Remain 2026

Hosea 4–8

The Lord Accuses Israel

4:1   Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel,
    for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
  There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
    and no knowledge of God in the land;
2   there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
    they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
3   Therefore the land mourns,
    and all who dwell in it languish,
  and also the beasts of the field
    and the birds of the heavens,
    and even the fish of the sea are taken away.
4   Yet let no one contend,
    and let none accuse,
    for with you is my contention, O priest.
5   You shall stumble by day;
    the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;
    and I will destroy your mother.
6   My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge;
    because you have rejected knowledge,
    I reject you from being a priest to me.
  And since you have forgotten the law of your God,
    I also will forget your children.
7   The more they increased,
    the more they sinned against me;
    I will change their glory into shame.
8   They feed on the sin of my people;
    they are greedy for their iniquity.
9   And it shall be like people, like priest;
    I will punish them for their ways
    and repay them for their deeds.
10   They shall eat, but not be satisfied;
    they shall play the whore, but not multiply,
  because they have forsaken the LORD
    to cherish 11 whoredom, wine, and new wine,
    which take away the understanding.
12   My people inquire of a piece of wood,
    and their walking staff gives them oracles.
  For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray,
    and they have left their God to play the whore.
13   They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains
    and burn offerings on the hills,
  under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
    because their shade is good.
  Therefore your daughters play the whore,
    and your brides commit adultery.
14   I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
    nor your brides when they commit adultery;
  for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes
    and sacrifice with cult prostitutes,
  and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.
15   Though you play the whore, O Israel,
    let not Judah become guilty.
  Enter not into Gilgal,
    nor go up to Beth-aven,
    and swear not, “As the LORD lives.”
16   Like a stubborn heifer,
    Israel is stubborn;
  can the LORD now feed them
    like a lamb in a broad pasture?
17   Ephraim is joined to idols;
    leave him alone.
18   When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;
    their rulers dearly love shame.
19   A wind has wrapped them in its wings,
    and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.

Punishment Coming for Israel and Judah

5:1   Hear this, O priests!
    Pay attention, O house of Israel!
  Give ear, O house of the king!
    For the judgment is for you;
  for you have been a snare at Mizpah
    and a net spread upon Tabor.
2   And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter,
    but I will discipline all of them.
3   I know Ephraim,
    and Israel is not hidden from me;
  for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;
    Israel is defiled.
4   Their deeds do not permit them
    to return to their God.
  For the spirit of whoredom is within them,
    and they know not the LORD.
5   The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
    Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt;
    Judah also shall stumble with them.
6   With their flocks and herds they shall go
    to seek the LORD,
  but they will not find him;
    he has withdrawn from them.
7   They have dealt faithlessly with the LORD;
    for they have borne alien children.
    Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.
8   Blow the horn in Gibeah,
    the trumpet in Ramah.
  Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;
    we follow you, O Benjamin!
9   Ephraim shall become a desolation
    in the day of punishment;
  among the tribes of Israel
    I make known what is sure.
10   The princes of Judah have become
    like those who move the landmark;
  upon them I will pour out
    my wrath like water.
11   Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,
    because he was determined to go after filth.
12   But I am like a moth to Ephraim,
    and like dry rot to the house of Judah.
13   When Ephraim saw his sickness,
    and Judah his wound,
  then Ephraim went to Assyria,
    and sent to the great king.
  But he is not able to cure you
    or heal your wound.
14   For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
    and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
  I, even I, will tear and go away;
    I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
15   I will return again to my place,
    until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,
    and in their distress earnestly seek me.

