Book of Common Prayer
Zayin
49 Do not forget Your promise to Your servant;
through it You have given me hope.
50 This brings me solace in the midst of my troubles:
that Your word has revived me.
51 Those who are proud cruelly ridicule me,
but I keep to the steady path of Your teachings.
52 I have considered Your ancient rulings, O Eternal One,
and their memory brings me comfort.
53 Burning anger rises in me, has me in its grip
because the unrighteous abandon Your teachings.
54 As I journey through this life,
Your statutes are my song.
55 O Eternal One, through the night, I stop to recall Your name.
That’s how I live according to Your teachings.
56 This has become my practice:
to keep Your ordinances.
Heth
57 The Eternal One is mine. He’s all I need.
I have promised to keep Your words.
58 I sought Your blessing wholeheartedly.
Show grace to me as You promised.
59 I carefully charted out my paths
to align my steps with Your decrees.
60 I did not procrastinate and hurried
to follow Your commands.
61 The wicked have entangled me in their nets,
but I have not forgotten Your teaching.
62 In the middle of the night, I wake to thank You
because Your rulings are just and right.
63 I am a friend of anyone who fears You
and of those who follow Your precepts.
64 The earth is filled with Your unfailing love, O Eternal One;
teach me to observe what You require.
Teth
65 You have handled Your servant well,
O Eternal One, as You promised.
66 Help me to learn good judgment and knowledge
because I believe Your commandments.
67 Before I had trouble, I strayed from the true path, the path of righteousness,
but now I live according to Your word.
68 You are truly good, and Your acts are too;
teach me what You require.
69 The proud smear me with their lies;
I will keep Your instructions wholeheartedly.
70 Their hearts are dull and callous;
I am delighted to study Your teaching.
71 It is a good thing that I was humbled
because it helped me learn Your limits.
72 Your teachings are more valuable to me
than a fortune in gold and silver.
Psalm 49
For the worship leader. A song of the sons of Korah.
Some songs are described as “wisdom psalms.” Similar in theme to the short sayings of Proverbs or the reflective essays of Ecclesiastes, these songs offer practical advice to the worshiper of the one True God. In Psalm 49 we find a meditation on wealth and wisdom, but others describe daily activities (127–128; 133), encouragement when evil succeeds (37; 73), and the results of following God or wickedness (112). The purpose of these songs is to edify those who sing and those who hear, reminding them, and us, how to live life as God intends.
1 Listen up, everyone!
All you who reside in this world, give an ear!
2 Everyone—rich and poor,
young and old, wise and foolish, humble and mighty—
3 My mouth will overflow with wisdom;
the reflections of my heart will guide you to understand the nature of life.
4 I will tune my ear to the words of a proverb;
to the sounds of a harp, I will reveal my riddle.
5 Why should I be afraid when dark evils swirl about me,
when I am walking among the sin of evildoers—
6 Those who depend on their own fortunes,
who boast about their earthly riches?
7 One person can’t grant salvation to another
or make a payment to the True God for another.
8 Redeeming a life is costly;
no premium is enough, ever enough,
9 That one’s body might live on forever
and never fear the grave’s decay.
10 Everyone knows that even the wisest ones die,
perishing together with the foolish and the stupid.
For all die—beggars and kings, fools and wise men.
Their wealth remains behind for others.
11 Although they wish to dwell in fine houses forever,
their graves are their real resting places.
Their homes are for all future generations,
yet for a while they have named lands after themselves.
12 [No one, regardless of how rich or important, can live forever;
he is][a] just like the animals that perish and decay.
13 This is the destiny of those foolish souls who have faith only in themselves;
this will be the end of those happy to follow in their ways.
[pause][b]
14 The fate of fools is the grave, and just like sheep,
death will feast on them.
The righteous will rule over them at dawn,
their bodies, their outward forms, rotting in the grave
far away from their great mansions.
15 But God will reach into the grave and save my life from its power.
He will fetch me and take me into His eternal house.
[pause]
16 Do not be afraid of the rich and powerful
as their prestige and honor grow,
17 For they cannot take anything with them when they die.
Their fame and glory will not follow them into the grave.
18 During their lives, they seek every blessing and advantage
because others praise you when you’ve done well.
19 But they will soon join their ancestors, for all of time,
among the tombs of the faithless—a place of no light.
20 Anyone who is rich or important without understanding
is just like the animals that perish and decay.
Psalm 53
For the worship leader. A contemplative song[a] of David. A song for the dance.[b]
1 The foolish are convinced deep down that there is no God.
Their souls are polluted, and they commit gross injustice.
Not one of them does good.
2 From heaven the one True God examines the earth
to see if any understand the big picture,
if any seek to know the True God.
3 All have turned back to their wicked ways; they’ve become totally perverse.
Not one of them does good,
not even one.
4 Do the wicked relish their ignorance,
the wicked ones who consume My people as if they were bread
and fail to call upon the True God?
5 They trembled with great fear,
though they’d never been afraid before,
Because the True God ravaged the bones of those who rose against you.
You humiliated them because the True God spat them out.
