M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

7 Finally the day came when the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I consider you alone to be righteous. ² Bring in the animals, too—a pair of each, except those kinds I have chosen for eating and for sacrifice: take seven pairs of each of them, ³ and seven pairs^[a] of every kind of bird. Thus there will be every kind of life reproducing again after the flood has ended. ⁴ One week from today I will begin forty days and nights of rain; and all the animals and birds and reptiles I have made will die.”

⁵ So Noah did everything the Lord commanded him. ⁶ He was 600 years old when the flood came. ⁷ He boarded the boat with his wife and sons and their wives, to escape the flood. ^8-9 With him were all the various kinds of animals—those for eating and sacrifice, and those that were not, and the birds and reptiles. They came into the boat in pairs, male and female, just as God commanded Noah.

^10-12 One week later, when Noah was 600 years, two months, and seventeen days old, the rain came down in mighty torrents from the sky, and the subterranean waters burst forth upon the earth for forty days and nights. ¹³ But Noah had gone into the boat that very day with his wife and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. ^14-15 With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of animal—domestic and wild—and reptiles and birds of every sort. ¹⁶ Two by two they came, male and female, just as God had commanded. Then the Lord God^[b] closed the door and shut them in.

¹⁷ For forty days the roaring floods prevailed, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth. ¹⁸ As the water rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely upon it; ¹⁹ until finally the water covered all the high mountains under the whole heaven, ²⁰ standing twenty-two feet and more above the highest peaks. ²¹ And all living things upon the earth perished—birds, domestic and wild animals, and reptiles and all mankind— ²² everything that breathed and lived upon dry land. ²³ All existence on the earth was blotted out—man and animals alike, and reptiles and birds. God destroyed them all, leaving only Noah alive, and those with him in the boat. ²⁴ And the water covered the earth 150 days.

7 “Don’t criticize, and then you won’t be criticized. ² For others will treat you as you treat them. ³ And why worry about a speck in the eye of a brother when you have a board in your own? ⁴ Should you say, ‘Friend, let me help you get that speck out of your eye,’ when you can’t even see because of the board in your own? ⁵ Hypocrite! First get rid of the board. Then you can see to help your brother.

⁶ “Don’t give holy things to depraved men. Don’t give pearls to swine! They will trample the pearls and turn and attack you.

⁷ “Ask, and you will be given what you ask for. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened. ⁸ For everyone who asks, receives. Anyone who seeks, finds. If only you will knock, the door will open. ⁹ If a child asks his father for a loaf of bread, will he be given a stone instead? ¹⁰ If he asks for fish, will he be given a poisonous snake? Of course not! ¹¹ And if you hard-hearted, sinful men know how to give good gifts to your children, won’t your Father in heaven even more certainly give good gifts to those who ask him for them?

¹² “Do for others what you want them to do for you. This is the teaching of the laws of Moses in a nutshell.^[a]

¹³ “Heaven can be entered only through the narrow gate! The highway to hell^[b] is broad, and its gate is wide enough for all the multitudes who choose its easy way. ¹⁴ But the Gateway to Life is small, and the road is narrow, and only a few ever find it.

¹⁵ “Beware of false teachers who come disguised as harmless sheep, but are wolves and will tear you apart. ¹⁶ You can detect them by the way they act, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit. You need never confuse grapevines with thorn bushes or figs with thistles. ¹⁷ Different kinds of fruit trees can quickly be identified by examining their fruit. ¹⁸ A variety that produces delicious fruit never produces an inedible kind. And a tree producing an inedible kind can’t produce what is good. ¹⁹ So the trees having the inedible fruit are chopped down and thrown on the fire. ²⁰ Yes, the way to identify a tree or a person^[c] is by the kind of fruit produced.

²¹ “Not all who sound religious are really godly people. They may refer to me as ‘Lord,’ but still won’t get to heaven. For the decisive question is whether they obey my Father in heaven. ²² At the Judgment^[d] many will tell me, ‘Lord, Lord, we told others about you and used your name to cast out demons and to do many other great miracles.’ ²³ But I will reply, ‘You have never been mine.^[e] Go away, for your deeds are evil.’

²⁴ “All who listen to my instructions and follow them are wise, like a man who builds his house on solid rock. ²⁵ Though the rain comes in torrents, and the floods rise and the storm winds beat against his house, it won’t collapse, for it is built on rock.

²⁶ “But those who hear my instructions and ignore them are foolish, like a man who builds his house on sand. ²⁷ For when the rains and floods come, and storm winds beat against his house, it will fall with a mighty crash.” ²⁸ The crowds were amazed at Jesus’ sermons, ²⁹ for he taught as one who had great authority, and not as their Jewish leaders.^[f]

7 ^1-5 Here is the genealogy of Ezra, who traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem^[a] during the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia:

⁶ As a Jewish religious leader, Ezra was well versed in Jehovah’s laws, which Moses had given to the people of Israel. He asked to be allowed to return to Jerusalem, and the king granted his request; for the Lord his God was blessing him. ^7-9 Many ordinary people as well as priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, and Temple workers traveled with him. They left Babylon in the middle of March in the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes and arrived at Jerusalem in the month of August; for the Lord gave them a good trip. ¹⁰ This was because Ezra had determined to study and obey the laws of the Lord and to become a Bible teacher, teaching those laws to the people of Israel.

