Night Watch Devotion

To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.
¹ Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!
² O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah
³ But know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD hears when I call to him.
⁴ Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah
⁵ Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD.
⁶ There are many who say, “Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O LORD!”
⁷ You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.
⁸ In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. (ESV)

¹ In you, O LORD, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame!
² In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me, and save me!
³ Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.
⁴ Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.
⁵ For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth.
⁶ Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.
⁷ I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge.
⁸ My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all the day.
⁹ Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent.
¹⁰ For my enemies speak concerning me; those who watch for my life consult together
¹¹ and say, “God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him.”
¹² O God, be not far from me; O my God, make haste to help me!
¹³ May my accusers be put to shame and consumed; with scorn and disgrace may they be covered who seek my hurt.
¹⁴ But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.
¹⁵ My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge.
¹⁶ With the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.
¹⁷ O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
¹⁸ So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.
¹⁹ Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?
²⁰ You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.
²¹ You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.
²² I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel.
²³ My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.
²⁴ And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt. (ESV)

¹ Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you.
² For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
³ While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
⁴ But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.
⁵ For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.
⁶ So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
⁷ For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. (ESV)

¹³ In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.
¹⁴ In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out.
¹⁵ Then God said to Noah,
¹⁶ “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.
¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
¹⁸ So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him.
¹⁹ Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.
²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
²¹ And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
²² While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
¹ And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
² The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.
³ Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
⁴ But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
⁵ And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
⁶ “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
⁷ And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
⁹ “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you,
¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth.
¹¹ I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
¹³ I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,
¹⁵ I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
¹⁶ When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” (ESV)

¹ Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land.
² And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them:
³ “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.
⁴ And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.
⁵ Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil.
⁶ And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.
⁷ Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.
⁸ And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
⁹ And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
¹⁰ And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.
¹¹ And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables,
¹² so that “‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”
¹³ And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?
¹⁴ The sower sows the word.
¹⁵ And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.
¹⁶ And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy.
¹⁷ And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.
¹⁸ And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word,
¹⁹ but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.
²⁰ But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” (ESV)

¹ The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,
² “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD.
³ For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits,
⁴ but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.
⁵ You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.
⁶ The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you,
⁷ and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.
⁸ “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.
⁹ Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land.
¹⁰ And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.
¹¹ That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.
¹² For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.
¹³ “In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property.
¹⁴ And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another.
¹⁵ You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops.
¹⁶ If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you.
¹⁷ You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the LORD your God.
¹⁸ “Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely.
¹⁹ The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely.
²⁰ And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’
²¹ I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years.
²² When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.
²³ “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.
²⁴ And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.
²⁵ “If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold.
²⁶ If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it,
²⁷ let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property.
²⁸ But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.
²⁹ “If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem it within a year of its sale. For a full year he shall have the right of redemption.
³⁰ If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the buyer, throughout his generations; it shall not be released in the jubilee.
³¹ But the houses of the villages that have no wall around them shall be classified with the fields of the land. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the jubilee.
³² As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the houses in the cities they possess.
³³ And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city they possess shall be released in the jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel.
³⁴ But the fields of pastureland belonging to their cities may not be sold, for that is their possession forever.
³⁵ “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you.
³⁶ Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.
³⁷ You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.
³⁸ I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
³⁹ “If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave:
⁴⁰ he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.
⁴¹ Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers.
⁴² For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.
⁴³ You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God.
⁴⁴ As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.
⁴⁵ You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.
⁴⁶ You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.
⁴⁷ “If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger’s clan,
⁴⁸ then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him,
⁴⁹ or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich he may redeem himself.
⁵⁰ He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker.
⁵¹ If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price.
⁵² If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service.
⁵³ He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight.
⁵⁴ And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of jubilee.
⁵⁵ For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

¹ “You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the LORD your God.
² You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.
³ “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them,
⁴ then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
⁵ Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely.
⁶ I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land.
⁷ You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
⁸ Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
⁹ I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you.
¹⁰ You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new.
¹¹ I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.
¹² And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
¹³ I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. (ESV)

¹ When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
² And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.
³ And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”
⁴ And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large.
⁵ And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.
⁶ And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.
⁷ But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”
⁸ And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. [Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20.] [[
⁹ Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.
¹⁰ She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept.
¹¹ But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.
¹² After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country.
¹³ And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
¹⁴ Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.
¹⁵ And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
¹⁷ And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;
¹⁸ they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
¹⁹ So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.
²⁰ And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.]] (ESV)

¹ Shout for joy in the LORD, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright.
² Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
³ Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
⁴ For the word of the LORD is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.
⁵ He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.
⁶ By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
⁷ He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; he puts the deeps in storehouses.
⁸ Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
⁹ For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
¹⁰ The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
¹¹ The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. (ESV)