Book of Common Prayer
78 Hear my doctrine, O my people. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable. I will declare high sentences of old
3 which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children; but to the generation to come we will show the praise of the LORD, His power also, and His wonderful works that He has done.
5 How He established a testimony in Jacob and ordained a Law in Israel. Which He commanded our fathers that they should teach their children,
6 so that the posterity might know it and the children which should be born should stand up and declare it to their children.
7 So that they might set their hope on God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His Commandments.
8 So that they not be as their fathers (a disobedient and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set their heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God).
9 The children of Ephraim, being armed and shooting with the bow, turned back on the day of battle.
10 They did not keep the Covenant of God, but refused to walk in His Law,
11 and forgot His acts and His wonderful works that He had shown them.
12 He did marvelous things in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt (in the field of Zoan).
13 He divided the sea and led them through. He also made the waters to stand as a heap.
14 Also, in the daytime, He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.
15 He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink, as with the great depths.
16 He also brought floods out of the stony rock, making the waters descend like the rivers.
17 But, they still sinned against Him and provoked the Highest in the wilderness
18 and tempted God in their hearts, requiring food for their lust.
19 They also spoke against God, saying, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?
20 “Behold, He struck the rock so that the water gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can He also give bread, or prepare flesh for His people?”
21 Therefore, the LORD heard and was angry, and the fire was kindled in Jacob; and wrath also came upon Israel
22 because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His help.
23 Still, He had commanded the clouds above, and had opened the doors of Heaven,
24 and had rained down manna upon them to eat and had given them of the wheat of Heaven.
25 Man ate the bread of angels. He sent them food enough.
26 He caused the east wind to pass in the sky; and through His power He brought in the south wind.
27 He also rained flesh upon them as dust, and feathered fowl as the sand of the sea.
28 And He made it fall in the midst of their camp, all around their habitations.
29 So they ate and were well-filled; for He gave them their desire.
30 They were not turned from their lusts. The food was still in their mouths
31 when the wrath of God came upon them and slew the strongest of them and struck down the chosen men of Israel.
32 In spite of all this, they still sinned and did not believe His wondrous works.
33 Therefore, He ended their days in futility, and their years in dismay.
34 And when He slew them, they sought Him; and they returned and sought God earnestly.
35 And they remembered that God was their strength, and the Most High God their Redeemer.
36 But they flattered Him with their mouth and lied to Him with their tongue.
37 For their heart was not upright with Him; nor were they faithful in His Covenant.
38 Yet, He, being merciful, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them; but oftentimes called back His anger and did not stir up all His wrath.
39 For He remembered that they were flesh, a wind that passes and does not come again.
40 How often did they provoke Him in the wilderness, and grieve Him in the desert?
41 Indeed, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.
42 They remembered neither His hand nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy
43 nor Him Who set His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the field of Zoan.
44 Who turned their rivers into blood, and their floods, so that they could not drink.
45 He sent a swarm of flies among them which devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them.
46 He also gave their fruits to the caterpillar, and their labor to the grasshopper.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail, and their wild fig trees with the hailstone.
48 He also gave their cattle to the hail, and their flocks to the thunderbolts.
49 He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, indignation and wrath, and troubled them by sending out evil angels.
50 He made a path for His anger. He did not spare their soul from death but gave their life to the pestilence.
51 He struck all the firstborn in Egypt, even the beginning of their strength, in the tabernacles of Ham.
52 But, He made His people go out like sheep and led them in the wilderness like a flock.
53 Indeed, He carried them out safely, and they did not fear; and the sea covered their enemies.
54 And He brought them to the borders of His Sanctuary, to this Mountain which His right hand purchased.
55 He also cast out the heathen before them and caused them to fall to the lot of His inheritance; and made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tabernacles.
56 Yet, they tempted and provoked the Most High God and did not keep His testimonies.
57 But they turned back and dealt falsely, like their fathers. They turned like a deceitful bow.
58 And they provoked Him to anger with their high places and moved Him to wrath with their graven images.
59 God heard this and was angry, and greatly abhorred Israel;
60 so that He abandoned the habitation of Shiloh, the Tabernacle where He dwelt among men,
61 and delivered His power into captivity, and His beauty into the enemy’s hand.
62 And He gave up His people to the sword and was angry with His inheritance.
63 The fire devoured their chosen men, and their maids were not praised.
64 Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows did not lament.
