Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 18
For the worship leader. A song of David, the Eternal One’s servant, who addressed these words to the Eternal after He had rescued him from Saul and his other enemies.
This Davidic psalm is also found in 2 Samuel 22. It expresses gratitude to God for saving him.
1 I love You, Eternal One, source of my power.
2 The Eternal is my rock, my fortress, and my salvation;
He is my True God, the stronghold in which I hide,
my strong shield, the horn that calls forth help, and my tall-walled tower.
3 I call out to the Eternal, who is worthy to be praised—
that’s how I will be rescued from my enemies.
4 The bonds of death encircled me;
the currents of destruction tugged at me;
5 The sorrows of the grave wrap around me;
the traps of death lay in wait for me.
6 In my time of need, I called to the Eternal;
I begged my True God for help.
He heard my voice echo up to His temple,
and my cry came to His ears.
7 Because of His great anger, the earth shook and staggered;
the roots of the mountains shifted.
8 Smoke poured out from His nose,
and devouring fire burst from His mouth.
Coals glowed from Him.
9 He bent the heavens and descended;
inky darkness was beneath His feet.
10 He rode upon a heavenly creature,[a] flying;
He was carried quickly on the wings of the wind.
11 He took darkness as His hiding place—
both the dark waters of the seas and the dark clouds of the sky.
12 Out from His brilliance
hailstones and burning coals
broke through the clouds.
13 The Eternal thundered in the heavens;
the Highest spoke; His voice rumbled [in the midst of hail and lightning].[b]
14 He shot forth His arrows and scattered the wicked;
He flung forth His lightning and struck them.
15 Then the deepest channels of the seas were visible,
and the very foundations of the world were uncovered
At Your rebuke, O Eternal One,
at the blast of wind from Your nostrils.
16 He reached down His hand from above me; He held me.
He lifted me from the raging waters.
17 He rescued me from my strongest enemy,
from all those who sought my death,
for they were too strong.
18 They came for me in the day of my destruction,
but the Eternal was the support of my life.
19 He set me down in a safe place;
He saved me to His delight; He took joy in me.
20 The Eternal One responded to me according to my goodness;
I kept my hands clean, and He blessed me.
21 I kept the ways of the Eternal
and have not walked away from my True God in wickedness.
22 All His laws were there before me,
and I did not push His statutes away.
23 I was blameless before Him;
I kept myself from guilt and shame.
24 That’s why the Eternal has rewarded me for my right living;
He’s rewarded me because He saw my hands were clean.
25 You are loyal to those who are loyal;
with the innocent, You prove to be innocent;
26 With the clean, You prove to be clean;
and with the twisted, You make Yourself contrary.
27 For You rescue humble people,
but You bring the proud back in line.
28 You are the lamp who lights my way;
the Eternal, my God, lights up my darkness.
29 With Your help, I can conquer an army;
I can leap over walls with a helping hand from You.
30 Everything God does is perfect;
the promise of the Eternal rings true;
He stands as a shield for all who hide in Him.
31 Who is the True God except the Eternal?
Who stands like a rock except our God?
32 The True God who encircled me with strength
and made my pathway straight.
33 He made me sure-footed as a deer
and placed me high up where I am safe.
34 He teaches me to fight
so that my arms can bend a bronze bow.
35 You have shielded me with Your salvation,
supporting me with Your strong right hand,
and it makes me strong.
36 You taught me how to walk with care
so my feet will not slip.
37 I chased my enemies and caught them
and did not stop until they were destroyed.
38 I broke them and threw them down beneath my feet,
and they could not rise up again.
39 For You equipped me for battle,
and You made my enemies fall beneath me.
40 You made my enemies turn tail and run,
and all who wanted my destruction, I destroyed.
41 They looked everywhere, but no one came to rescue them;
they asked the Eternal, but He did not answer them.
42 I beat them to sand, to dust that blows in the wind;
I flung them away like trash in the gutters.
43 You rescued me from conflict with the peoples;
You raised me up to rule over nations.
People who did not know me have come to serve me.
44 Strangers come to me, afraid.
As soon as they hear about me, they serve me;
45 Strangers who have lost heart
come fearfully to me from behind their high walls.
