Four verses do most of the work at a Veterans Day service: Romans 13:7 for the honor itself, Psalm 20:7 for the trust behind it, Psalm 121:7-8 for the ones who came home, and Numbers 6:24-26 to close. Below they are sorted by where they go in a service rather than listed flat.
Every verse here is printed in full from the Berean Standard Bible with the reference checked against the text. The Berean text was placed in the public domain on April 30, 2023, and licensing is not required for any use, so these can go on a screen or into a printed bulletin with no permission and no fee.
Veterans Day honors the living
This one fact decides half of your verse choices. The Department of Veterans Affairs puts it this way: Veterans Day honors everyone who served honorably, living and dead, and is largely intended to thank living veterans for their service. Memorial Day is the day set aside for those who died in service. A verse about laying down a life belongs to the other holiday.
The date comes from the armistice that stopped the fighting of the First World War at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. An act approved on May 13, 1938 made November 11 a legal holiday dedicated to the cause of world peace, under the name Armistice Day. In 1954 Congress struck out the word Armistice and put the word Veterans in its place. That history is on the VA record of the holiday.
If you are building a Memorial Day service instead, the verses for that day are a different set, and they are here.
Verses to open a service
An opening verse does two jobs. It says why the room is gathered, and it hands the person at the microphone a first line. These three do that without asking a congregation to agree about any particular war.
Pay everyone what you owe him: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
Honor appears on a list of debts owed. That makes it the plainest warrant in scripture for the day itself, and it works as a one-line call to worship.
First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be offered for everyone— for kings and all those in authority—so that we may lead tranquil and quiet lives in all godliness and dignity.
A direct instruction to pray for people in public office and public service, with a quiet and peaceable life named as the point of it. Good as the lead-in to the pastoral prayer.
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.
Short enough for a slide without trimming. Use it if the service opens with thanksgiving rather than with remembrance.
Verses for a moment of remembrance
The moment of remembrance is usually the hardest minute of the service, because the room holds people with very different service records and very different feelings about them. Verses that name trust rather than triumph carry that minute better.
Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
Honors the service without honoring the hardware. Reads well immediately before a moment of silence.
The LORD will guard you from all evil; He will preserve your soul. The LORD will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.
About coming and going, which is what this day is about. Veterans Day is the homecoming holiday, and this is the homecoming verse.
Have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
A commissioning word, spoken to a man who was being sent out. It fits a veteran who was sent, and it fits anyone in the room about to deploy.
Verses for grief
Every Veterans Day service has grief in it, including the ones that did not plan for any. Widows, parents, and veterans who lost people they served with are sitting there. These four do not explain anything, which is exactly why they work.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.
The shortest true thing scripture says about grief. One line, no argument attached.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Pairs with the verse above. The two of them sit well on one slide.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
The verse people expect, and the one most often mislabeled. The valley line is Psalm 23:4. The green pastures line is Psalm 23:2, and the table in the presence of enemies is Psalm 23:5. Check the number before it goes on the screen.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
The one verse in this group that gives the congregation something to do. Comfort is passed on by the person who already received it, which is often a veteran.
Verses for peace
Armistice Day was made a legal holiday in 1938 as a day dedicated to the cause of world peace. Peace verses are not a softening of Veterans Day. They are the older layer of it.
Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.
Swords into plowshares. This is the verse nearest the founding purpose of the holiday.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Short, and it puts the work of peacemaking on the congregation rather than only on the people being honored.
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid.
For anyone in the room still carrying what they saw. Read it slowly and leave a gap after it.
If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone.
The realistic one. It puts peace within reach and admits its limits in the same sentence, which is a fair thing to say out loud on this day.
A blessing to close with
‘May the LORD bless you and keep you; may the LORD cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the LORD lift up His countenance toward you and give you peace.’
The Aaronic blessing. It ends on the word peace, which is the right last word for November 11, and it needs no introduction from the front.
Three verses worth a second look
These three turn up often. None of them is a bad verse, and using one is not a mistake anybody should feel caught out over. They are worth one read in context before they go on a screen, because of who may be sitting in the room.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus said this about his own death, on the night before the cross, in the talk he gave the disciples before he was arrested. It is also a verse about dying, and Veterans Day honors people who came home. If your service includes a roll of the fallen, that is where it fits.
Though a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, no harm will come near you.
Read aloud over a congregation, this sounds like a promise that the soldier will not be touched. Some families in that room know it did not go that way. Psalm 91 is a psalm of trust rather than a guarantee of safety, and it carries better inside a spoken prayer than alone on a screen.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” And I said: “Here am I. Send me!”
This is Isaiah accepting a call to speak to his own nation, and the message he is handed in the next two verses is a hard one. If willingness to go is the point you want, naming whose call it was keeps it honest and costs you nothing.
These verses are sized for a bulletin, a slide, or a reading from the front.