Midday Devotion

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
¹ The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
² Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
³ There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
⁴ Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun,
⁵ which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
⁶ Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
⁷ The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
⁸ the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
⁹ the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.
¹⁰ More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
¹¹ Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
¹² Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
¹³ Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.
¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. (ESV)

A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.
¹ Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain,
² beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.
³ Within her citadels God has made himself known as a fortress.
⁴ For behold, the kings assembled; they came on together.
⁵ As soon as they saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic; they took to flight.
⁶ Trembling took hold of them there, anguish as of a woman in labor.
⁷ By the east wind you shattered the ships of Tarshish.
⁸ As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever. Selah
⁹ We have thought on your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.
¹⁰ As your name, O God, so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness.
¹¹ Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments!
¹² Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers,
¹³ consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation
¹⁴ that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever. (ESV)

¹ I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (ESV)

¹⁵ For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling,
¹⁶ and you said, “No! We will flee upon horses”; therefore you shall flee away; and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore your pursuers shall be swift.
¹⁷ A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.
¹⁸ Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
¹⁹ For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you.
²⁰ And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
²¹ And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
²² Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”
²³ And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures,
²⁴ and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork.
²⁵ And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
²⁶ Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow. (ESV)

¹ The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,
² who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
³ Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
⁴ John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,
⁵ and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood
⁶ and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
⁷ Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
⁹ I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
¹⁰ I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet
¹¹ saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”
¹² Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,
¹³ and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.
¹⁴ The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire,
¹⁵ his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last,
¹⁸ and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
¹⁹ Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. (ESV)

¹ Now in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king’s command and edict were about to be carried out, on the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.
² The Jews gathered in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus to lay hands on those who sought their harm. And no one could stand against them, for the fear of them had fallen on all peoples.
³ All the officials of the provinces and the satraps and the governors and the royal agents also helped the Jews, for the fear of Mordecai had fallen on them.
⁴ For Mordecai was great in the king’s house, and his fame spread throughout all the provinces, for the man Mordecai grew more and more powerful.
⁵ The Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and did as they pleased to those who hated them.
⁶ In Susa the citadel itself the Jews killed and destroyed 500 men,
⁷ and also killed Parshandatha and Dalphon and Aspatha
⁸ and Poratha and Adalia and Aridatha
⁹ and Parmashta and Arisai and Aridai and Vaizatha,
¹⁰ the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews, but they laid no hand on the plunder.
¹¹ That very day the number of those killed in Susa the citadel was reported to the king.
¹² And the king said to Queen Esther, “In Susa the citadel the Jews have killed and destroyed 500 men and also the ten sons of Haman. What then have they done in the rest of the king’s provinces! Now what is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what further is your request? It shall be fulfilled.”
¹³ And Esther said, “If it please the king, let the Jews who are in Susa be allowed tomorrow also to do according to this day’s edict. And let the ten sons of Haman be hanged on the gallows.”
¹⁴ So the king commanded this to be done. A decree was issued in Susa, and the ten sons of Haman were hanged.
¹⁵ The Jews who were in Susa gathered also on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and they killed 300 men in Susa, but they laid no hands on the plunder.
¹⁶ Now the rest of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces also gathered to defend their lives, and got relief from their enemies and killed 75,000 of those who hated them, but they laid no hands on the plunder.
¹⁷ This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested and made that a day of feasting and gladness.
¹⁸ But the Jews who were in Susa gathered on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth, and rested on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness.
¹⁹ Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the rural towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, as a holiday, and as a day on which they send gifts of food to one another.
²⁰ And Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far,
²¹ obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year,
²² as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor.
²³ So the Jews accepted what they had started to do, and what Mordecai had written to them.
²⁴ For Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur (that is, cast lots), to crush and to destroy them.
²⁵ But when it came before the king, he gave orders in writing that his evil plan that he had devised against the Jews should return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
²⁶ Therefore they called these days Purim, after the term Pur. Therefore, because of all that was written in this letter, and of what they had faced in this matter, and of what had happened to them,
²⁷ the Jews firmly obligated themselves and their offspring and all who joined them, that without fail they would keep these two days according to what was written and at the time appointed every year,
²⁸ that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, in every clan, province, and city, and that these days of Purim should never fall into disuse among the Jews, nor should the commemoration of these days cease among their descendants.
²⁹ Then Queen Esther, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew gave full written authority, confirming this second letter about Purim.
³⁰ Letters were sent to all the Jews, to the 127 provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, in words of peace and truth,
³¹ that these days of Purim should be observed at their appointed seasons, as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther obligated them, and as they had obligated themselves and their offspring, with regard to their fasts and their lamenting.
³² The command of Esther confirmed these practices of Purim, and it was recorded in writing.

¹ King Ahasuerus imposed tax on the land and on the coastlands of the sea.
² And all the acts of his power and might, and the full account of the high honor of Mordecai, to which the king advanced him, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?
³ For Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was great among the Jews and popular with the multitude of his brothers, for he sought the welfare of his people and spoke peace to all his people. (ESV)

¹ Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.
² And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?”
³ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it,
⁴ and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.
⁵ And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
⁶ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
⁷ And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.
⁸ And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
⁹ And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,
¹⁰ and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
¹¹ Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,
¹² saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
¹³ And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
¹⁴ And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped. (ESV)

¹¹ There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers.
¹² There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.
¹³ There are those—how lofty are their eyes, how high their eyelids lift!
¹⁴ There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mankind.
¹⁵ The leech has two daughters: Give and Give. Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough”:
¹⁶ Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, “Enough.”
¹⁷ The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.
¹⁸ Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand:
¹⁹ the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.
²⁰ This is the way of an adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.”
²¹ Under three things the earth trembles; under four it cannot bear up:
²² a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food;
²³ an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress. (ESV)