46 The Eternal is alive! My Rock is blessed,
and exalted is the True God of my deliverance—
47 The God who avenged me
and placed the peoples under me,
48 Who rescued me from all my foes.
Truly, You raised me up above my enemies
and saved me from the violent ones.
49 For this I will praise You among the nations, O Eternal,
and sing praises to Your name.
50 He is a tower of salvation for His king
and shows His enduring love to His anointed,
to David and his descendants forever.
Daniel agrees with the counsel given to the king by his own advisors. No worldly source can possibly answer the king’s challenge. To know the content of the dream without any prior information is beyond anyone but the God of Israel.
Daniel: 31 In your dream, you were looking, O king, and suddenly a great statue of what appeared to be a man stood before you. It was enormous in size, shining bright as the sun at midday. Its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of the statue was fashioned of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its trunk and thighs of bronze, 33 its calves of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34 As you were watching, a special stone was quarried and cut, but not by human hands. The divinely hewn stone began to move; it struck the statue on its iron and clay feet and smashed them to pieces. 35 Suddenly the entire statue collapsed—its iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were all broken into pieces and turned to dust, like the chaff carried away by the wind from the threshing floors in summer. Soon not a trace of the statue was left. But the divinely hewn stone that struck the statue became a mountain that filled the whole earth. 36 That, good king, was your dream.
If you allow, we will now tell you what it all means. 37 You, O king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has conferred upon you the kingdom you now rule, along with the power and strength and glory to subdue it. 38 He has placed all people everywhere and all the beasts that roam the fields and all the birds that fly in the sky under your control. He has made you ruler over them all: you are the head of gold. 39 After your reign is over, another kingdom will rise, but its glory will never match yours. This lesser kingdom is the chest and arms of silver. When that kingdom has come and gone, a third and even less majestic empire will rise, which will rule over the whole earth. This kingdom is the trunk and thighs of bronze. 40 Then, when those days are past, a fourth kingdom will come to power with the strength of iron, though lacking in grandeur. Just as iron breaks and shatters everything, so this kingdom will break and shatter all these former realms. 41-42 But as you saw in your vision, this kingdom will be divided, with feet and toes made of both clay and iron. The strength of iron runs through it, but as the toes are made partly of iron and partly of clay, the kingdom, too, will be partly strong and partly fragile. 43 Your dream envisions that this kingdom of iron mixed with clay will be of peoples mixed but not united, the kingdoms joined in the bonds of marriage but not true allies, for iron and clay form no alloy.
These four kingdoms of gold, silver, bronze, and iron/clay are probably the Neo-Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek kingdoms, respectively.
44 In the days when these kings of iron and clay reign, the God of heaven will set up another kingdom, a kingdom that can never be destroyed, a kingdom that will never be ruled by others. It will crush all the other kingdoms and bring them to an end. This kingdom will last forever. 45 It will be as you have seen in your dream, that a special stone quarried and cut from the mountain—but not by human hands—will crush the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The great God, the one True God of heaven, has revealed to the king what will happen in the future. You can be sure that the dream and its meaning are true.
46 When Daniel had finished, King Nebuchadnezzar did something remarkable. He fell on his face before Daniel, worshiped him, and ordered his officials to offer grain offerings and burn incense to him as they would to a god.
Nebuchadnezzar: 47 I am now certain that your God is the God of all gods, the Lord of all kings, and the Revealer of mysteries, for unlike the other wise men in my service, you were able to reveal to me this mystery. You told me not only what I dreamed but what it all means.
48 The king bestowed high honors and many gifts on Daniel. He promoted him to new positions in his court and made him governor over the whole province of Babylon and head over all the wise men in his realm. 49 Daniel approached the king and requested that he put his friends—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego—in charge of affairs in the province of Babylon while Daniel remained in the royal court.
18 My children, this is the final hour. You have heard that the antiChrist, the greatest enemy to His kingdom, is coming, but in fact, many antiChrists are already here. This development tells us how late it really is. 19 A group has left us, but they were not part of our family. If they were truly our brothers and sisters, they would have remained for the duration with us. When they left, they made it ever so obvious that they were not part of us.
