M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Promises and Warnings
26 You shall not make gods that are really not gods for yourselves, and you shall not set up an image or a sacred memorial stone for yourselves, and you shall not set up a carved stone relief in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God. 2 You shall observe my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3 If you walk according to my regulations and keep my commandments and carry them out, 4 I will give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees in the farmland will yield their fruit. 5 Threshing will last until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will last until the time for sowing. You will eat your food until you are full, and you will live securely in your land.
6 I will give peace in the land so that you may lie down without anyone frightening you. I will eliminate ferocious 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, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.
9 I will look on you with favor, and I will make you fruitful and will multiply you, and I will keep my covenant with you. 10 You will eat grain from previous harvests, grain long stored, until you remove the old grain to make room for the new. 11 I will place my Dwelling in your midst, and I will not at all detest you. 12 I will walk about in your midst, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who freed you from the land of Egypt so that you would not be slaves to them. I broke the bars of your yoke so that I could make you walk upright.
14 But if you will not listen to me and do not obey all these commandments, 15 if you reject my regulations and you detest my ordinances so much that you do not obey all my commandments, so that you break my covenant, 16 I in turn will do this to you: I will inflict upon you panic, wasting disease, and fever, which will cause your eyes to fail and your vitality to slip away. You will sow your seed but get no return, for your enemies will eat it. 17 I will set my face against you. You will be beaten by your enemies, and those who hate you will rule over you. You will flee, even though nobody is pursuing you.
18 If, despite these things, you will not listen to me, I will go on to discipline you seven times for your sins. 19 I will break your proud strength and make your sky like iron and your land as hard as bronze, 20 so that your strength will be exhausted without accomplishing anything. Your land will not yield its produce, and the trees on the land will not yield their fruit.
21 If you still remain hostile to me and you are not willing to listen to me, I will multiply the plague against you seven times more according to your sins. 22 I will send against you the wild animals so that they will deprive you of your children and cut off your livestock. They will make you so few that your roads will be deserted.
23 If in spite of all these things you still refuse to be disciplined by me, and you remain hostile to me, 24 I will also remain hostile to you. I will strike you seven times more for your sins. 25 I will bring a sword on you to avenge the covenant. If you withdraw into your towns, I will send an epidemic among you, so that you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 When I break your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven. They will have to ration[a] your bread, and though you eat, you will not be satisfied.
27 But if, in spite of all this, you will not listen to me and remain hostile to me, 28 I will remain hostile to you in anger. I myself will discipline you seven times as much for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places,[b] cut down your incense burners, and place your corpses on the corpses of your filthy idols. With all my heart I will detest you. 31 I will turn your towns into a wasteland and make your holy places desolate, and I will not smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. 32 I myself will make your land so desolate that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled at it, 33 while I scatter you among the nations and unsheathe my sword against you. Then your land will be a desolation, and your towns will be a wasteland.
34 The land will then enjoy its sabbaths during all the days of its desolation, while you are in the land of your enemies. Yes, the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.[c] 35 All the days when it is desolate it will rest, because it did not rest on your sabbaths when you lived there. 36 As for those of you who survive, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that the sound of a scattered leaf will scare them away. They will flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they will fall though no one is pursuing them. 37 Each of them will stumble over his brother, as if from a sword, even though no one is pursuing him. You will have no power to stand against your enemies, 38 and you will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those of you who survive will rot away in the lands of your enemies because of their guilt. They will rot away because of the guilt of their ancestors. 40 They will confess their guilt and the guilt of their ancestors because of the unfaithfulness that they committed against me, and also because they remained hostile to me. 41 So I in turn became hostile to them, and I brought them into the land of their enemies. So their uncircumcised hearts will then be humbled, and they will then accept the punishment for their guilt.
42 Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham as well. I will remember the land.
43 The land will be empty of them, so that in its desolation it may enjoy its sabbaths without them, while they suffer punishment for their guilt, because, and only because, they rejected my ordinances and they detested my statutes with all their heart.
44 Yet, for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, and I will not detest them so much that I exterminate them. I will not annul my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. 45 I will remember in their favor the covenant to be their God that I made with their first generation, whom I freed from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations. I am the Lord.
46 These are the regulations, the ordinances, and the laws[d] that the Lord instituted between himself and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai through Moses.
Psalm 33
Blessed Is the Nation Whose God Is the Lord
Introductory Praise
1 Shout joyfully to the Lord, you righteous.
The praise of the upright is beautiful.
2 Thank the Lord with a lyre.
Make music for him with the ten-stringed harp.
3 Sing to him a new song.
Play skillfully and shout praises.
4 Yes, the word of the Lord is right,
and everything he does is trustworthy.
