Evening Devotion

A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon.
¹ Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
² It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
³ Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.
⁴ Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
⁵ Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (ESV)

Of Solomon.
¹ Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son!
² May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice!
³ Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness!
⁴ May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor!
⁵ May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations!
⁶ May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth!
⁷ In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more!
⁸ May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth!
⁹ May desert tribes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust!
¹⁰ May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts!
¹¹ May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him!
¹² For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper.
¹³ He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.
¹⁴ From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight.
¹⁵ Long may he live; may gold of Sheba be given to him! May prayer be made for him continually, and blessings invoked for him all the day!
¹⁶ May there be abundance of grain in the land; on the tops of the mountains may it wave; may its fruit be like Lebanon; and may people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field!
¹⁷ May his name endure forever, his fame continue as long as the sun! May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!
¹⁸ Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.
¹⁹ Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen!
²⁰ The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended. (ESV)

¹⁵ When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
¹⁶ But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.
¹⁷ And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’
¹⁸ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’
¹⁹ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’
²⁰ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’
²¹ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’
²² And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’
²³ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.
²⁴ For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’” (ESV)

²³ When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground.
²⁴ She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant.
²⁵ Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.
²⁶ Now then, my lord, as the LORD lives, and as your soul lives, because the LORD has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal.
²⁷ And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord.
²⁸ Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the LORD will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the LORD, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live.
²⁹ If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the LORD your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.
³⁰ And when the LORD has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel,
³¹ my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself. And when the LORD has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.”
³² And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me!
³³ Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand!
³⁴ For as surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.”
³⁵ Then David received from her hand what she had brought him. And he said to her, “Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition.”
³⁶ And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk. So she told him nothing at all until the morning light.
³⁷ In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone.
³⁸ And about ten days later the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.
³⁹ When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the LORD who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The LORD has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife.
⁴⁰ When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.”
⁴¹ And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.”
⁴² And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.
⁴³ David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives.
⁴⁴ Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim. (ESV)

¹ This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
² Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
³ But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself.
⁴ For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
⁵ Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
⁶ I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.
⁷ For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
⁸ Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!
⁹ For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.
¹⁰ We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.
¹¹ To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless,
¹² and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;
¹³ when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
¹⁴ I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.
¹⁵ For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
¹⁶ I urge you, then, be imitators of me.
¹⁷ That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.
¹⁸ Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.
¹⁹ But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.
²⁰ For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.
²¹ What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness? (ESV)

¹ Solomon the son of David established himself in his kingdom, and the LORD his God was with him and made him exceedingly great.
² Solomon spoke to all Israel, to the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, to the judges, and to all the leaders in all Israel, the heads of fathers’ houses.
³ And Solomon, and all the assembly with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon, for the tent of meeting of God, which Moses the servant of the LORD had made in the wilderness, was there.
⁴ (But David had brought up the ark of God from Kiriath-jearim to the place that David had prepared for it, for he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem.)
⁵ Moreover, the bronze altar that Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, had made, was there before the tabernacle of the LORD. And Solomon and the assembly sought it out.
⁶ And Solomon went up there to the bronze altar before the LORD, which was at the tent of meeting, and offered a thousand burnt offerings on it.
⁷ In that night God appeared to Solomon, and said to him, “Ask what I shall give you.”
⁸ And Solomon said to God, “You have shown great and steadfast love to David my father, and have made me king in his place.
⁹ O LORD God, let your word to David my father be now fulfilled, for you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth.
¹⁰ Give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people, for who can govern this people of yours, which is so great?”
¹¹ God answered Solomon, “Because this was in your heart, and you have not asked for possessions, wealth, honor, or the life of those who hate you, and have not even asked for long life, but have asked for wisdom and knowledge for yourself that you may govern my people over whom I have made you king,
¹² wisdom and knowledge are granted to you. I will also give you riches, possessions, and honor, such as none of the kings had who were before you, and none after you shall have the like.”
¹³ So Solomon came from the high place at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting, to Jerusalem. And he reigned over Israel.
¹⁴ Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem.
¹⁵ And the king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stone, and he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the Shephelah.
¹⁶ And Solomon’s import of horses was from Egypt and Kue, and the king’s traders would buy them from Kue for a price.
¹⁷ They imported a chariot from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver, and a horse for 150. Likewise through them these were exported to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria. (ESV)

¹ When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?
² Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?
³ Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!
⁴ So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?
⁵ I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers,
⁶ but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?
⁷ To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?
⁸ But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!
⁹ Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
¹² “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.
¹³ “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
¹⁴ And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
¹⁵ Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
¹⁶ Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”
¹⁷ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
¹⁹ Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
²⁰ for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (ESV)

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. (ESV)