DAILY OFFICE

1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
    nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
    heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
    But you, O Lord—how long?
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
    save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
    in Sheol who will give you praise?
6 I am weary with my moaning;
    every night I flood my bed with tears;
    I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
    it grows weak because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
    for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
    the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
    they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

1 Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
    for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
2 Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
    with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
    the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
    our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
5 “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord;
    “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
    like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
    purified seven times.
7 You, O Lord, will keep them;
    you will guard us from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
    as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

1 O Lord, God of vengeance,
    O God of vengeance, shine forth!
2 Rise up, O judge of the earth;
    repay to the proud what they deserve!
3 O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
    how long shall the wicked exult?
4 They pour out their arrogant words;
    all the evildoers boast.
5 They crush your people, O Lord,
    and afflict your heritage.
6 They kill the widow and the sojourner,
    and murder the fatherless;
7 and they say, “The Lord does not see;
    the God of Jacob does not perceive.”
8 Understand, O dullest of the people!
    Fools, when will you be wise?
9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear?
    He who formed the eye, does he not see?
10 He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke?
    He who teaches man knowledge—
11 the Lord—knows the thoughts of man,
    that they are but a breath.
12 Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,
    and whom you teach out of your law,
13 to give him rest from days of trouble,
    until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the Lord will not forsake his people;
    he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous,
    and all the upright in heart will follow it.
16 Who rises up for me against the wicked?
    Who stands up for me against evildoers?
17 If the Lord had not been my help,
    my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
18 When I thought, “My foot slips,”
    your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
19 When the cares of my heart are many,
    your consolations cheer my soul.
20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
    those who frame injustice by statute?
21 They band together against the life of the righteous
    and condemn the innocent to death.
22 But the Lord has become my stronghold,
    and my God the rock of my refuge.
23 He will bring back on them their iniquity
    and wipe them out for their wickedness;
    the Lord our God will wipe them out.

17 Zion stretches out her hands,
    but there is none to comfort her;
    the Lord has commanded against Jacob
    that his neighbors should be his foes;
    Jerusalem has become
    a filthy thing among them.
18 “The Lord is in the right,
    for I have rebelled against his word;
    but hear, all you peoples,
    and see my suffering;
    my young women and my young men
    have gone into captivity.
19 “I called to my lovers,
    but they deceived me;
    my priests and elders
    perished in the city,
    while they sought food
    to revive their strength.
20 “Look, O Lord, for I am in distress;
    my stomach churns;
    my heart is wrung within me,
    because I have been very rebellious.
    In the street the sword bereaves;
    in the house it is like death.
21 “They heard my groaning,
    yet there is no one to comfort me.
    All my enemies have heard of my trouble;
    they are glad that you have done it.
    You have brought the day you announced;
    now let them be as I am.
22 “Let all their evildoing come before you,
    and deal with them
    as you have dealt with me
    because of all my transgressions;
    for my groans are many,
    and my heart is faint.”

8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. 12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you. 15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

27 And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, 28 and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” 29 Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” 31 And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32 But shall we say, ‘From man’?”—they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. 33 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”