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.
Chapter 44
1 The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Judahites who were living in Egypt, those living in Migdol, Tahpanhes, and Memphis, and in Upper Egypt: 2 [a]Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You yourselves have seen all the evil I brought upon Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah. Today they lie in ruins uninhabited,(A) 3 because of the evil they did to provoke me, going after other gods, offering incense and serving other gods they did not know, neither they, nor you, nor your ancestors.(B) 4 Though I repeatedly sent you all my servants the prophets, saying: “You must not commit this abominable deed I hate,” 5 they did not listen or incline their ears in order to turn from their evil, no longer offering incense to other gods.(C) 6 Therefore the fury of my anger poured forth and kindled fire in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, to turn them into the ruined wasteland they are today.
7 Now thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why inflict so great an evil upon yourselves, cutting off from Judah man and woman, child and infant, not leaving yourselves even a remnant? 8 Why do you provoke me with the works of your hands, offering sacrifice to other gods here in the land of Egypt where you have come to live? Will you cut yourselves off and become a curse, a reproach among all the nations of the earth?(D) 9 Have you forgotten the evil of your ancestors, the evil of the kings of Judah, the evil of their wives, and your own evil and the evil of your wives—all that they did in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?(E) 10 To this day they have not been crushed down, nor have they shown fear. They have not followed my law and my statutes that I set before you and your ancestors.(F)
11 Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I have set my face against you for evil, to cut off all Judah. 12 I will take away the remnant of Judah who insisted on going to the land of Egypt to live there; in the land of Egypt they shall meet their end. They shall fall by the sword or be consumed by hunger. From the least to the greatest, they shall die by sword or hunger; they shall become a malediction, a horror, a curse, a reproach.(G) 13 Thus I will punish those who live in Egypt, just as I punished Jerusalem, with sword, hunger, and disease, 14 so that none of the remnant of Judah who came to live in the land of Egypt shall escape or survive.(H) No one shall return to the land of Judah. Even though they long to return and live there, they shall not return except as refugees.
30 [a]Moreover, why are we endangering ourselves all the time?(A) 31 Every day I face death; I swear it by the pride in you [brothers] that I have in Christ Jesus our Lord.(B) 32 If at Ephesus I fought with beasts, so to speak, what benefit was it to me? If the dead are not raised:
“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”(C)
33 Do not be led astray:
“Bad company corrupts good morals.”
34 Become sober as you ought and stop sinning. For some have no knowledge of God; I say this to your shame.(D)
C. The Manner of the Resurrection[b]
35 [c]But someone may say, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come back?”
The Resurrection Body. 36 [d]You fool! What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies.(E) 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind; 38 (F)but God gives it a body as he chooses, and to each of the seeds its own body. 39 [e]Not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for human beings, another kind of flesh for animals, another kind of flesh for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the brightness of the heavenly is one kind and that of the earthly another. 41 The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another, and the brightness of the stars another. For star differs from star in brightness.
16 (A)“To what shall I compare this generation?[a] It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, 17 ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ 18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’(B) 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”(C)
Reproaches to Unrepentant Towns. 20 (D)Then he began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon,[b] they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.(E) 22 But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. 23 [c]And as for you, Capernaum:
‘Will you be exalted to heaven?(F)
You will go down to the netherworld.’
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”(G)
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