6 Oh, that the liberation of Israel would come out of Zion!
When the True God reclaims His people,
let Jacob celebrate; let Israel rejoice.
13 I’ve seen how stubborn and obstinate these people are. 14 Don’t try to stop Me—I’m going to destroy them! I’ll wipe out every last trace of them under the sky, and I’ll make a bigger and stronger nation out of just you.”
15 The mountain was still blazing with fire as I hurried back down it, carrying the two covenant tablets in my hands. 16 I saw with my own eyes how you had sinned against the Eternal, your True God: you’d cast an idol in the shape of a young bull!
This young bull is made in imitation of the Canaanite fertility gods. The bull is a prominent symbol of Baal. Creating this idol requires a long, intentional process of collecting enough precious metal for a statue, melting it down and purifying it, pouring it into a mold that also has to be designed and crafted, and making sure the statue cools evenly so that it doesn’t break apart. (Perhaps the Israelites learned these crafts by observation or practice in Egypt.) This was no casual slip into an unintentional religious compromise. This is a deliberate embrace of a god other than the Lord, right at the moment when He is drawing up His covenant of love with Israel. They are as unfaithful to the Lord as a person who has an affair while on his honeymoon!
Moses: How quickly you left the path the Eternal commanded you to stay on. 17 Right before your eyes I took the two tablets, hurled them onto the ground, and smashed them to pieces. 18 I went back up the mountain, and for another 40 days and nights I prostrated myself before Him, lying face down on the ground in grief and petition, not eating or drinking anything as before. You had sinned so seriously—you did what the Eternal had just told you was wrong, and this made Him furious! 19 I was afraid[a] He was so violently angry with you that He’d destroy you, as He said He would. But one more time, the Eternal One listened to me, and He spared you. 20 I had to pray particularly for Aaron because the Eternal was furious with him for making the idol—He would have killed my brother! 21 I took the calf idol you made, that embodiment of your sin, and I burned it up. Then I crushed what was left, ground it into tiny pieces until it was as fine as dust, and threw the dust into the riverbed that rushes down the mountain.
12 Brothers and sisters, pay close attention so you won’t develop an evil and unbelieving heart that causes you to abandon the living God. 13 Encourage each other every day—for as long as we can still say “today”—so none of you let the deceitfulness of sin harden your hearts. 14 For we have become partners with the Anointed One—if we can just hold on to our confidence until the end.
15 Look at the lines from the psalm again:
Today, if you listen to His voice,
Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
in the bitter uprising at Meribah.
16 Now who, exactly, was God talking to then? Who heard and rebelled? Wasn’t it all of those whom Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And who made God angry for an entire generation? Wasn’t it those who sinned against Him, those whose bodies are still buried in the wilderness, the site of that uprising? 18 It was those disobedient ones who God swore would never enter into salvation’s rest. 19 And we can see that they couldn’t enter because they did not believe.
23 During the Passover feast in Jerusalem, the crowds were watching Jesus closely; and many began to believe in Him because of the signs He was doing. 24-25 But Jesus saw through to the heart of humankind, and He chose not to give them what they requested. He didn’t need anyone to prove to Him the character of humanity. He knew what man was made of.
3 Nicodemus was one of the Pharisees, a man with some clout among his people. 2 He came to Jesus under the cloak of darkness to question Him.
Nicodemus: Teacher, some of us have been talking. You are obviously a teacher who has come from God. The signs You are doing are proof that God is with You.
At this time, Israel’s Roman occupiers have given a small group of Sadducees and Pharisees limited powers to rule, and Nicodemus is one of the Pharisees. He holds a seat on the ruling council known as the Sanhedrin, and surprisingly Nicodemus is among those who seek Jesus for His teaching. It appears that he believes more about Jesus than he wants others to know, so he comes at night.
Jesus: 3 I tell you the truth: only someone who experiences birth for a second time[a] can hope to see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus: 4 I am a grown man. How can someone be born again when he is old like me? Am I to crawl back into my mother’s womb for a second birth? That’s impossible!
Jesus: 5 I tell you the truth, if someone does not experience water and Spirit birth, there’s no chance he will make it into God’s kingdom. 6 Like from like. Whatever is born from flesh is flesh; whatever is born from Spirit is spirit. 7 Don’t be shocked by My words, but I tell you the truth. Even you, an educated and respected man among your people, must be reborn by the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. 8 The wind[b] blows all around us as if it has a will of its own; we feel and hear it, but we do not understand where it has come from or where it will end up. Life in the Spirit is as if it were the wind of God.
Nicodemus: 9 I still do not understand how this can be.
Jesus: 10 Your responsibility is to instruct Israel in matters of faith, but you do not comprehend the necessity of life in the Spirit? 11 I tell you the truth: we speak about the things we know, and we give evidence about the things we have seen, and you choose to reject the truth of our witness. 12 If you do not believe when I talk to you about ordinary, earthly realities, then heavenly realities will certainly elude you. 13 No one has ever journeyed to heaven above except the One who has come down from heaven—the Son of Man, who is of heaven. 14 Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. In the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up; 15 then all those who believe in Him will experience everlasting life.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.