5 He loves righteousness and justice.
The mercy of the Lord fills the earth.
God’s Love in Creation
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.
By the breath of his mouth he made the whole army of stars.[a]
7 He gathers the water of the sea into a heap.
He puts the depths into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of the world revere him.
9 For he said, “Let it be,” and it was!
He gave a command, and there it stood.
God’s Rule of History
10 The Lord wrecks the plan of the nations.
He hinders the intentions of the peoples.
11 The plan of the Lord stands forever.
The intentions of his heart stand through all generations.
12 How blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people he chose to be his possession.
13 From heaven the Lord observes.
He sees all the children of Adam.
14 From his throne room he looks at all the inhabitants of earth.
15 He alone is the one who shapes all their hearts.
He understands all their deeds.
16 No king is saved by the great size of his army.
No hero is rescued by his great strength.
17 You cannot rely on a horse to save you.
Its great strength will not deliver you.
18 Look, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who wait for his mercy.
19 He will deliver their souls from death.
He keeps them alive in famine.
Concluding Prayer
20 Our souls wait for the Lord.
He is our help and our shield.
21 Yes, in him our heart rejoices,
because we trust in his holy name.
22 May your mercy, O Lord, be on us,
even as we wait confidently for you.
9 Nevertheless, as I pondered all this in my heart, I wanted to make all this clear—that the righteous, the wise, and their works are in God’s hand. Will there be love or hate? No one knows anything that is ahead of him. 2 Everything turns out the same for everyone. One destination waits for the righteous and the wicked, and the good,[a] the ceremonially clean and the unclean, the one who brings sacrifices and the one who does not. As it will be for the good, so it will be for the sinner. As it will be for the one who swears an oath, so it will be for the one who is afraid to take an oath.
3 This is an evil that infects everything done under the sun. Yes, they all share one fate. What’s more, people’s hearts are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts as long as they live. After that they go to the dead.
4 Now, whoever is still joined to all the living has hope, because a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 At least the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love, their hate, and their envy have already perished, and they will never again take part in anything done under the sun.
7 Go ahead, eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, for God is already pleased with what you do. 8 Wear white clothes all the time. Always put lotion on your head.
9 Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your life, that vanishes like vapor, the life which God has given you under the sun, all the days that vanish like vapor,[b] for that is your portion in life and your reward from all the hard work at which you worked so hard under the sun.
10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength, for there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in the grave, where you are heading.
11 I looked again and saw that under the sun the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the strong. Food is not given to the wise, nor is wealth given to those who have good judgment, nor is success given to those who have knowledge, because time and chance come upon all of them.
12 Certainly, no man knows his time. Like fish caught in a deadly net and like birds caught in a trap, people are trapped at an evil time which falls on them suddenly.
Wisdom Has Some Value
13 I also saw this example of wisdom under the sun, and it impressed me.[c] 14 There was a small city that had few men in it. A great king came against it, surrounded it, and built great siege works against it. 15 A poor man who was wise was found in it, and he saved the city by his wisdom, but no one remembered that poor man. 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than might, but the wisdom of the poor man gets despised, and his words are not heeded.”
17 Words of the wise, spoken quietly, should be heeded more than the rant of a ruler among fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.
Greeting
1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God’s elect people and the knowledge of the truth that conforms to godliness, 2 based on the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began. 3 At the proper time he revealed this in his word, in the preaching that was entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,
4 To Titus, my true child in our common faith:
Grace[a] and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Titus’ Work in Crete
5 The reason I left you in Crete was so that you would set in order the things that were left unfinished and appoint elders in every city, as I directed you. 6 Such a man is to be blameless, the husband of only one wife, and to have believing children who are not open to a charge of wild living or disobedience. 7 Indeed an overseer, since he is God’s steward, must be blameless, not arrogant, not quick-tempered, not a drunkard, not violent, not eager for dishonest gain. 8 Instead, he must be hospitable, loving what is good, self-controlled, upright, devout, and disciplined. 9 He must cling to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he will be able both to encourage people by the sound teaching and also to correct[b] those who oppose him.
10 For there are many who are rebellious, whose words are empty, and who deceive, especially those of the circumcision party. 11 The mouths of these people must be stopped, because they are ruining whole households by teaching what they should not teach, for the sake of dishonest gain. 12 One of their own prophets said, “Cretans are always liars, vicious beasts, and lazy gluttons.”[c] 13 This testimony is true. For this reason, correct them sharply so that they may be sound in the faith, 14 not paying attention to Jewish myths or the commands of people who turn their backs on the truth. 15 All things are pure to those who are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are defiled and do not believe; rather, both their minds and consciences are defiled. 16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit to do anything good.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.