Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 25[a]
Confident Prayer for Forgiveness and Guidance
1 Of David.
I
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul,
2 (A)my God, in you I trust;
do not let me be disgraced;(B)
do not let my enemies gloat over me.
3 No one is disgraced who waits for you,(C)
but only those who are treacherous without cause.
4 Make known to me your ways, Lord;
teach me your paths.(D)
5 Guide me by your fidelity and teach me,
for you are God my savior,
for you I wait all the day long.
6 Remember your compassion and your mercy, O Lord,
for they are ages old.(E)
7 Remember no more the sins of my youth;(F)
remember me according to your mercy,
because of your goodness, Lord.
II
8 Good and upright is the Lord,
therefore he shows sinners the way,
9 He guides the humble in righteousness,
and teaches the humble his way.
10 All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth
toward those who honor his covenant and decrees.
11 For the sake of your name, Lord,
pardon my guilt, though it is great.
12 Who is the one who fears the Lord?
God shows him the way he should choose.(G)
13 He will abide in prosperity,
and his descendants will inherit the land.(H)
14 The counsel of the Lord belongs to those who fear him;
and his covenant instructs them.
15 My eyes are ever upon the Lord,
who frees my feet from the snare.(I)
III
16 Look upon me, have pity on me,
for I am alone and afflicted.(J)
17 Relieve the troubles of my heart;
bring me out of my distress.
18 Look upon my affliction and suffering;
take away all my sins.
19 See how many are my enemies,
see how fiercely they hate me.
20 Preserve my soul and rescue me;
do not let me be disgraced, for in you I seek refuge.
21 Let integrity and uprightness preserve me;
I wait for you, O Lord.
22 [b]Redeem Israel, O God,
from all its distress!
Psalm 9[a]
Thanksgiving for Victory and Prayer for Justice
1 For the leader; according to Muth Labben.[b] A psalm of David.
I
2 I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;
I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
3 I will delight and rejoice in you;
I will sing hymns to your name, Most High.
4 When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before you.
II
5 For you upheld my right and my cause,
seated on your throne, judging justly.
6 You rebuked the nations, you destroyed the wicked;
their name you blotted out for all time.(A)
7 The enemies have been ruined forever;
you destroyed their cities;
their memory has perished.
III
8 The Lord rules forever,
has set up his throne for judgment.
9 It is he who judges the world with justice,(B)
who judges the peoples with fairness.
10 The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.(C)
11 Those who know your name trust in you;
you never forsake those who seek you, Lord.
IV
12 Sing hymns to the Lord enthroned on Zion;
proclaim his deeds among the nations!
13 For the avenger of bloodshed remembers,
does not forget the cry of the afflicted.(D)
V
14 Be gracious to me, Lord;
see how my foes afflict me!
You alone can raise me from the gates of death.(E)
15 Then I will declare all your praises,
sing joyously of your salvation
in the gates of daughter Zion.[c]
VI
16 The nations fall into the pit they dig;
in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught.
17 [d]The Lord is revealed in making judgments:
by the deeds they do the wicked are trapped.(F)
Higgaion. Selah
VII
18 To Sheol the wicked will depart,
all the nations that forget God.
19 For the needy will never be forgotten,
nor will the hope of the afflicted ever fade.(G)
20 Arise, Lord, let no mortal prevail;
let the nations be judged in your presence.
21 Strike them with terror, Lord;
show the nations they are only human.
Selah
Psalm 15[a]
The Righteous Israelite
1 (A)A psalm of David.
I
Lord, who may abide in your tent?[b]
Who may dwell on your holy mountain?
II
2 Whoever walks without blame,(B)
doing what is right,
speaking truth from the heart;
3 Who does not slander with his tongue,
does no harm to a friend,
never defames a neighbor;
4 Who disdains the wicked,
but honors those who fear the Lord;
Who keeps an oath despite the cost,
5 lends no money at interest,[c]
accepts no bribe against the innocent.(C)
III
Whoever acts like this
shall never be shaken.
19 you are that tree, O king, large and strong! Your majesty has become so great as to touch the heavens, and your rule reaches to the ends of the earth. 20 As for the king’s vision of a holy watcher, who came down from heaven and proclaimed: ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave its stump in the earth. Bound with iron and bronze, let him be fed with the grass of the field, and bathed with the dew of heaven; let his lot be with wild beasts till seven years pass over him’— 21 here is its meaning, O king, here is the sentence that the Most High has passed upon my lord king: 22 (A)You shall be cast out from human society and dwell with wild beasts; you shall be given grass to eat like an ox and be bathed with the dew of heaven; seven years shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High is sovereign over human kingship and gives it to whom he will. 23 The command that the stump of the tree is to be left means that your kingdom shall be preserved for you, once you have learned that heaven is sovereign. 24 Therefore, O king, may my advice be acceptable to you; atone for your sins by good deeds,[a] and for your misdeeds by kindness to the poor; then your contentment will be long lasting.”
25 All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. 26 Twelve months later, as he was walking on the roof of the royal palace in Babylon, 27 the king said, “Babylon the great! Was it not I, with my great strength, who built it as a royal residence for my splendor and majesty?”
19 [Now] this is how we shall know that we[a] belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him 20 in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything. 21 Beloved, if [our] hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God 22 and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.(A) 23 And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.(B) 24 Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.(C)
Chapter 4
Testing the Spirits.[b] 1 Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.(D) 2 This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God,(E) 3 and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus[c] does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world.(F) 4 You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them.(G) 6 We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.(H)
IV. The Ministry in Galilee
The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry. 14 (A)Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread[a] throughout the whole region.(B) 15 He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all.
The Rejection at Nazareth.[b](C) 16 He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom[c] into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read 17 and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,[d]
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.(D)
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
20 Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. 21 He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”[e] 22 And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”(E) 23 He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’”[f] 24 And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. 25 [g]Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land.(F) 26 [h]It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath(G) in the land of Sidon. 27 Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”(H) 28 When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. 29 They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
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