Book of Common Prayer

70 Rescue me, O God! Lord, hurry to my aid! ^2-3 They are after my life and delight in hurting me. Confuse them! Shame them! Stop them! Don’t let them keep on mocking me! ⁴ But fill the followers of God with joy. Let those who love your salvation exclaim, “What a wonderful God he is!” ⁵ But I am in deep trouble. Rush to my aid, for only you can help and save me. O Lord, don’t delay.

71 Lord, you are my refuge! Don’t let me down! ² Save me from my enemies, for you are just! Rescue me! Bend down your ear and listen to my plea and save me. ³ Be to me a great protecting Rock, where I am always welcome, safe from all attacks. For you have issued the order to save me. ⁴ Rescue me, O God, from these unjust and cruel men. ⁵ O Lord, you alone are my hope; I’ve trusted you from childhood. ⁶ Yes, you have been with me from birth and have helped me constantly—no wonder I am always praising you! ⁷ My success—at which so many stand amazed—is because you are my mighty protector. ⁸ All day long I’ll praise and honor you, O God, for all that you have done for me.

⁹ And now, in my old age, don’t set me aside. Don’t forsake me now when my strength is failing. ¹⁰ My enemies are whispering, ¹¹ “God has forsaken him! Now we can get him. There is no one to help him now!” ¹² O God, don’t stay away! Come quickly! Help! ¹³ Destroy them! Cover them with failure and disgrace—these enemies of mine.

¹⁴ I will keep on expecting you to help me. I praise you more and more. ¹⁵ I cannot count the times when you have faithfully rescued me from danger. I will tell everyone how good you are, and of your constant, daily care. ¹⁶ I walk in the strength of the Lord God. I tell everyone that you alone are just and good. ¹⁷ O God, you have helped me from my earliest childhood—and I have constantly testified to others of the wonderful things you do. ¹⁸ And now that I am old and gray, don’t forsake me. Give me time to tell this new generation (and their children too) about all your mighty miracles. ¹⁹ Your power and goodness, Lord, reach to the highest heavens. You have done such wonderful things. Where is there another God like you? ²⁰ You have let me sink down deep in desperate problems. But you will bring me back to life again, up from the depths of the earth. ²¹ You will give me greater honor than before and turn again and comfort me.

²² I will praise you with music, telling of your faithfulness to all your promises, O Holy One of Israel. ²³ I will shout and sing your praises for redeeming me. ²⁴ I will talk to others all day long about your justice and your goodness. For all who tried to hurt me have been disgraced and dishonored.

74 O God, why have you cast us away forever? Why is your anger hot against us—the sheep of your own pasture? ² Remember that we are your people—the ones you chose in ancient times from slavery and made the choicest of your possessions. You chose Jerusalem^[a] as your home on earth!

³ Walk through the awful ruins of the city and see what the enemy has done to your sanctuary. ⁴ There they shouted their battle cry and erected their idols to flaunt their victory. ^5-6 Everything lies in shambles like a forest chopped to the ground. They came with their axes and sledgehammers and smashed and chopped the carved paneling; ⁷ they set the sanctuary on fire, and razed it to the ground—your sanctuary, Lord. ⁸ “Let’s wipe out every trace of God,” they said, and went through the entire country burning down the assembly places where we worshiped you.

^9-10 There is nothing left to show that we are your people. The prophets are gone, and who can say when it all will end? How long, O God, will you allow our enemies to dishonor your name? Will you let them get away with this forever? ¹¹ Why do you delay? Why hold back your power? Unleash your fist and give them a final blow.

¹² God is my King from ages past; you have been actively helping me everywhere throughout the land. ^13-14 You divided the Red Sea with your strength; you crushed the sea god’s heads! You gave him to the desert tribes to eat! ¹⁵ At your command the springs burst forth to give your people water; and then you dried a path for them across the ever-flowing Jordan. ¹⁶ Day and night alike belong to you; you made the starlight and the sun. ¹⁷ All nature is within your hands; you make the summer and the winter too. ¹⁸ Lord, see how these enemies scoff at you. O Jehovah, an arrogant nation has blasphemed your name.

¹⁹ O Lord, save me! Protect your turtledove from the hawks.^[b] Save your beloved people from these beasts. ²⁰ Remember your promise! For the land is full of darkness and cruel men. ²¹ O Lord, don’t let your downtrodden people be constantly insulted. Give cause for these poor and needy ones to praise your name! ²² Arise, O God, and state your case against our enemies. Remember the insults these rebels have hurled against you all day long. ²³ Don’t overlook the cursing of these enemies of yours; it grows louder and louder.

²⁹ So King Ahab of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah led their armies to Ramoth-gilead.

³⁰ Ahab said to Jehoshaphat, “You wear your royal robes, but I’ll not wear mine!”

