Book of Common Prayer
A Prayer for Help
120 When I was in trouble, I called to the Lord,
and he answered me.
2 Save me, Lord,
from liars and deceivers.
3 You liars, what will God do to you?
How will he punish you?
4 With a soldier's sharp arrows,
with red-hot coals!
5 Living among you is as bad as living in Meshech
or among the people of Kedar.[a]
6 I have lived too long
with people who hate peace!
7 When I speak of peace,
they are for war.
The Lord Our Protector
121 I look to the mountains;
where will my help come from?
2 My help will come from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let you fall;
your protector is always awake.
4 The protector of Israel
never dozes or sleeps.
5 The Lord will guard you;
he is by your side to protect you.
6 The sun will not hurt you during the day,
nor the moon during the night.
7 The Lord will protect you from all danger;
he will keep you safe.
8 He will protect you as you come and go
now and forever.
In Praise of Jerusalem[b]
122 I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the Lord's house.”
2 And now we are here,
standing inside the gates of Jerusalem!
3 Jerusalem is a city restored
in beautiful order and harmony.
4 This is where the tribes come,
the tribes of Israel,
to give thanks to the Lord
according to his command.
5 Here the kings of Israel
sat to judge their people.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you prosper.
7 May there be peace inside your walls
and safety in your palaces.”
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends
I say to Jerusalem, “Peace be with you!”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God
I pray for your prosperity.
A Prayer for Mercy
123 Lord, I look up to you,
up to heaven, where you rule.
2 As a servant depends on his master,
as a maid depends on her mistress,
so we will keep looking to you, O Lord our God,
until you have mercy on us.
3 Be merciful to us, Lord, be merciful;
we have been treated with so much contempt.
4 We have been mocked too long by the rich
and scorned by proud oppressors.
God the Protector of His People[c]
124 What if the Lord had not been on our side?
Answer, O Israel!
2 “If the Lord had not been on our side
when our enemies attacked us,
3 then they would have swallowed us alive
in their furious anger against us;
4 then the flood would have carried us away,
the water would have covered us,
5 the raging torrent would have drowned us.”
6 Let us thank the Lord,
who has not let our enemies destroy us.
7 We have escaped like a bird from a hunter's trap;
the trap is broken, and we are free!
8 Our help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
The Security of God's People
125 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,
which can never be shaken, never be moved.
2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people,
now and forever.
3 The wicked will not always rule over the land of the righteous;
if they did, the righteous themselves might do evil.
4 Lord, do good to those who are good,
to those who obey your commands.
5 But when you punish the wicked,
punish also those who abandon your ways.
Peace be with Israel!
A Prayer for Deliverance
126 When the Lord brought us back to Jerusalem,[d]
it was like a dream!
2 How we laughed, how we sang for joy!
Then the other nations said about us,
“The Lord did great things for them.”
3 Indeed he did great things for us;
how happy we were!
4 Lord, make us prosperous again,[e]
just as the rain brings water back to dry riverbeds.
5 Let those who wept as they planted their crops,
gather the harvest with joy!
6 Those who wept as they went out carrying the seed
will come back singing for joy,
as they bring in the harvest.
In Praise of God's Goodness[f]
127 If the Lord does not build the house,
the work of the builders is useless;
if the Lord does not protect the city,
it does no good for the sentries to stand guard.
2 It is useless to work so hard for a living,
getting up early and going to bed late.
For the Lord provides for those he loves,
while they are asleep.
3 Children are a gift from the Lord;
they are a real blessing.
4 The sons a man has when he is young
are like arrows in a soldier's hand.
5 Happy is the man who has many such arrows.
He will never be defeated
when he meets his enemies in the place of judgment.
Moses and Aaron before the King of Egypt
5 Then Moses and Aaron went to the king of Egypt and said, “The Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Let my people go, so that they can hold a festival in the desert to honor me.’”
2 “Who is the Lord?” the king demanded. “Why should I listen to him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord; and I will not let Israel go.”
3 Moses and Aaron replied, “The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us. Allow us to travel three days into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God. If we don't do so, he will kill us with disease or by war.”
4 The king said to Moses and Aaron, “What do you mean by making the people neglect their work? Get those slaves back to work! 5 You people have become more numerous than the Egyptians. And now you want to stop working!”
