Book of Common Prayer
A Song of Victory
For the director of music. By the Lord’s servant, David. David sang this song to the Lord when the Lord had saved him from Saul and all his other enemies.
18 I love you, Lord. You are my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my protection, my Savior.
My God is my rock.
I can run to him for safety.
He is my shield and my saving strength, my defender.
3 I will call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and I will be saved from my enemies.
4 The ropes of death came around me;
the deadly rivers overwhelmed me.
5 The ropes of death wrapped around me.
The traps of death were before me.
6 In my trouble I called to the Lord.
I cried out to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my call for help reached his ears.
7 The earth trembled and shook.
The foundations of the mountains began to shake.
They trembled because the Lord was angry.
8 Smoke came out of his nose,
and burning fire came out of his mouth.
Burning coals went before him.
9 He tore open the sky and came down
with dark clouds under his feet.
10 He rode a creature with wings and flew.
He raced on the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness his covering, his shelter around him,
surrounded by fog and clouds.
12 Out of the brightness of his presence came clouds
with hail and lightning.
13 The Lord thundered from heaven;
the Most High raised his voice,
and there was hail and lightning.
14 He shot his arrows and scattered his enemies.
His many bolts of lightning confused them with fear.
15 Lord, you spoke strongly.
The wind blew from your nose.
Then the valleys of the sea appeared,
and the foundations of the earth were seen.
16 The Lord reached down from above and took me;
he pulled me from the deep water.
17 He saved me from my powerful enemies,
from those who hated me, because they were too strong for me.
18 They attacked me at my time of trouble,
but the Lord supported me.
19 He took me to a safe place.
Because he delights in me, he saved me.
20 The Lord spared me because I did what was right.
Because I have not done evil, he has rewarded me.
21 I have followed the ways of the Lord;
I have not done evil by turning away from my God.
22 I remember all his laws
and have not broken his rules.
23 I am innocent before him;
I have kept myself from doing evil.
24 The Lord rewarded me because I did what was right,
because I did what the Lord said was right.
25 Lord, you are loyal to those who are loyal,
and you are good to those who are good.
26 You are pure to those who are pure,
but you are against those who are bad.
27 You save the humble,
but you bring down those who are proud.
28 Lord, you give light to my lamp.
My God brightens the darkness around me.
29 With your help I can attack an army.
With God’s help I can jump over a wall.
30 The ways of God are without fault.
The Lord’s words are pure.
He is a shield to those who trust him.
31 Who is God? Only the Lord.
Who is the Rock? Only our God.
32 God is my protection.
He makes my way free from fault.
33 He makes me like a deer that does not stumble;
he helps me stand on the steep mountains.
34 He trains my hands for battle
so my arms can bend a bronze bow.
35 You protect me with your saving shield.
You support me with your right hand.
You have stooped to make me great.
36 You give me a better way to live,
so I live as you want me to.
37 I chased my enemies and caught them.
I did not quit until they were destroyed.
38 I crushed them so they couldn’t rise up again.
They fell beneath my feet.
39 You gave me strength in battle.
You made my enemies bow before me.
40 You made my enemies turn back,
and I destroyed those who hated me.
41 They called for help,
but no one came to save them.
They called to the Lord,
but he did not answer them.
42 I beat my enemies into pieces, like dust in the wind.
I poured them out like mud in the streets.
43 You saved me when the people attacked me.
You made me the leader of nations.
People I never knew serve me.
44 As soon as they hear me, they obey me.
Foreigners obey me.
45 They all become afraid
and tremble in their hiding places.
46 The Lord lives!
May my Rock be praised.
Praise the God who saves me!
47 God gives me victory over my enemies
and brings people under my rule.
48 He saves me from my enemies.
You set me over those who hate me.
You saved me from violent people.
49 So I will praise you, Lord, among the nations.
I will sing praises to your name.
50 The Lord gives great victories to his king.
He is loyal to his appointed king,
to David and his descendants forever.
God Calls and Jonah Obeys
3 The Lord spoke his word to Jonah again and said, 2 “Get up, go to the great city Nineveh, and preach to it what I tell you to say.”
3 So Jonah obeyed the Lord and got up and went to Nineveh. It was a very large city; just to walk across it took a person three days. 4 After Jonah had entered the city and walked for one day, he preached to the people, saying, “After forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed!”
5 The people of Nineveh believed God. They announced that they would fast for a while, and they put on rough cloth to show their sadness. All the people in the city did this, from the most important to the least important.
6 When the king of Nineveh heard this news, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, and covered himself with rough cloth and sat in ashes to show how upset he was.
