Friday, July 26 | St. Andrew's Anglican Church

Psalm 40

¹ I waited patiently for the Lord;
    he inclined to me and heard my cry.
²He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
    out of the miry bog,
    and set my feet upon a rock,
    making my steps secure.
³He put a new song in my mouth,
    a song of praise to our God.
    Many will see and fear,
    and put their trust in the Lord.
⁴Blessed is the man who makes
    the Lord his trust,
    who does not turn to the proud,
    to those who go astray after a lie!
⁵You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
    your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
    none can compare with you!
    I will proclaim and tell of them,
    yet they are more than can be told.
⁶In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,
    but you have given me an open ear.
    Burnt offering and sin offering
    you have not required.
⁷Then I said, “Behold, I have come;
    in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
⁸I delight to do your will, O my God;
    your law is within my heart.”
⁹I have told the glad news of deliverance
    in the great congregation;
    behold, I have not restrained my lips,
    as you know, O Lord.
¹⁰I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart;
    I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
    I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness
    from the great congregation.
¹¹As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain
    your mercy from me;
    your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
    ever preserve me!
¹²For evils have encompassed me
    beyond number;
    my iniquities have overtaken me,
    and I cannot see;
    they are more than the hairs of my head;
    my heart fails me.
¹³Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
    O Lord, make haste to help me!
¹⁴Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether
    who seek to snatch away my life;
    let those be turned back and brought to dishonor
    who delight in my hurt!
¹⁵Let those be appalled because of their shame
    who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”
¹⁶But may all who seek you
    rejoice and be glad in you;
    may those who love your salvation
    say continually, “Great is the Lord!”
¹⁷As for me, I am poor and needy,
    but the Lord takes thought for me.
    You are my help and my deliverer;
    do not delay, O my God!

Psalm 51

¹ Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
    according to your abundant mercy
    blot out my transgressions.
²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin!
³For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
⁴Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight,
    so that you may be justified in your words
    and blameless in your judgment.
⁵Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
    and in sin did my mother conceive me.
⁶Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
    and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
⁹Hide your face from my sins,
    and blot out all my iniquities.
¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and renew a right spirit within me.
¹¹Cast me not away from your presence,
    and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and uphold me with a willing spirit.
¹³Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    and sinners will return to you.
¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
    O God of my salvation,
    and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
¹⁵O Lord, open my lips,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
¹⁸Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
    build up the walls of Jerusalem;
¹⁹then will you delight in right sacrifices,
    in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
    then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Psalm 54

¹ O God, save me by your name,
    and vindicate me by your might.
²O God, hear my prayer;
    give ear to the words of my mouth.
³For strangers have risen against me;
    ruthless men seek my life;
    they do not set God before themselves. Selah
⁴Behold, God is my helper;
    the Lord is the upholder of my life.
⁵He will return the evil to my enemies;
    in your faithfulness put an end to them.
⁶With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you;
    I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good.
⁷For he has delivered me from every trouble,
    and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.

Joshua 9:22-10:15

²²Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, “Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us? ²³Now therefore you are cursed, and some of you shall never be anything but servants, cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.” ²⁴They answered Joshua, “Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the Lord your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you—so we feared greatly for our lives because of you and did this thing. ²⁵And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.” ²⁶So he did this to them and delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. ²⁷But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, to this day, in the place that he should choose. ^10:1 As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, ²he feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors. ³So Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent to Hoham king of Hebron, to Piram king of Jarmuth, to Japhia king of Lachish, and to Debir king of Eglon, saying, ⁴“Come up to me and help me, and let us strike Gibeon. For it has made peace with Joshua and with the people of Israel.” ⁵Then the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon, gathered their forces and went up with all their armies and encamped against Gibeon and made war against it. ⁶And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” ⁷So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. ⁸And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” ⁹So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. ¹⁰And the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel, who struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon and struck them as far as Azekah and Makkedah. ¹¹And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword. ¹²At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
    “Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
    and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
¹³And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
    until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. ¹⁴There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. ¹⁵So Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Gilgal.

Romans 15:14-24

¹⁴I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. ¹⁵But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God ¹⁶to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. ¹⁷In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. ¹⁸For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, ¹⁹by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; ²⁰and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, ²¹but as it is written,
“Those who have never been told of him will see,
and those who have never heard will understand.”
²²This is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you. ²³But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, ²⁴I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while.

Matthew 27:1-10

¹ When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. ²And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor. ³Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, ⁴saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” ⁵And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. ⁶But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” ⁷So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. ⁸Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. ⁹Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, ¹⁰and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”