20 You have been given an anointing, a special touch from the Holy One. You know the truth.[a] 21 I am not writing to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it. You know that no lie belongs to the truth. 22 The liar is the one who says, “Jesus is not really the Anointed One.” This is the antiChrist, the one denying both the Father and the Son. 23 Anyone who denies the Son does not know the Father. The one affirming the Son enjoys an intimate relationship with the Father as well.
24 Let the good news, the story you have heard from the beginning of your journey, live in and take hold of you. If that happens and you focus on the good news, then you will always remain in a relationship with the Son and the Father. 25 This is what He promised us: eternal life.
26 I also am writing to warn you about some who are attempting to deceive you. 27 You have an anointing. You received it from Him, and His anointing remains on you. You do not need any other teacher. But as His anointing instructs you in all the essentials (all the truth uncontaminated by darkness and lies), it teaches you this: “Remain connected to Him.”
28 So now, my little children, live in Him, so that whenever He is revealed, we will have confidence and not have to hang our heads in shame before Him when He comes. 29 If you know that He is just and faithful, then you also know that everyone who lives faithfully and acts justly has been born into a new life through Him.
3 Our story continues 15 years after Tiberius Caesar had begun his reign over the empire. Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod ruled Galilee, his brother Philip ruled Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruled Abilene.
More than any other Gospel writer, Luke wants to situate the story of Jesus in secular history. In particular, he gives details of the emperor, governor, and other client rulers. With a toxic mixture of cruelty and might, these authorities lord their power over the common people. Yet these high and mighty are—as Mary’s poem describes—destined to be brought down in the presence of a new kind of king and a new kind of kingdom. Jesus will exercise His authority in a radically different way—not through domination and violence, but through love, healing, compassion, and service.
John’s father Zacharias is a priest who serves in Jerusalem at the temple. Among their other duties, priests perform ritual cleansings necessary for Jewish worshipers who become ceremonially unclean—perhaps through contact with outsiders (non-Jewish people), perhaps through contact with blood or a dead body, perhaps through a physical illness. But when John appears on the scene, he hasn’t followed in his father’s footsteps. He’s not fulfilling the role of the priest, but rather of the prophet. He works far outside of Jerusalem, and he baptizes people in the Jordan River, not near the temple. It’s as if John is performing a symbolic drama: If you want to be in tune with God, the temple and its normal routines can’t help you anymore. Instead of being cleansed there, you should come out to this radical preacher and let him cleanse you in the river. And his message isn’t a polite, tame message. It’s fiery and intense! God isn’t interested in just routine religion. He wants changed lives!
2 In Jerusalem Annas and Caiaphas were high priests in the temple. And in those days, out in the wilderness, John (son of Zacharias) received a message from God.
3 John brought this divine message to all those who came to the Jordan River. He preached that people should be ritually cleansed through baptism as an expression of changed lives for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As Isaiah the prophet had said,
A solitary voice is calling:
“Go into the wilderness;
prepare the road for the Eternal One’s journey.
In the desert, repair and straighten
every mile of our True God’s highway.
5 Every low place will be lifted
and every high mountain,
every hill will be humbled;
The crooked road will be straightened out
and rough places ironed out smooth;
6 Then the radiant glory of the Eternal One will be revealed.
All flesh together will take it in.”[a]
7 In fulfillment of those words, crowds streamed out from the villages and towns to be baptized[b] by John at the Jordan.
John the Baptist: You bunch of venomous snakes! Who told you that you could escape God’s coming wrath? 8 Don’t just talk of turning to God; you’d better bear the authentic fruit of a changed life. Don’t take pride in your religious heritage, saying, “We have Abraham for our father!” Listen—God could turn these rocks into children of Abraham!
9 God wants you to bear fruit! If you don’t produce good fruit, then you’ll be chopped down like a fruitless tree and made into firewood. God’s ax is taking aim and ready to swing!
People: 10 What shall we do to perform works from changed lives?
John the Baptist: 11 The person who has two shirts must share with the person who has none. And the person with food must share with the one in need.
12 Some tax collectors were among those in the crowd seeking baptism.[c]
Tax Collectors: Teacher, what kind of fruit is God looking for from us?
John the Baptist: 13 Stop overcharging people. Only collect what you must turn over to the Romans.
Soldiers: 14 What about us? What should we do to show true change?
John the Baptist: Don’t extort money from people by throwing around your power or making false accusations, and be content with your pay.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.