Night Watch Devotion

A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath.
¹ It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
² to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,
³ to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.
⁴ For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
⁵ How great are your works, O LORD! Your thoughts are very deep!
⁶ The stupid man cannot know; the fool cannot understand this:
⁷ that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever;
⁸ but you, O LORD, are on high forever.
⁹ For behold, your enemies, O LORD, for behold, your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered.
¹⁰ But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil.
¹¹ My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.
¹² The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
¹³ They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴ They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green,
¹⁵ to declare that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (ESV)

A Psalm of David.
¹ The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,
² for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.
³ Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?
⁴ He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.
⁵ He will receive blessing from the LORD and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
⁶ Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah
⁷ Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
⁸ Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!
⁹ Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
¹⁰ Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory! Selah (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 “For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,
² I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land,
³ and have cast lots for my people, and have traded a boy for a prostitute, and have sold a girl for wine and have drunk it.
⁴ “What are you to me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you paying me back for something? If you are paying me back, I will return your payment on your own head swiftly and speedily.
⁵ For you have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried my rich treasures into your temples.
⁶ You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their own border.
⁷ Behold, I will stir them up from the place to which you have sold them, and I will return your payment on your own head.
⁸ I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a nation far away, for the LORD has spoken.”
⁹ Proclaim this among the nations: Consecrate for war; stir up the mighty men. Let all the men of war draw near; let them come up.
¹⁰ Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.”
¹¹ Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD.
¹² Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.
¹³ Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.
¹⁴ Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
¹⁵ The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.
¹⁶ The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But the LORD is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel.
¹⁷ “So you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain. And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it.
¹⁸ “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD and water the Valley of Shittim.
¹⁹ “Egypt shall become a desolation and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the people of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land.
²⁰ But Judah shall be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations.
²¹ I will avenge their blood, blood I have not avenged, for the LORD dwells in Zion.” (ESV)

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.
¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
¹⁸ If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
²⁰ To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
¹ Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
² Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
³ For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,
⁴ for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
⁵ Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.
⁶ For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.
⁷ Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
⁸ Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
⁹ For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
¹⁰ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
¹¹ Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.
¹² The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
¹³ Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.
¹⁴ But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (ESV)

¹³ Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine.
¹⁴ And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.
¹⁵ And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.”
¹⁶ And Joseph answered, “Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.”
¹⁷ So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. He supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year.
¹⁸ And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said to him, “We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent. The herds of livestock are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land.
¹⁹ Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh. And give us seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.”
²⁰ So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh’s.
²¹ As for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other.
²² Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.
²³ Then Joseph said to the people, “Behold, I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh. Now here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.
²⁴ And at the harvests you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones.”
²⁵ And they said, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh.”
²⁶ So Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt, and it stands to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; the land of the priests alone did not become Pharaoh’s.
²⁷ Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen. And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.
²⁸ And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years. So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years.
²⁹ And when the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said to him, “If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh and promise to deal kindly and truly with me. Do not bury me in Egypt,
³⁰ but let me lie with my fathers. Carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place.” He answered, “I will do as you have said.”
³¹ And he said, “Swear to me”; and he swore to him. Then Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed.

¹ After this, Joseph was told, “Behold, your father is ill.” So he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
² And it was told to Jacob, “Your son Joseph has come to you.” Then Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed.
³ And Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me,
⁴ and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.’
⁵ And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are.
⁶ And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance.
⁷ As for me, when I came from Paddan, to my sorrow Rachel died in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).”
⁸ When Israel saw Joseph’s sons, he said, “Who are these?”
⁹ Joseph said to his father, “They are my sons, whom God has given me here.” And he said, “Bring them to me, please, that I may bless them.”
¹⁰ Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see. So Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them and embraced them.
¹¹ And Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see your face; and behold, God has let me see your offspring also.”
¹² Then Joseph removed them from his knees, and he bowed himself with his face to the earth.
¹³ And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near him.
¹⁴ And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands (for Manasseh was the firstborn).
¹⁵ And he blessed Joseph and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,
¹⁶ the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys; and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.”
¹⁷ When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him, and he took his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head.
¹⁸ And Joseph said to his father, “Not this way, my father; since this one is the firstborn, put your right hand on his head.”
¹⁹ But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations.”
²⁰ So he blessed them that day, saying, “By you Israel will pronounce blessings, saying, ‘God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh.’” Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh.
²¹ Then Israel said to Joseph, “Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you again to the land of your fathers.
²² Moreover, I have given to you rather than to your brothers one mountain slope that I took from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow.” (ESV)

²¹ From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
²³ But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
²⁴ Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
²⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
²⁶ For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
²⁷ For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.
²⁸ Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

¹ And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
² And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.
³ And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
⁴ And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
⁵ He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
⁶ When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified.
⁷ But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.”
⁸ And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
⁹ And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
¹⁰ And the disciples asked him, “Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?”
¹¹ He answered, “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things.
¹² But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.”
¹³ Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. (ESV)

¹ My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments,
² for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.
³ Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.
⁴ So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.
⁵ Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
⁷ Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
⁸ It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
⁹ Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce;
¹⁰ then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. (ESV)