with wordpress 2.3 you need to update the sql query shown above to this:
SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts
LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ON($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id)
LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships ON($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id)
LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy ON($wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id)
WHERE $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id = 1,2,3
AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category'
AND $wpdb->posts.post_status = 'publish'
AND $wpdb->postmeta.meta_key = 'paragraf'
ORDER BY $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value ASC