65 But the LORD awakened, as one out of sleep, as a strong man who cries out after wine,
66 and drove His enemies backwards and put them to a perpetual shame.
67 Yet, He refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
68 But He chose the tribe of Judah, and Mount Zion, which He loved.
69 And He built His Sanctuary as a high palace, like the Earth, which He established forever.
70 He also chose David, His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds.
71 Even from behind the ewes with young. He brought him to feed His people in Jacob, and His inheritance in Israel.
72 So, he fed them according to the simplicity of his heart and guided them by the discretion of his hands. A Psalm committed to Asaph
21 Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: “Put your Burnt Offerings with your Sacrifices and eat the flesh.
22 “For I did not speak to your fathers, or Command them, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning Burnt Offerings and Sacrifices.
23 “But this thing I Commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My Voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways which I have Commanded you, so that it may be well with you.’
24 “But they would not obey, nor incline their ear, but went after the counsels and the stubbornness of their wicked heart and went backward and not forward.
25 “Since the day that your fathers came up out of the land of Egypt, to this day, I have even sent to you all My servants, the Prophets, rising up early every day and sending them.
26 “Yet they would not hear Me, nor incline their ear, but hardened their neck and did worse than their fathers.
27 “Therefore, you shall speak all these Words to them. But they will not hear you. You shall also cry to them, but they will not answer you.
28 “But you shall say to them, ‘This is a nation that does not hear the Voice of the LORD their God or receive discipline. Truth has perished and has been cut out of their mouth.
29 ‘Cut off your hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away. And take up a complaint on the high places. For the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’
30 “For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight,” says the LORD. “They have set their abominations in the House upon which My Name is called, to pollute it.
31 “And they have built the high place of Tophet, which is in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not Command them. Nor did it come into My Heart.
32 “Therefore, behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that it shall not be called Tophet anymore, nor the valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. For they shall bury in Tophet until there is no place.
33 “And the carcasses of this people shall be food for the birds of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. And no one shall frighten them away.
34 “Then I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride. For the land shall be desolate.”
13 For the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not given to Abraham, or to his seed, through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if those who are of the Law are heirs, then faith is made void, and the promise is made to no effect.
15 For the Law causes wrath. For where there is no Law, there is no transgression.
16 Therefore, it is by faith, so that it might come by grace (and the promise might be a surety) to all the seed; not only to that which is of the Law, but also to that which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the Father of us all,
17 (as it is written: “I have made you a Father of many nations.”) before God, Whom he believed, Who quickens the dead, and calls those things which are not as though they were;
18 which Abraham, hoping against all hope, believed. So that he should be the Father of many nations, according to that which was spoken to him, “So shall your seed be.”
19 And he, not being weak in the faith, did not consider his own body, which was now dead (being almost a hundred years old), nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
20 Nor did he, through unbelief, doubt the promise of God. But he was strengthened in the faith. And gave glory to God,
21 being fully assured that He Who had promised, was also able to do it.
22 And therefore, it was counted to him as righteousness.
23 Now, it is not only written for him that it was counted to him as righteousness,
24 but it shall also be reckoned as righteousness for us who believe in Him Who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead,
25 Who was delivered for our sins. And is risen again for our justification.
37 Now, on the last day (the great day) of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink!
38 “The one who believes in Me, as says the Scripture, ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water’!”
39 (He spoke this about the Spirit, Whom those who believed in Him were about to receive. For the Holy Ghost was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.)
40 So, many of the people, when they heard this saying, said, “Truly this is the Prophet!”
41 Others said, “This is the Christ!” And some said, “But shall the Christ come out of Galilee?
42 “Does not the Scripture say that the Christ shall come from the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?
43 So there was dissension among the people because of Him.
44 And some of them would have taken Him, but no one laid hands on Him.
45 Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, “Why have you not brought Him?”
46 The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this Man speaks.”
47 Then the Pharisees answered them, “Are you also deceived?!
48 “Do any of the rulers, or any of the Pharisees, believe in Him?
49 “But this people, who do not know the Law, are cursed!”
50 Nicodemus said to them (he who came to Jesus by night, and was one of them),
51 “Does our Law judge a man before it hears him, and knows what he has done?”
52 They answered, and said to him, “Aren’t you also from Galilee? Search and see that no Prophet arises out of Galilee.
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