6 That same day the king commanded the Egyptian slave drivers and the Israelite foremen: 7 “Stop giving the people straw for making bricks. Make them go and find it for themselves. 8 But still require them to make the same number of bricks as before, not one brick less. They don't have enough work to do, and that is why they keep asking me to let them go and offer sacrifices to their God! 9 Make them work harder and keep them busy, so that they won't have time to listen to a pack of lies.”
10 The slave drivers and the Israelite foremen went out and said to the Israelites, “The king has said that he will not supply you with any more straw. 11 He says that you must go and get it for yourselves wherever you can find it, but you must still make the same number of bricks.” 12 So the people went all over Egypt looking for straw. 13 The slave drivers kept trying to force them to make the same number of bricks every day as they had made when they were given straw. 14 The Egyptian slave drivers beat the Israelite foremen, whom they had put in charge of the work. They demanded, “Why aren't you people making the same number of bricks that you made before?”
15 Then the foremen went to the king and complained, “Why do you do this to us, Your Majesty? 16 We are given no straw, but we are still ordered to make bricks! And now we are being beaten. It is your people that are at fault.”
17 The king answered, “You are lazy and don't want to work, and that is why you ask me to let you go and offer sacrifices to the Lord. 18 Now get back to work! You will not be given any straw, but you must still make the same number of bricks.” 19 The foremen realized that they were in trouble when they were told that they had to make the same number of bricks every day as they had made before.
20 As they were leaving, they met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them. 21 They said to Moses and Aaron, “The Lord has seen what you have done and will punish you for making the king and his officers hate us. You have given them an excuse to kill us.”
Moses Complains to the Lord
22 Then Moses turned to the Lord again and said, “Lord, why do you mistreat your people? Why did you send me here? 23 Ever since I went to the king to speak for you, he has treated them cruelly. And you have done nothing to help them!”
6 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you are going to see what I will do to the king. I will force him to let my people go. In fact, I will force him to drive them out of his land.”
20 Do not be like children in your thinking, my friends; be children so far as evil is concerned, but be grown up in your thinking. 21 (A)In the Scriptures it is written,
“By means of people speaking strange languages
I will speak to my people, says the Lord.
I will speak through lips of foreigners,
but even then my people will not listen to me.”
22 So then, the gift of speaking in strange tongues is proof for unbelievers, not for believers, while the gift of proclaiming God's message is proof for believers, not for unbelievers.
23 If, then, the whole church meets together and everyone starts speaking in strange tongues—and if some ordinary people or unbelievers come in, won't they say that you are all crazy? 24 But if everyone is proclaiming God's message when some unbelievers or ordinary people come in, they will be convinced of their sin by what they hear. They will be judged by all they hear, 25 their secret thoughts will be brought into the open, and they will bow down and worship God, confessing, “Truly God is here among you!”
Order in the Church
26 This is what I mean, my friends. When you meet for worship, one person has a hymn, another a teaching, another a revelation from God, another a message in strange tongues, and still another the explanation of what is said. Everything must be of help to the church. 27 If someone is going to speak in strange tongues, two or three at the most should speak, one after the other, and someone else must explain what is being said. 28 But if no one is there who can explain, then the one who speaks in strange tongues must be quiet and speak only to himself and to God. 29 Two or three who are given God's message should speak, while the others are to judge what they say. 30 But if someone sitting in the meeting receives a message from God, the one who is speaking should stop. 31 All of you may proclaim God's message, one by one, so that everyone will learn and be encouraged. 32 The gift of proclaiming God's message should be under the speaker's control, 33 because God does not want us to be in disorder but in harmony and peace.
As in all the churches of God's people,
39 So then, my friends, set your heart on proclaiming God's message, but do not forbid the speaking in strange tongues. 40 Everything must be done in a proper and orderly way.
Temptations to Sin(A)
42 “If anyone should cause one of these little ones to lose faith in me, it would be better for that person to have a large millstone tied around the neck and be thrown into the sea. 43 (B)So if your hand makes you lose your faith, cut it off! It is better for you to enter life without a hand than to keep both hands and go off to hell, to the fire that never goes out. 44 [a] 45 And if your foot makes you lose your faith, cut it off! It is better for you to enter life without a foot than to keep both feet and be thrown into hell. 46 [b] 47 (C)And if your eye makes you lose your faith, take it out! It is better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with only one eye than to keep both eyes and be thrown into hell. 48 (D)There ‘the worms that eat them never die, and the fire that burns them is never put out.’
49 “Everyone will be purified by fire as a sacrifice is purified by salt.
50 (E)“Salt is good; but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?
“Have the salt of friendship among yourselves, and live in peace with one another.”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.