Book of Common Prayer

119 Happy are all who perfectly follow the laws of God. ² Happy are all who search for God and always do his will, ³ rejecting compromise with evil and walking only in his paths. ⁴ You have given us your laws to obey— ⁵ oh, how I want to follow them consistently. ⁶ Then I will not be disgraced, for I will have a clean record.

⁷ After you have corrected me,^[a] I will thank you by living as I should! ⁸ I will obey! Oh, don’t forsake me and let me slip back into sin again.^[b]

⁹ How can a young man stay pure? By reading your Word and following its rules. ¹⁰ I have tried my best to find you—don’t let me wander off from your instructions. ¹¹ I have thought much about your words and stored them in my heart so that they would hold me back from sin.

¹² Blessed Lord, teach me your rules. ¹³ I have recited your laws ¹⁴ and rejoiced in them more than in riches. ¹⁵ I will meditate upon them and give them my full respect. ¹⁶ I will delight in them and not forget them.

¹⁷ Bless me with life^[c] so that I can continue to obey you. ¹⁸ Open my eyes to see wonderful things in your Word. ¹⁹ I am but a pilgrim here on earth: how I need a map—and your commands are my chart and guide. ²⁰ I long for your instructions more than I can tell.

²¹ You rebuke those cursed proud ones who refuse your commands— ²² don’t let them scorn me for obeying you. ²³ For even princes sit and talk against me, but I will continue in your plans. ²⁴ Your laws are both my light and my counselors.

12 Lord! Help! Godly men are fast disappearing. Where in all the world can dependable men be found? ² Everyone deceives and flatters and lies. There is no sincerity left.

^3-4 But the Lord will not deal gently with people who act like that; he will destroy those proud liars who say, “We will lie to our heart’s content. Our lips are our own; who can stop us?”

⁵ The Lord replies, “I will arise and defend the oppressed, the poor, the needy. I will rescue them as they have longed for me to do.” ⁶ The Lord’s promise is sure. He speaks no careless word; all he says is purest truth, like silver seven times refined. ⁷ O Lord, we know that you will forever preserve your own from the reach of evil men, ⁸ although they prowl on every side and vileness is praised throughout the land.

13 How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? ² How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand?

³ Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die. ⁴ Don’t let my enemies say, “We have conquered him!” Don’t let them gloat that I am down.

⁵ But I will always trust in you and in your mercy and shall rejoice in your salvation. ⁶ I will sing to the Lord because he has blessed me so richly.

14 That man is a fool who says to himself, “There is no God!” Anyone who talks like that is warped and evil and cannot really be a good person at all.

² The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who are wise, who want to please God. ³ But no, all have strayed away; all are rotten with sin. Not one is good, not one! ⁴ They eat my people like bread and wouldn’t think of praying! Don’t they really know any better?

⁵ Terror shall grip them, for God is with those who love him. ⁶ He is the refuge of the poor and humble when evildoers are oppressing them. ⁷ Oh, that the time of their rescue were already here, that God would come from Zion now to save his people. What gladness when the Lord has rescued Israel!

6 Son, if you endorse a note for someone you hardly know, guaranteeing his debt, you are in serious trouble. ² You may have trapped yourself by your agreement. ³ Quick! Get out of it if you possibly can! Swallow your pride; don’t let embarrassment stand in the way. Go and beg to have your name erased. ⁴ Don’t put it off. Do it now. Don’t rest until you do. ⁵ If you can get out of this trap you have saved yourself like a deer that escapes from a hunter or a bird from the net.

⁶ Take a lesson from the ants, you lazy fellow. Learn from their ways and be wise! ⁷ For though they have no king to make them work, ⁸ yet they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter. ⁹ But you—all you do is sleep. When will you wake up? ¹⁰ “Let me sleep a little longer!” Sure, just a little more! ¹¹ And as you sleep, poverty creeps upon you like a robber and destroys you; want attacks you in full armor.

^12-13 Let me describe for you a worthless and a wicked man; first, he is a constant liar; he signals his true intentions to his friends with eyes and feet and fingers. ¹⁴ He is always thinking up new schemes to swindle people. He stirs up trouble everywhere. ¹⁵ But he will be destroyed suddenly, broken beyond hope of healing.

^16-19 For there are six things the Lord hates—no, seven: haughtiness, lying, murdering, plotting evil, eagerness to do wrong, a false witness, sowing discord among brothers.

5 If you believe that Jesus is the Christ—that he is God’s Son and your Savior—then you are a child of God. And all who love the Father love his children too. ² So you can find out how much you love God’s children—your brothers and sisters in the Lord—by how much you love and obey God. ³ Loving God means doing what he tells us to do, and really, that isn’t hard at all; ⁴ for every child of God can obey him, defeating sin and evil pleasure by trusting Christ to help him.

⁵ But who could possibly fight and win this battle except by believing that Jesus is truly the Son of God? ^6-8 And we know he is, because God said so with a voice from heaven when Jesus was baptized, and again as he was facing death^[a]—yes, not only at his baptism but also as he faced death. And the Holy Spirit, forever truthful, says it too. So we have these three witnesses: the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the voice from heaven at Christ’s baptism, and the voice before he died. And they all say the same thing: that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. ⁹ We believe men who witness in our courts, and so surely we can believe whatever God declares. And God declares that Jesus is his Son. ¹⁰ All who believe this know in their hearts that it is true. If anyone doesn’t believe this, he is actually calling God a liar because he doesn’t believe what God has said about his Son.

¹¹ And what is it that God has said? That he has given us eternal life and that this life is in his Son. ¹² So whoever has God’s Son has life; whoever does not have his Son, does not have life.

¹⁶ “What shall I say about this nation? These people are like children playing, who say to their little friends, ¹⁷ ‘We played wedding and you weren’t happy, so we played funeral but you weren’t sad.’ ¹⁸ For John the Baptist doesn’t even drink wine and often goes without food, and you say, ‘He’s crazy.’^{[a] 19} And I, the Messiah,^[b] feast and drink, and you complain that I am ‘a glutton and a drinking man, and hang around with the worst sort of sinners!’ But brilliant men like you can justify your every inconsistency!”

²⁰ Then he began to pour out his denunciations against the cities where he had done most of his miracles, because they hadn’t turned to God.

²¹ “Woe to you, Chorazin, and woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles I did in your streets had been done in wicked Tyre and Sidon,^[c] their people would have repented long ago in shame and humility. ²² Truly, Tyre and Sidon will be better off on the Judgment Day than you! ²³ And Capernaum, though highly honored,^[d] shall go down to hell! For if the marvelous miracles I did in you had been done in Sodom, it would still be here today. ²⁴ Truly, Sodom will be better off at the Judgment Day than you.”