Tuesday, July 9 | St. Andrew's Anglican Church

Psalm 5

¹ Give ear to my words, O Lord;
    consider my groaning.
²Give attention to the sound of my cry,
    my King and my God,
    for to you do I pray.
³O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
    in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
⁴For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
    evil may not dwell with you.
⁵The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
    you hate all evildoers.
⁶You destroy those who speak lies;
    the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
⁷But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
    will enter your house.
    I will bow down toward your holy temple
    in the fear of you.
⁸Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
    because of my enemies;
    make your way straight before me.
⁹For there is no truth in their mouth;
    their inmost self is destruction;
    their throat is an open grave;
    they flatter with their tongue.
¹⁰Make them bear their guilt, O God;
    let them fall by their own counsels;
    because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
    for they have rebelled against you.
¹¹But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
    let them ever sing for joy,
    and spread your protection over them,
    that those who love your name may exult in you.
¹²For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
    you cover him with favor as with a shield.

Psalm 6

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

Psalm 10

¹ Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
²In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
    let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
³For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
    and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
⁴In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
    all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
⁵His ways prosper at all times;
    your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
    as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
⁶He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
    throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
⁷His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
    under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
⁸He sits in ambush in the villages;
    in hiding places he murders the innocent.
    His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
⁹he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
    he lurks that he may seize the poor;
    he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
¹⁰The helpless are crushed, sink down,
    and fall by his might.
¹¹He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
    he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
¹²Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
    forget not the afflicted.
¹³Why does the wicked renounce God
    and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
¹⁴But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
    that you may take it into your hands;
    to you the helpless commits himself;
    you have been the helper of the fatherless.
¹⁵Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
    call his wickedness to account till you find none.
¹⁶The Lord is king forever and ever;
    the nations perish from his land.
¹⁷O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
    you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
¹⁸to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
    so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

Psalm 11

¹In the Lord I take refuge;
    how can you say to my soul,
    “Flee like a bird to your mountain,
²for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
    they have fitted their arrow to the string
    to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
³if the foundations are destroyed,
    what can the righteous do?”
⁴The Lord is in his holy temple;
    the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
    his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
⁵The Lord tests the righteous,
    but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
⁶Let him rain coals on the wicked;
    fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
⁷For the Lord is righteous;
    he loves righteous deeds;
    the upright shall behold his face.

Numbers 35:1-3, 9-15, 30-34

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, saying, ²“Command the people of Israel to give to the Levites some of the inheritance of their possession as cities for them to dwell in. And you shall give to the Levites pasturelands around the cities. ³The cities shall be theirs to dwell in, and their pasturelands shall be for their cattle and for their livestock and for all their beasts. … ⁹And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ¹⁰“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, ¹¹then you shall select cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer who kills any person without intent may flee there. ¹²The cities shall be for you a refuge from the avenger, that the manslayer may not die until he stands before the congregation for judgment. ¹³And the cities that you give shall be your six cities of refuge. ¹⁴You shall give three cities beyond the Jordan, and three cities in the land of Canaan, to be cities of refuge. ¹⁵These six cities shall be for refuge for the people of Israel, and for the stranger and for the sojourner among them, that anyone who kills any person without intent may flee there. … ³⁰“If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses. But no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. ³¹Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death. ³²And you shall accept no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return to dwell in the land before the death of the high priest. ³³You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. ³⁴You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

Romans 8:31-39

³¹What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Matthew 23:13-26

¹³“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. ¹⁵Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. ¹⁶“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ ¹⁷You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? ¹⁸And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ ¹⁹You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? ²⁰So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. ²¹And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. ²²And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. ²³“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. ²⁴You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! ²⁵“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

DAILY OFFICE