7 He sent this announcement through Nineveh:
By command of the king and his important men: No person or animal, herd or flock, will be allowed to taste anything. Do not let them eat food or drink water. 8 But every person and animal should be covered with rough cloth, and people should cry loudly to God. Everyone must turn away from evil living and stop doing harm all the time. 9 Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind. Maybe he will stop being angry, and then we will not die.
10 When God saw what the people did, that they stopped doing evil, he changed his mind and did not do what he had warned. He did not punish them.
God’s Mercy Makes Jonah Angry
4 But this made Jonah very unhappy, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “When I was still in my own country this is what I said would happen, and that is why I quickly ran away to Tarshish. I knew that you are a God who is kind and shows mercy. You don’t become angry quickly, and you have great love. I knew you would choose not to cause harm. 3 So now I ask you, Lord, please kill me. It is better for me to die than to live.”
4 Then the Lord said, “Do you think it is right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah went out and sat down east of the city. There he made a shelter for himself and sat in the shade, waiting to see what would happen to the city. 6 The Lord made a plant grow quickly up over Jonah, which gave him shade and helped him to be more comfortable. Jonah was very pleased to have the plant. 7 But the next day when the sun rose, God sent a worm to attack the plant so that it died.
8 As the sun rose higher in the sky, God sent a very hot east wind to blow, and the sun became so hot on Jonah’s head that he became very weak and wished he were dead. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you think it is right for you to be angry about the plant?”
Jonah answered, “It is right for me to be angry! I am so angry I could die!”
10 And the Lord said, “You are so concerned for that plant even though you did nothing to make it grow. It appeared one day, and the next day it died. 11 Then shouldn’t I show concern for the great city Nineveh, which has more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know right from wrong, and many animals, too?”
27 On the fourteenth night we were still being carried around in the Adriatic Sea.[a] About midnight the sailors thought we were close to land, 28 so they lowered a rope with a weight on the end of it into the water. They found that the water was one hundred twenty feet deep. They went a little farther and lowered the rope again. It was ninety feet deep. 29 The sailors were afraid that we would hit the rocks, so they threw four anchors into the water and prayed for daylight to come. 30 Some of the sailors wanted to leave the ship, and they lowered the lifeboat, pretending they were throwing more anchors from the front of the ship. 31 But Paul told the officer and the other soldiers, “If these men do not stay in the ship, your lives cannot be saved.” 32 So the soldiers cut the ropes and let the lifeboat fall into the water.
33 Just before dawn Paul began persuading all the people to eat something. He said, “For the past fourteen days you have been waiting and watching and not eating. 34 Now I beg you to eat something. You need it to stay alive. None of you will lose even one hair off your heads.” 35 After he said this, Paul took some bread and thanked God for it before all of them. He broke off a piece and began eating. 36 They all felt better and started eating, too. 37 There were two hundred seventy-six people on the ship. 38 When they had eaten all they wanted, they began making the ship lighter by throwing the grain into the sea.
The Ship Is Destroyed
39 When daylight came, the sailors saw land. They did not know what land it was, but they saw a bay with a beach and wanted to sail the ship to the beach if they could. 40 So they cut the ropes to the anchors and left the anchors in the sea. At the same time, they untied the ropes that were holding the rudders. Then they raised the front sail into the wind and sailed toward the beach. 41 But the ship hit a sandbank. The front of the ship stuck there and could not move, but the back of the ship began to break up from the big waves.
42 The soldiers decided to kill the prisoners so none of them could swim away and escape. 43 But Julius, the officer, wanted to let Paul live and did not allow the soldiers to kill the prisoners. Instead he ordered everyone who could swim to jump into the water first and swim to land. 44 The rest were to follow using wooden boards or pieces of the ship. And this is how all the people made it safely to land.
Jesus Is the Christ
18 One time when Jesus was praying alone, his followers were with him, and he asked them, “Who do the people say I am?”
19 They answered, “Some say you are John the Baptist. Others say you are Elijah.[a] And others say you are one of the prophets from long ago who has come back to life.”
20 Then Jesus asked, “But who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Christ from God.”
21 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone, saying, 22 “The Son of Man must suffer many things. He will be rejected by the Jewish elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of the law. He will be killed and after three days will be raised from the dead.”
23 Jesus said to all of them, “If people want to follow me, they must give up the things they want. They must be willing to give up their lives daily to follow me. 24 Those who want to save their lives will give up true life. But those who give up their lives for me will have true life. 25 It is worthless to have the whole world if they themselves are destroyed or lost. 26 If people are ashamed of me and my teaching, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and with the glory of the Father and the holy angels. 27 I tell you the truth, some people standing here will see the kingdom of God before they die.”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.