Israel and Judah Are Unrepentant

6:1   “Come, let us return to the LORD;
    for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
    he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
2   After two days he will revive us;
    on the third day he will raise us up,
    that we may live before him.
3   Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;
    his going out is sure as the dawn;
  he will come to us as the showers,
    as the spring rains that water the earth.”
4   What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
    What shall I do with you, O Judah?
  Your love is like a morning cloud,
    like the dew that goes early away.
5   Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
    I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
    and my judgment goes forth as the light.
6   For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
    the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
7   But like Adam they transgressed the covenant;
    there they dealt faithlessly with me.
8   Gilead is a city of evildoers,
    tracked with blood.
9   As robbers lie in wait for a man,
    so the priests band together;
  they murder on the way to Shechem;
    they commit villainy.
10   In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;
    Ephraim’s whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.
11   For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed.
  When I restore the fortunes of my people,
7:1   when I would heal Israel,
    the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed,
    and the evil deeds of Samaria,
  for they deal falsely;
    the thief breaks in,
    and the bandits raid outside.
2   But they do not consider
    that I remember all their evil.
  Now their deeds surround them;
    they are before my face.
3   By their evil they make the king glad,
    and the princes by their treachery.
4   They are all adulterers;
    they are like a heated oven
  whose baker ceases to stir the fire,
    from the kneading of the dough
    until it is leavened.
5   On the day of our king, the princes
    became sick with the heat of wine;
    he stretched out his hand with mockers.
6   For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;
    all night their anger smolders;
    in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
7   All of them are hot as an oven,
    and they devour their rulers.
  All their kings have fallen,
    and none of them calls upon me.
8   Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
    Ephraim is a cake not turned.
9   Strangers devour his strength,
    and he knows it not;
  gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,
    and he knows it not.
10   The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
    yet they do not return to the LORD their God,
    nor seek him, for all this.
11   Ephraim is like a dove,
    silly and without sense,
    calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
12   As they go, I will spread over them my net;
    I will bring them down like birds of the heavens;
    I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.
13   Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!
    Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!
  I would redeem them,
    but they speak lies against me.
14   They do not cry to me from the heart,
    but they wail upon their beds;
  for grain and wine they gash themselves;
    they rebel against me.
15   Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
    yet they devise evil against me.
16   They return, but not upward;
    they are like a treacherous bow;
  their princes shall fall by the sword
    because of the insolence of their tongue.
  This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.

Israel Will Reap the Whirlwind

8:1   Set the trumpet to your lips!
    One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD,
  because they have transgressed my covenant
    and rebelled against my law.
2   To me they cry,
    “My God, we—Israel—know you.”
3   Israel has spurned the good;
    the enemy shall pursue him.
4   They made kings, but not through me.
    They set up princes, but I knew it not.
  With their silver and gold they made idols
    for their own destruction.
5   I have spurned your calf, O Samaria.
    My anger burns against them.
  How long will they be incapable of innocence?
6   For it is from Israel;
  a craftsman made it;
    it is not God.
  The calf of Samaria
    shall be broken to pieces.
7   For they sow the wind,
    and they shall reap the whirlwind.
  The standing grain has no heads;
    it shall yield no flour;
  if it were to yield,
    strangers would devour it.
8   Israel is swallowed up;
    already they are among the nations
    as a useless vessel.
9   For they have gone up to Assyria,
    a wild donkey wandering alone;
    Ephraim has hired lovers.
10   Though they hire allies among the nations,
    I will soon gather them up.
  And the king and princes shall soon writhe
    because of the tribute.
11   Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning,
    they have become to him altars for sinning.
12   Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
    they would be regarded as a strange thing.
13   As for my sacrificial offerings,
    they sacrifice meat and eat it,
    but the LORD does not accept them.
  Now he will remember their iniquity
    and punish their sins;
    they shall return to Egypt.
14   For Israel has forgotten his Maker
    and built palaces,
  and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;
    so I will send a fire upon his cities,
    and it shall devour her strongholds.

Revelation 1

Prologue

1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

Greeting to the Seven Churches

4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia:

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.

8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Vision of the Son of Man

9 I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”

12 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, 15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. 19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Revelation 2:1–11

To the Church in Ephesus

2:1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

2 “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. 3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’

To the Church in Smyrna

8 “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.

9 “‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10 Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. 11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’

Psalm 141

Give Ear to My Voice

A Psalm of David.

141:1   O LORD, I call upon you; hasten to me!
    Give ear to my voice when I call to you!
2   Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
    and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!
3   Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth;
    keep watch over the door of my lips!
4   Do not let my heart incline to any evil,
    to busy myself with wicked deeds
  in company with men who work iniquity,
    and let me not eat of their delicacies!
5   Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness;
    let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head;
    let my head not refuse it.
  Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds.
6   When their judges are thrown over the cliff,
    then they shall hear my words, for they are pleasant.
7   As when one plows and breaks up the earth,
    so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of Sheol.
8   But my eyes are toward you, O GOD, my Lord;
    in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!
9   Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me
    and from the snares of evildoers!
10   Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
    while I pass by safely.

Proverbs 30:19–21

19   the way of an eagle in the sky,
    the way of a serpent on a rock,
  the way of a ship on the high seas,
    and the way of a man with a virgin.
20   This is the way of an adulteress:
    she eats and wipes her mouth
    and says, “I have done no wrong.”
21   Under three things the earth trembles;
    under four it cannot bear up: