Midday 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 Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!
² Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day.
³ Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!
⁴ For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.
⁵ For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
⁶ Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
⁷ Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!
⁸ Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts!
⁹ Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!
¹⁰ Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.”
¹¹ Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
¹² let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
¹³ before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness. (ESV)

¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.
² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
³ Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
⁶ If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. (ESV)

¹ Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
² The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
³ The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name.
⁴ “Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
⁵ The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
⁶ Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power, your right hand, O LORD, shatters the enemy.
⁷ In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries; you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.
⁸ At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
⁹ The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’
¹⁰ You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
¹¹ “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
¹² You stretched out your right hand; the earth swallowed them.
¹³ “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
¹⁴ The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.
¹⁵ Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.
¹⁶ Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, till your people, O LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased.
¹⁷ You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
¹⁸ The LORD will reign forever and ever.” (ESV)

¹ Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness.
² For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place.
³ Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place,
⁴ having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant.
⁵ Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
⁶ These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties,
⁷ but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.
⁸ By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing
⁹ (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper,
¹⁰ but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.
¹¹ But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)
¹² he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
¹³ For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh,
¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
¹⁵ Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
¹⁶ For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.
¹⁷ For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.
¹⁸ Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.
¹⁹ For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people,
²⁰ saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.”
²¹ And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship.
²² Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
²³ Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
²⁴ For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.
²⁵ Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own,
²⁶ for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
²⁷ And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
²⁸ so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (ESV)

¹⁵ “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire,
¹⁶ beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female,
¹⁷ the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air,
¹⁸ the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.
¹⁹ And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
²⁰ But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.
²¹ Furthermore, the LORD was angry with me because of you, and he swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.
²² For I must die in this land; I must not go over the Jordan. But you shall go over and take possession of that good land.
²³ Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the LORD your God has forbidden you.
²⁴ For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
²⁵ “When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, and you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, so as to provoke him to anger,
²⁶ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed.
²⁷ And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you.
²⁸ And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
²⁹ But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
³⁰ When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice.
³¹ For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.
³² “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of.
³³ Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live?
³⁴ Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
³⁵ To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.
³⁶ Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire.
³⁷ And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power,
³⁸ driving out before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day,
³⁹ know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.
⁴⁰ Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for all time.”
⁴¹ Then Moses set apart three cities in the east beyond the Jordan,
⁴² that the manslayer might flee there, anyone who kills his neighbor unintentionally, without being at enmity with him in time past; he may flee to one of these cities and save his life:
⁴³ Bezer in the wilderness on the tableland for the Reubenites, Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.
⁴⁴ This is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel.
⁴⁵ These are the testimonies, the statutes, and the rules, which Moses spoke to the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt,
⁴⁶ beyond the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the people of Israel defeated when they came out of Egypt.
⁴⁷ And they took possession of his land and the land of Og, the king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who lived to the east beyond the Jordan;
⁴⁸ from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, as far as Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon),
⁴⁹ together with all the Arabah on the east side of the Jordan as far as the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah.

¹ And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them.
² The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.
³ Not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.
⁴ The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire,
⁵ while I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said:
⁶ “‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
⁷ “‘You shall have no other gods before me.
⁸ “‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
⁹ You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
¹⁰ but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
¹¹ “‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
¹² “‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.
¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
¹⁴ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
¹⁵ You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
¹⁶ “‘Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
¹⁷ “‘You shall not murder.
¹⁸ “‘And you shall not commit adultery.
¹⁹ “‘And you shall not steal.
²⁰ “‘And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
²¹ “‘And you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.’
²² “These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.
²³ And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes, and your elders.
²⁴ And you said, ‘Behold, the LORD our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live.
²⁵ Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, we shall die.
²⁶ For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived?
²⁷ Go near and hear all that the LORD our God will say, and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’
²⁸ “And the LORD heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the LORD said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken.
²⁹ Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!
³⁰ Go and say to them, “Return to your tents.”
³¹ But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess.’
³² You shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
³³ You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess. (ESV)

⁵ And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves,
⁶ for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’;
⁷ and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’?
⁸ I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.
⁹ And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
¹¹ What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent;
¹² or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
¹³ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
¹⁴ Now he was casting out a demon that was mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled.
¹⁵ But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,”
¹⁶ while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven.
¹⁷ But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.
¹⁸ And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul.
¹⁹ And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.
²⁰ But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
²¹ When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe;
²² but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil.
²³ Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
²⁴ “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’
²⁵ And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order.
²⁶ Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
²⁷ As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!”
²⁸ But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
²⁹ When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
³⁰ For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
³¹ The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.
³² The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (ESV)

³² “And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways.
³³ Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.
³⁴ Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.
³⁵ For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD,
³⁶ but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (ESV)