Old/New Testament
God takes care of his people[a]
105 Thank the Lord!
Make his name famous!
Tell people in all the nations
what he has done.
2 Sing songs and make music
to praise him!
Tell people about the miracles that he has done.
3 Boast about his holy name.[b]
Everybody who wants to worship the Lord
should be very happy!
4 Ask the Lord to help you.
Ask him to give you strength.
Always try to be near him
and worship him.
5 Remember the great things that he has done.
Remember his miracles,
and the commands that he has spoken.[c]
6 Remember that you are descendants of God's servant, Abraham.
You are Jacob's descendants,
and God has chosen you to be his people.
7 He is the Lord, our God.
He rules the whole earth with justice.
8 He will always remember the covenant
that he made with us.
He made that promise to continue for ever.
9 That is the promise that he made to Abraham,
and that he also made to Isaac.
10 He repeated it to Jacob as a law.
It was a covenant with Israel's people
that would continue for ever.[d]
11 He promised Jacob,
‘I will give to you the land of Canaan.
It will belong to you,
and to your descendants.’
12 At one time, God's people were only a few.
They lived in Canaan as strangers.
13 They travelled among different nations
and different kingdoms.
14 But the Lord did not let anyone hurt them.
He punished kings to keep his people safe.
15 He said, ‘Do not even touch the people that I have chosen to be mine.
Do not hurt my prophets.’
16 The Lord sent a famine to the land of Canaan,
so that his people had no food left to eat.
17 But he sent Joseph to Egypt
before they went there to get food.[e]
Joseph's brothers sold him as a slave.
18 In Egypt the chains on his feet hurt him.
He had a heavy piece of iron round his neck.
19 He remained a slave
until what he said would happen really happened.
Then the Lord showed that Joseph was right.
20 The powerful king of Egypt sent someone
to let Joseph go free out of prison.
21 The king made Joseph master of his palace.
Joseph took care of everything that belonged to the king.
22 The king gave him authority over his officers.
He could teach the king's leaders,
so that they would know what to do.
23 Then Jacob's family came into Egypt.
They lived as strangers in the land of Ham's descendants.[f]
24 The Lord gave to his people many children.
They became more powerful than their enemies.
25 So the Egyptians began to hate God's people.
They did cruel things to the Lord's people.
26 The Lord sent his servant Moses
to help his people in Egypt.
He also chose Aaron to help them.
27 Moses and Aaron did many miracles in Egypt,
where Ham's descendants lived.
They showed the Lord's great power to the Egyptians.
28 God made all the land become dark.
But the Egyptians did not obey God's command.
29 God caused their rivers to become blood,
and he killed their fish.
30 Frogs covered all their land.
They even went into the bedrooms of the palace!
31 The Lord commanded flies and gnats
to cover the whole country.
32 He sent hail with the rain,
and there was lightning everywhere.
33 He destroyed their vines and fig trees.
He knocked down the trees everywhere in their country.
34 He commanded many locusts to come.
There were too many locusts to count!
35 They ate all the plants in their land,
and all the crops in their fields.
36 Then the Lord killed all the firstborn sons in Egypt.
He killed the oldest son in each family.
37 So the Lord led his people out from Egypt.
They took with them valuable silver and gold things.
Nobody among the Israelite people was too weak to go.
38 The Egyptians were happy when they went,
because they were afraid of the Israelites.[g]
39 The Lord made a cloud to cover them
and a fire to give them light at night.
40 When they asked him for food,
he gave them quails to eat.
He fed them with bread from the sky.
41 He broke a rock,
so that water poured out from it.
It ran as a river through the dry places.
42 Yes, the Lord remembered the holy promise
that he had made to his servant, Abraham.
43 So he led his people out from Egypt,
and they were very happy!
They were the people that he had chosen for himself,
and they shouted with joy!
44 The Lord gave to them
the land of other nations.
They enjoyed the good things
that other people had worked to get.
45 Then God's people could obey his commands
and his laws.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
The Lord is good![h]
106 Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Thank the Lord, because he is good.
His faithful love will always be with us.
2 The great things that the Lord has done
are too many to tell!
Nobody can praise him enough.
3 God has blessed the people who obey his commands.
They always do what is right.
4 Lord, when you help your people,
please remember me!
Do not forget to help me,
when you come to rescue them.
5 I want to enjoy the good things
that you give to the people that you have chosen.
I want to be happy together with them.
I want to join with the people who belong to you,
and praise you as you deserve.
6 We have done bad things,
as our ancestors also did.
We have done things that are wicked and evil.
7 When our ancestors were in Egypt,
they did not understand your miracles.
They forgot the many ways that you showed them your faithful love.
When they arrived at the Red Sea,
they turned against you, Lord.
8 But the Lord rescued them,
to show that his name is great.
He showed that he was very powerful.
9 He shouted at the Red Sea,
and it became dry.
He led his people through the middle of the deep water,
as if they walked in a desert!
10 He rescued them from the people who hated them.
He saved them from their enemy's power.
11 The water of the sea drowned their enemies,
so that none of them remained alive.[i]
12 Then God's people believed his promises.
They sang songs to praise him.[j]
13 But they soon forgot
what the Lord had done to help them.
They did not wait for him to tell them what to do.
14 In the wilderness they wanted better food.
They tested God to see what he would do.
15 He gave them the food that they asked for,
but he also sent a bad disease on them.[k]
16 The people became jealous of Moses,
and Aaron, the Lord's special priest.
17 So God made the earth break open,
so that Dathan fell into it.
It also destroyed Abiram and his people.
