Book of Common Prayer
God’s Love for Israel
105 Give thanks to the Lord and pray to him.
Tell the nations what he has done.
2 Sing to him; sing praises to him.
Tell about all his miracles.
3 Be glad that you are his;
let those who seek the Lord be happy.
4 Depend on the Lord and his strength;
always go to him for help.
5 Remember the miracles he has done;
remember his wonders and his decisions.
6 You are descendants of his servant Abraham,
the children of Jacob, his chosen people.
7 He is the Lord our God.
His laws are for all the world.
8 He will keep his agreement forever;
he will keep his promises always.
9 He will keep the agreement he made with Abraham
and the promise he made to Isaac.
10 He made it a law for the people of Jacob;
he made it an agreement with Israel to last forever.
11 The Lord said, “I will give you the land of Canaan,
and it will belong to you.”
12 Then God’s people were few in number.
They were strangers in the land.
13 They went from one nation to another,
from one kingdom to another.
14 But the Lord did not let anyone hurt them;
he warned kings not to harm them.
15 He said, “Don’t touch my chosen people,
and don’t harm my prophets.”
16 God ordered a time of hunger in the land,
and he destroyed all the food.
17 Then he sent a man ahead of them—
Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
18 They put chains around his feet
and an iron ring around his neck.
19 Then the time he had spoken of came,
and the Lord’s words proved that Joseph was right.
20 The king of Egypt sent for Joseph and freed him;
the ruler of the people set him free.
21 He made him the master of his house;
Joseph was in charge of his riches.
22 He could order the princes as he wished.
He taught the older men to be wise.
23 Then his father Israel came to Egypt;
Jacob[a] lived in Egypt.[b]
24 The Lord made his people grow in number,
and he made them stronger than their enemies.
25 He caused the Egyptians to hate his people
and to make plans against his servants.
26 Then he sent his servant Moses,
and Aaron, whom he had chosen.
27 They did many signs among the Egyptians
and worked wonders in Egypt.
28 The Lord sent darkness and made the land dark,
but the Egyptians turned against what he said.
29 So he changed their water into blood
and made their fish die.
30 Then their country was filled with frogs,
even in the bedrooms of their rulers.
31 The Lord spoke and flies came,
and gnats were everywhere in the country.
32 He made hail fall like rain
and sent lightning through their land.
33 He struck down their grapevines and fig trees,
and he destroyed every tree in the country.
34 He spoke and grasshoppers came;
the locusts were too many to count.
35 They ate all the plants in the land
and everything the earth produced.
36 The Lord also killed all the firstborn sons in the land,
the oldest son of each family.
37 Then he brought his people out,
and they carried with them silver and gold.
Not one of his people stumbled.
38 The Egyptians were glad when they left,
because the Egyptians were afraid of them.
39 The Lord covered them with a cloud
and lit up the night with fire.
40 When they asked, he brought them quail
and filled them with bread from heaven.
41 God split the rock, and water flowed out;
it ran like a river through the desert.
42 He remembered his holy promise
to his servant Abraham.
43 So God brought his people out with joy,
his chosen ones with singing.
44 He gave them lands of other nations,
so they received what others had worked for.
45 This was so they would keep his orders
and obey his teachings.
Praise the Lord!
God and Israel Make Their Agreement
24 The Lord told Moses, “You, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel must come up to me and worship me from a distance. 2 Then Moses alone must come near me; the others must not come near. The rest of the people must not come up the mountain with Moses.”
3 Moses told the people all the Lord’s words and laws for living. Then all of the people answered out loud together, “We will do all the things the Lord has said.” 4 So Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And he got up early the next morning and built an altar near the bottom of the mountain. He set up twelve stones, one stone for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 Then Moses sent young Israelite men to offer whole burnt offerings and to sacrifice young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. 6 Moses put half of the blood of these animals in bowls, and he sprinkled the other half of the blood on the altar. 7 Then he took the Book of the Agreement and read it so the people could hear him. And they said, “We will do everything that the Lord has said; we will obey.”
8 Then Moses took the blood from the bowls and sprinkled it on the people, saying, “This is the blood that begins the Agreement, the Agreement which the Lord has made with you about all these words.”
9 Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up the mountain 10 and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was a surface that looked as if it were paved with blue sapphire stones, and it was as clear as the sky! 11 These leaders of the Israelites saw God, but God did not destroy them. Then they ate and drank together.
God Promises Moses the Stone Tablets
12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up the mountain to me. Wait there, and I will give you two stone tablets. On these are the teachings and the commands I have written to instruct the people.”
13 So Moses and his helper Joshua set out, and Moses went up to Sinai, the mountain of God. 14 Moses said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone who has a disagreement with others can take it to them.”
Moses Meets with God
15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it. 16 The glory of the Lord came down on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from inside the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a fire burning on top of the mountain. 18 Then Moses went into the cloud and went higher up the mountain. He was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
8 Be sure that no one leads you away with false and empty teaching that is only human, which comes from the ruling spirits of this world, and not from Christ. 9 All of God lives fully in Christ (even when Christ was on earth), 10 and you have a full and true life in Christ, who is ruler over all rulers and powers.
11 Also in Christ you had a different kind of circumcision, a circumcision not done by hands. It was through Christ’s circumcision, that is, his death, that you were made free from the power of your sinful self. 12 When you were baptized, you were buried with Christ, and you were raised up with him through your faith in God’s power that was shown when he raised Christ from the dead. 13 When you were spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were not free from the power of your sinful self, God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the debt, which listed all the rules we failed to follow. He took away that record with its rules and nailed it to the cross. 15 God stripped the spiritual rulers and powers of their authority. With the cross, he won the victory and showed the world that they were powerless.
Don’t Follow People’s Rules
16 So do not let anyone make rules for you about eating and drinking or about a religious feast, a New Moon Festival, or a Sabbath day. 17 These things were like a shadow of what was to come. But what is true and real has come and is found in Christ. 18 Do not let anyone disqualify you by making you humiliate yourself and worship angels. Such people enter into visions, which fill them with foolish pride because of their human way of thinking. 19 They do not hold tightly to Christ, the head. It is from him that all the parts of the body are cared for and held together. So it grows in the way God wants it to grow.
20 Since you died with Christ and were made free from the ruling spirits of the world, why do you act as if you still belong to this world by following rules like these: 21 “Don’t handle this,” “Don’t taste that,” “Don’t even touch that thing”? 22 These rules refer to earthly things that are gone as soon as they are used. They are only human commands and teachings. 23 They seem to be wise, but they are only part of a human religion. They make people pretend not to be proud and make them punish their bodies, but they do not really control the evil desires of the sinful self.
Jesus Begins Work in Galilee
12 When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he went back to Galilee. 13 He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum, a town near Lake Galilee, in the area near Zebulun and Naphtali. 14 Jesus did this to bring about what the prophet Isaiah had said:
15 “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali
along the sea,
beyond the Jordan River.
This is Galilee where the non-Jewish people live.
16 These people who live in darkness
will see a great light.
They live in a place covered with the shadows of death,
but a light will shine on them.” Isaiah 9:1–2
Jesus Chooses Some Followers
17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Change your hearts and lives, because the kingdom of heaven is near.”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.