Leviticus 26

COVENANT BLESSINGS AND DISCIPLINE
“Do not make worthless idols for yourselves, set up a carved image or sacred pillar for yourselves, or place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God.
2 Keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary; I am the Lord.

3 “If you follow my statutes and faithfully observe my commands, 4 I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until sowing time; you will have plenty of food to eat and live securely in your land. 6 I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to frighten you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword. 8 Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand; your enemies will fall before you by the sword.

9 “I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. 10 You will eat the old grain of the previous year and will clear out the old to make room for the new. 11 I will place my residence among you, and I will not reject you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to live in freedom.

14 “But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands ​— ​15 if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands ​— ​and break my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you ​— ​wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. 17 I will turn against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even though no one is pursuing you.

18 “But if after these things you will not obey me, I will proceed to discipline you seven times for your sins. 19 I will break down your strong pride. I will make your sky like iron and your land like bronze, 20 and your strength will be used up for nothing. Your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit.

21 “If you act with hostility toward me and are unwilling to obey me, I will multiply your plagues seven times for your sins. 22 I will send wild animals against you that will deprive you of your children, ravage your livestock, and reduce your numbers until your roads are deserted.

23 “If in spite of these things you do not accept my discipline, but act with hostility toward me, 24 then I will act with hostility toward you; I also will strike you seven times for your sins. 25 I will bring a sword against you to execute the vengeance of the covenant. Though you withdraw into your cities, I will send a pestilence among you, and you will be delivered into enemy hands. 26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and ration out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.

27 “And if in spite of this you do not obey me but act with hostility toward me, 28 I will act with furious hostility toward you; I will also discipline you seven times for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons; you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your shrines, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless bodies of your idols; I will reject you. 31 I will reduce your cities to ruins and devastate your sanctuaries. I will not smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. 32 I also will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. 33 But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.

34 “Then the land will make up for its Sabbath years during the time it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and make up for its Sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate, it will have the rest it did not have during your Sabbaths when you lived there.

36 “I will put anxiety in the hearts of those of you who survive in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a wind-driven leaf will put them to flight, and they will flee as one flees from a sword, and fall though no one is pursuing them. 37 They will stumble over one another as if fleeing from a sword though no one is pursuing them. You will not be able to stand against your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away because of their iniquity; they will also waste away because of their ancestors’ iniquities along with theirs.

40 “But when they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors ​— ​their unfaithfulness that they practiced against me, and how they acted with hostility toward me, 41 and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies ​— ​and when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land abandoned by them will make up for its Sabbaths by lying desolate without the people, while they make amends for their iniquity, because they rejected my ordinances and abhorred my statutes. 44 Yet in spite of this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or abhor them so as to destroy them and break my covenant with them, since I am the Lord their God. 45 For their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God; I am the Lord.”

46 These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws the Lord established between himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.

Psalm 33

PRAISE TO THE CREATOR
Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous ones;
praise from the upright is beautiful.
2 Praise the Lord with the lyre;
make music to him with a ten-stringed harp.
3 Sing a new song to him;
play skillfully on the strings, with a joyful shout.
4 For the word of the Lord is right,
and all his work is trustworthy.
5 He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the Lord’s unfailing love.
6 The heavens were made by the word of the Lord,
and all the stars, by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the water of the sea into a heap;
he puts the depths into storehouses.
8 Let the whole earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
9 For he spoke, and it came into being;
he commanded, and it came into existence.
10 The Lord frustrates the counsel of the nations;
he thwarts the plans of the peoples.
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart from generation to generation.
12 Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord —
the people he has chosen to be his own possession!
13 The Lord looks down from heaven;
he observes everyone.
14 He gazes on all the inhabitants of the earth
from his dwelling place.
15 He forms the hearts of them all;
he considers all their works.
16 A king is not saved by a large army;
a warrior will not be rescued by great strength.
17 The horse is a false hope for safety;
it provides no escape by its great power.
18 But look, the Lord keeps his eye on those who fear him —
those who depend on his faithful love
19 to rescue them from death
and to keep them alive in famine.
20 We wait for the Lord;
he is our help and shield.
21 For our hearts rejoice in him
because we trust in his holy name.
22 May your faithful love rest on us, Lord,
for we put our hope in you.

Ecclesiastes 9

ENJOY LIFE DESPITE DEATH
Indeed, I took all this to heart and explained it all: The righteous, the wise, and their works are in God’s hands. People don’t know whether to expect love or hate. Everything lies ahead of them.
2 Everything is the same for everyone: There is one fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not sacrifice. As it is for the good, so also it is for the sinner; as it is for the one who takes an oath, so also for the one who fears an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: there is one fate for everyone. In addition, the hearts of people are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live; after that they go to the dead. 4 But there is hope for whoever is joined with all the living, since a live dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything. There is no longer a reward for them because the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love, their hate, and their envy have already disappeared, and there is no longer a portion for them in all that is done under the sun.

7 Go, eat your bread with pleasure, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already accepted your works. 8 Let your clothes be white all the time, and never let oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun. 10 Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength, because there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.

THE LIMITATIONS OF WISDOM
11 Again I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, or bread to the wise, or riches to the discerning, or favor to the skillful; rather, time and chance happen to all of them. 12 For certainly no one knows his time: like fish caught in a cruel net or like birds caught in a trap, so people are trapped in an evil time as it suddenly falls on them.

13 I have observed that this also is wisdom under the sun, and it is significant to me: 14 There was a small city with few men in it. A great king came against it, surrounded it, and built large siege works against it. 15 Now a poor wise man was found in the city, and he delivered the city by his wisdom. Yet no one remembered that poor man. 16 And I said, “Wisdom is better than strength, but the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heeded.”

17 The calm words of the wise are heeded
more than the shouts of a ruler over fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
but one sinner can destroy much good.

Titus 1

GREETING
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness,
2 in the hope of eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised before time began. 3 In his own time he has revealed his word in the preaching with which I was entrusted by the command of God our Savior:

4 To Titus, my true son in our common faith.

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

TITUS’S MINISTRY IN CRETE
5 The reason I left you in Crete was to set right what was left undone and, as I directed you, to appoint elders in every town. 6 An elder must be blameless, the husband of one wife, with faithful children who are not accused of wildness or rebellion. 7 As an overseer of God’s household, he must be blameless, not arrogant, not hot-tempered, not an excessive drinker, not a bully, not greedy for money, 8 but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled, 9 holding to the faithful message as taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict it.

10 For there are many rebellious people, full of empty talk and deception, especially those from the circumcision party. 11 It is necessary to silence them; they are ruining entire households by teaching what they shouldn’t in order to get money dishonestly. 12 One of their very own prophets said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” 13 This testimony is true. For this reason, rebuke them sharply, so that they may be sound in the faith 14 and may not pay attention to Jewish myths and the commands of people who reject the truth.

15 To the pure, everything is pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; in fact, both their mind and conscience are defiled. 16 They claim to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work.

— Leviticus 26, Psalm 33, Ecclesiastes 9, Titus 1 (CSB)