Night Watch Devotion

¹ He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
² I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
³ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.
⁴ He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
⁵ You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day,
⁶ nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
⁷ A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
⁸ You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
⁹ Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place— the Most High, who is my refuge—
¹⁰ no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
¹¹ For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
¹² On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.
¹³ You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
¹⁴ “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name.
¹⁵ When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.” (ESV)

To the choirmaster. A Maskil of David, when Doeg, the Edomite, came and told Saul, “David has come to the house of Ahimelech.”
¹ Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The steadfast love of God endures all the day.
² Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit.
³ You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking what is right. Selah
⁴ You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
⁵ But God will break you down forever; he will snatch and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
⁶ The righteous shall see and fear, and shall laugh at him, saying,
⁷ “See the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction!”
⁸ But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.
⁹ I will thank you forever, because you have done it. I will wait for your name, for it is good, in the presence of the godly. (ESV)

²³ Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (ESV)

¹ Ah, you destroyer, who yourself have not been destroyed, you traitor, whom none has betrayed! When you have ceased to destroy, you will be destroyed; and when you have finished betraying, they will betray you.
² O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble.
³ At the tumultuous noise peoples flee; when you lift yourself up, nations are scattered,
⁴ and your spoil is gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, it is leapt upon.
⁵ The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness,
⁶ and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is Zion’s treasure.
⁷ Behold, their heroes cry in the streets; the envoys of peace weep bitterly.
⁸ The highways lie waste; the traveler ceases. Covenants are broken; cities are despised; there is no regard for man.
⁹ The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.
¹⁰ “Now I will arise,” says the LORD, “now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted.
¹¹ You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you.
¹² And the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”
¹³ Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my might.
¹⁴ The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”
¹⁵ He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, who despises the gain of oppressions, who shakes his hands, lest they hold a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking on evil,
¹⁶ he will dwell on the heights; his place of defense will be the fortresses of rocks; his bread will be given him; his water will be sure.
¹⁷ Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar.
¹⁸ Your heart will muse on the terror: “Where is he who counted, where is he who weighed the tribute? Where is he who counted the towers?”
¹⁹ You will see no more the insolent people, the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend, stammering in a tongue that you cannot understand.
²⁰ Behold Zion, the city of our appointed feasts! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, an untroubled habitation, an immovable tent, whose stakes will never be plucked up, nor will any of its cords be broken.
²¹ But there the LORD in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams, where no galley with oars can go, nor majestic ship can pass.
²² For the LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver; the LORD is our king; he will save us.
²³ Your cords hang loose; they cannot hold the mast firm in its place or keep the sail spread out. Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided; even the lame will take the prey.
²⁴ And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”; the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity. (ESV)

¹ After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”
² At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.
³ And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.
⁴ Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads.
⁵ From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God,
⁶ and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind:
⁷ the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.
⁸ And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
⁹ And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever,
¹⁰ the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
¹¹ “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” (ESV)

⁶⁸ Some of the heads of families, when they came to the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem, made freewill offerings for the house of God, to erect it on its site.
⁶⁹ According to their ability they gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 darics of gold, 5,000 minas of silver, and 100 priests’ garments.
⁷⁰ Now the priests, the Levites, some of the people, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the temple servants lived in their towns, and all the rest of Israel in their towns.

¹ When the seventh month came, and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem.
² Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God.
³ They set the altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the LORD, burnt offerings morning and evening.
⁴ And they kept the Feast of Booths, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule, as each day required,
⁵ and after that the regular burnt offerings, the offerings at the new moon and at all the appointed feasts of the LORD, and the offerings of everyone who made a freewill offering to the LORD.
⁶ From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the LORD. But the foundation of the temple of the LORD was not yet laid.
⁷ So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the grant that they had from Cyrus king of Persia.
⁸ Now in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak made a beginning, together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to supervise the work of the house of the LORD.
⁹ And Jeshua with his sons and his brothers, and Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, together supervised the workmen in the house of God, along with the sons of Henadad and the Levites, their sons and brothers.
¹⁰ And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the LORD, according to the directions of David king of Israel.
¹¹ And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid.
¹² But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy,
¹³ so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.

¹ Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel,
² they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.”
³ But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”
⁴ Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build
⁵ and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. (ESV)

¹³ Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God,
¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
¹⁵ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind.
¹⁶ The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number.
¹⁷ And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths.
¹⁸ By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths.
¹⁹ For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.
²⁰ The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk,
²¹ nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

¹ Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire.
² He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land,
³ and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded.
⁴ And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.”
⁵ And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven
⁶ and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay,
⁷ but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.
⁸ Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.”
⁹ So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, “Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.”
¹⁰ And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.
¹¹ And I was told, “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” (ESV)

²⁴ Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise:
²⁵ the ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in the summer;
²⁶ the rock badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the cliffs;
²⁷ the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank;
²⁸ the lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.
²⁹ Three things are stately in their tread; four are stately in their stride:
³⁰ the lion, which is mightiest among beasts and does not turn back before any;
³¹ the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and a king whose army is with him.
³² If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth.
³³ For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife. (ESV)