So Ahab went into the battle disguised in an ordinary soldier’s uniform. ³¹ For the king of Syria had commanded his thirty-two chariot captains to fight no one except King Ahab himself. ^32-33 When they saw King Jehoshaphat in his royal robes, they thought, “That’s the man we’re after.” So they wheeled around to attack him. But when Jehoshaphat shouted out to identify himself,^[a] they turned back! ³⁴ However, someone shot an arrow at random and it struck King Ahab between the joints of his armor.

“Take me out of the battle, for I am badly wounded,” he groaned to his chariot driver.

³⁵ The battle became more and more intense as the day wore on, and King Ahab went back in, propped up in his chariot with the blood from his wound running down onto the floorboards. Finally, toward evening, he died. ^36-37 Just as the sun was going down the cry ran through his troops. “It’s all over—return home! The king is dead!”

And his body was taken to Samaria and buried there. ³⁸ When his chariot and armor were washed beside the pool of Samaria, where the prostitutes bathed, dogs came and licked the king’s blood just as the Lord had said would happen.

³⁹ The rest of Ahab’s history—including the story of the ivory palace and the cities he built—is written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel. ⁴⁰ So Ahab was buried among his ancestors, and Ahaziah, his son, became the new king of Israel.

⁴¹ Meanwhile, over in Judah, Jehoshaphat the son of Asa had become king during the fourth year of the reign of King Ahab of Israel. ⁴² Jehoshaphat was thirty-five years old when he ascended the throne, and he reigned in Jerusalem for twenty-five years. His mother was Azubah, the daughter of Shilhi. ⁴³ He did as his father Asa had done, obeying the Lord in all but one thing: he did not destroy the shrines on the hills, so the people sacrificed and burned incense there. ⁴⁴ He also made peace with Ahab, the king of Israel. ⁴⁵ The rest of the deeds of Jehoshaphat and his heroic achievements and his wars are described in The Annals of the Kings of Judah.

¹⁴ But the man who isn’t a Christian can’t understand and can’t accept these thoughts from God, which the Holy Spirit teaches us. They sound foolish to him because only those who have the Holy Spirit within them can understand what the Holy Spirit means. Others just can’t take it in. ¹⁵ But the spiritual man has insight into everything, and that bothers and baffles the man of the world, who can’t understand him at all. ¹⁶ How could he? For certainly he has never been one to know the Lord’s thoughts, or to discuss them with him, or to move the hands of God by prayer.^[a] But, strange as it seems, we Christians actually do have within us a portion of the very thoughts and mind of Christ.

3 Dear brothers, I have been talking to you as though you were still just babies in the Christian life who are not following the Lord but your own desires; I cannot talk to you as I would to healthy Christians who are filled with the Spirit. ² I have had to feed you with milk and not with solid food because you couldn’t digest anything stronger. And even now you still have to be fed on milk. ³ For you are still only baby Christians, controlled by your own desires, not God’s. When you are jealous of one another and divide up into quarreling groups, doesn’t that prove you are still babies, wanting your own way? In fact, you are acting like people who don’t belong to the Lord at all. ⁴ There you are, quarreling about whether I am greater than Apollos, and dividing the church. Doesn’t this show how little you have grown in the Lord?^[b]

⁵ Who am I, and who is Apollos, that we should be the cause of a quarrel? Why, we’re just God’s servants, each of us with certain special abilities, and with our help you believed. ⁶ My work was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos’ work was to water it, but it was God, not we, who made the garden grow in your hearts. ⁷ The person who does the planting or watering isn’t very important, but God is important because he is the one who makes things grow. ⁸ Apollos and I are working as a team, with the same aim, though each of us will be rewarded for his own hard work. ⁹ We are only God’s coworkers. You are God’s garden, not ours; you are God’s building, not ours.

¹⁰ God, in his kindness, has taught me how to be an expert builder. I have laid the foundation and Apollos has built on it. But he who builds on the foundation must be very careful. ¹¹ And no one can ever lay any other real foundation than that one we already have—Jesus Christ. ¹² But there are various kinds of materials that can be used to build on that foundation. Some use gold and silver and jewels; and some build with sticks and hay or even straw! ¹³ There is going to come a time of testing at Christ’s Judgment Day to see what kind of material each builder has used. Everyone’s work will be put through the fire so that all can see whether or not it keeps its value, and what was really accomplished. ¹⁴ Then every workman who has built on the foundation with the right materials, and whose work still stands, will get his pay. ¹⁵ But if the house he has built burns up, he will have a great loss. He himself will be saved, but like a man escaping through a wall of flames.

5 ^1-2 One day as the crowds were gathering, he went up the hillside with his disciples and sat down and taught them there.

³ “Humble men are very fortunate!” he told them, “for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them. ⁴ Those who mourn are fortunate! for they shall be comforted. ⁵ The meek and lowly are fortunate! for the whole wide world belongs to them.

⁶ “Happy are those who long to be just and good, for they shall be completely satisfied. ⁷ Happy are the kind and merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. ⁸ Happy are those whose hearts are pure, for they shall see God. ⁹ Happy are those who strive for peace—they shall be called the sons of God. ¹⁰ Happy are those who are persecuted because they are good, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.