11 Then I hope that I also will become alive again after death.
Christians do not belong to this world
12 I am not saying that I have already reached that place in my life. I have not yet completely become the person that God wants me to be. But I am trying very hard to reach that place. That was Christ's purpose when he first made me his own. 13 My Christian friends, I do not think that I have reached that place yet. But this is what I do: I do not think about past things that have already happened. Instead, I try hard to reach the things that are in front of me. 14 I am like a runner who wants to reach the end of the race. I run straight towards that place, so that I can win God's gift. Because I belong to Christ Jesus, God has called me to live with him in heaven. That is God's gift to me at the end of the race.
9 By this time, a large crowd of Jews had heard the news that Jesus was at Bethany. So they came there to see him. They came also to see Lazarus, because Jesus had made him alive again. 10 So the leaders of the priests decided to kill not only Jesus, but Lazarus too. 11 They wanted to do that because many Jews now refused to obey them. Instead, these Jews believed in Jesus because of what he had done for Lazarus.
Jesus goes into Jerusalem
12 The next day, a large crowd of people were in Jerusalem for the festival. They heard the news that Jesus was on the way there. 13 So they took branches from palm trees and they went out to meet Jesus. They were shouting, ‘We praise God! May the Lord God bless the king who comes with his authority. May he bless the king of Israel!’ 14 Jesus found a young donkey, and he sat on it. This happened in the way that was written in the Bible long ago:
15 ‘Do not be afraid, you people in Zion.
Look! Your king is coming.
He is riding on a young donkey.’[a]
16 Jesus' disciples did not understand all this at that time. They understood only after Jesus had returned to God in heaven. Then they remembered that someone had written these things about him in the Bible. And they remembered that these things had now really happened to him. 17 The crowd that had been with Jesus before at Bethany continued to tell people about Lazarus. They said, ‘Jesus told Lazarus that he should come out of the hole in the rock. He made Lazarus alive again after he had died and his body had been put in there.’ 18 That is why many people came to meet Jesus. They had heard that he had done this miracle. 19 So the Pharisees said to each other, ‘This is not what we wanted.[b] Look! All the people in the world have left us to go with him!’
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