18 Fire burned all their group,
and it killed those wicked people.[l]
19 At Horeb, the Israelites used gold to make a cow,
and they worshipped it.
20 They turned away from their great God.
Instead, they worshipped the statue of a cow,
an animal that eats grass![m]
21 They forgot the God who had saved them,
when he did great miracles in Egypt.
22 He had done powerful things in the land of Ham's descendants,
and at the shore of the Red Sea.
His people forgot about all that!
23 So God said that he would destroy them.
But God's servant, Moses, spoke on their behalf.
He asked God not to be angry with his people,
and God agreed.
24 Later, they did not believe God's promise
to take them safely into the beautiful land of Canaan.
25 They spoke against the Lord in their tents,
and they did not obey him.
26 So he made a strong promise
that he would cause them to die in the desert.
27 He promised that he would chase their descendants away,
so that they died in foreign countries.[n]
28 After that, they started to worship the false god, Baal of Peor.
They ate the food from sacrifices
that people gave to dead idols.
29 The Lord became angry
because of what his people did.
He sent a bad disease among them.
30 Then Phinehas punished the guilty people,
so that the disease stopped killing people.[o]
31 So we remember that Phinehas was a righteous man,
and that will be true for ever.
32 At Meribah springs, the Israelites made God angry.
What they did there caused Moses to have trouble.
33 Moses was so upset that he spoke in a careless way.[p]
34 The Lord commanded his people
to destroy the nations of Canaan,
But they did not obey the Lord's command.
35 Instead, they mixed with those nations
and they learned their way of life.
36 They worshipped their idols
which caught them in a trap.
37 They even killed their sons and their daughters
as sacrifices for those idols of demons!
38 Their sons and their daughters did not deserve to die,
but they killed them as sacrifices for the idols of Canaan.
Those murders made the land unclean.
39 The things that the Lord's people did
made them unclean.
They were not faithful to the Lord,
like a wife who is not faithful to her husband.
40 So the Lord became angry with his people.
They belonged to him
but he turned away from them.
41 He let other nations have power over them.
Their enemies ruled over them.
42 Their enemies had power to hurt them,
and they were cruel to them.
43 Many times, the Lord rescued his people,
but they had decided not to obey him.
Their sins made them weaker and weaker.
44 But the Lord still saw when they were in trouble.
He answered them when they called to him for help.
45 He remembered the covenant that he had made with them.
Because of his faithful love for his people,
he stopped punishing them.
46 He caused all their enemies to be kind to them.
47 Lord, our God, please save us!
Bring us safely home from among the other nations.[q]
Then we will thank you!
We will shout aloud to praise your holy name.
48 Praise the Lord, Israel's God,
as he deserves!
Praise him now and for ever!
Let everybody say, ‘Amen! We agree!’
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord![r]
God wants his people to grow as believers
3 My Christian friends, I could not teach you as I would teach people who have God's Spirit. I had to teach you as people who belong only to this world. You were like little children who could not understand the message about Christ very well. 2 I had to teach you things that were easy to understand, like a mother gives milk to a baby. You were not yet ready to receive proper food. And you are still not ready to receive God's complete message! 3 You still do what your human nature wants to do. You are jealous of each other, and you quarrel with each other. Yes! This shows that you do what your human nature wants to do. You live like people who do not know God. 4 Some of you say, ‘Paul is my leader.’ And other people say, ‘Apollos is my leader.’ When you speak like that, you are talking like people who belong to this world.
5 Is Apollos important? Is Paul important? No! We are God's servants. We told you God's good news and you believed it. Each of us is doing the job which the Lord has given to us. 6 When I told you God's good news, I was like someone who planted seeds. Then Apollos was like someone who gave water to the young plants. But it was God who caused everything to grow. 7 The person who plants the seeds is not important. The person who gives water to the plants is not important. The important person is God, because he causes everything to grow. 8 The person who plants and the person who gives water both have the same purpose. God will pay each person what is right for their work. 9 Apollos and I work together as God's servants. You are like God's field that we work in.
You are also like a building that belongs to God. 10 I am like a good builder. God has given that job to me and he has helped me to do it well. I was the person who built the foundation. Now other people are building on that foundation.[a] But each person must be careful how he builds. 11 God has already put Jesus Christ as the only foundation of this building. So nobody can put any other foundation there.
12 People may build on this foundation with gold, silver or valuable stones. Or they may build on it with wood, dry grass or leaves. 13 One day, God will show clearly how good each builder's work is. God will put each person's work into a fire on that great day.[b] The fire will show whether their work is good or bad. 14 If the fire does not destroy the work, then that builder will receive good things from God. 15 But if the fire destroys a builder's work, that person will lose everything. The person himself will be safe. But he will be like someone who has run through the fire to a safe place.
16 You surely know that you are like God's special house. As God's people, God's Spirit lives in you. 17 If anyone destroys God's special house, then God will destroy that person. And you are like that house. You belong to God in a special way.
18 Be careful! Do not think that you are better than you really are. Maybe you think that you are wise, like people today want to be wise. But if you want to become truly wise, be ready for other people to think that you are a fool. 19 People in this world think that some people are wise. But God thinks that those wise people are fools. It says in the Bible:
‘God causes the clever thoughts of wise people to confuse them.’[c]
20 In another place, the Bible says:
‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of wise people have no value.’[d]
21 Because of that, you should not be proud of any human leader. All leaders are there to serve you, as God's people. 22 Do not be proud of Paul, Apollos or Peter. We belong to you. All of this world, and life and death belong to you. The things of today and tomorrow belong to you. Everything belongs to you, 23 you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
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