¹¹ King Artaxerxes presented this letter to Ezra the priest, the student of God’s commands:

¹² “From: Artaxerxes, the king of kings.

“To: Ezra the priest, the teacher of the laws of the God of heaven.

¹³ “I decree that any Jew in my realm, including the priests and Levites, may return to Jerusalem with you. ¹⁴ I and my Council of Seven hereby instruct you to take a copy of God’s laws to Judah and Jerusalem and to send back a report of the religious progress being made there. ¹⁵ We also commission you to take with you to Jerusalem the silver and gold, which we are presenting as an offering to the God of Israel.

¹⁶ “Moreover, you are to collect voluntary Temple offerings of silver and gold from the Jews and their priests in all of the provinces of Babylon. ¹⁷ These funds are to be used primarily for the purchase of oxen, rams, lambs, grain offerings, and drink offerings, all of which will be offered upon the altar of your Temple when you arrive in Jerusalem. ¹⁸ The money that is left over may be used in whatever way you and your brothers feel is the will of your God. ¹⁹ And take with you the gold bowls and other items we are giving you for the Temple of your God at Jerusalem. ²⁰ If you run short of money for the construction of the Temple or for any similar needs, you may requisition funds from the royal treasury.

²¹ “I, Artaxerxes the king, send this decree to all the treasurers in the provinces west of the Euphrates River: ‘You are to give Ezra whatever he requests of you (for he is a priest and teacher of the laws of the God of heaven), ²² up to $200,000 in silver; 1,225 bushels of wheat; 990 gallons of wine; any amount of salt; ²³ and whatever else the God of heaven demands for his Temple; for why should we risk God’s wrath against the king and his sons? ²⁴ I also decree that no priest, Levite, choir member, gatekeeper, Temple attendant, or other worker in the Temple shall be required to pay taxes of any kind.’

²⁵ “And you, Ezra, are to use the wisdom God has given you to select and appoint judges and other officials to govern all the people west of the Euphrates River; if they are not familiar with the laws of your God, you are to teach them. ²⁶ Anyone refusing to obey the law of your God and the law of the king shall be punished immediately by death, banishment, confiscation of goods, or imprisonment.”

²⁷ Well, praise the Lord God of our ancestors, who made the king want to beautify the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem! ²⁸ And praise God for demonstrating such loving-kindness to me^[b] by honoring me before the king and his Council of Seven and before all of his mighty princes! I was given great status because the Lord my God was with me; and I persuaded some of the leaders of Israel to return with me to Jerusalem.

7 Then the High Priest asked him, “Are these accusations true?”

² This was Stephen’s lengthy reply: “The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Iraq^[a] before he moved to Syria, ³ and told him to leave his native land, to say good-bye to his relatives and to start out for a country that God would direct him to. ⁴ So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran, in Syria, until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land of Israel, ⁵ but gave him no property of his own, not one little tract of land.

“However, God promised that eventually the whole country would belong to him and his descendants—though as yet he had no children! ⁶ But God also told him that these descendants of his would leave the land and live in a foreign country and there become slaves for 400 years. ⁷ ‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God told him, ‘and afterwards my people will return to this land of Israel and worship me here.’

⁸ “God also gave Abraham the ceremony of circumcision at that time, as evidence of the covenant between God and the people of Abraham. And so Isaac, Abraham’s son, was circumcised when he was eight days old. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of the twelve patriarchs of the Jewish nation. ⁹ These men were very jealous of Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him, ¹⁰ and delivered him out of all of his anguish, and gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph unusual wisdom so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all Egypt, as well as putting him in charge of all the affairs of the palace.

¹¹ “But a famine developed in Egypt and Canaan, and there was great misery for our ancestors. When their food was gone, ¹² Jacob heard that there was still grain in Egypt, so he sent his sons^[b] to buy some. ¹³ The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his brothers’ families to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all. ¹⁵ So Jacob came to Egypt, where he died, and all his sons. ¹⁶ All of them were taken to Shechem and buried in the tomb Abraham bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father.

^17-18 “As the time drew near when God would fulfill his promise to Abraham to free his descendants from slavery, the Jewish people greatly multiplied in Egypt; but then a king was crowned who had no respect for Joseph’s memory. ¹⁹ This king plotted against our race, forcing parents to abandon their children in the fields.

²⁰ “About that time Moses was born—a child of divine beauty. His parents hid him at home for three months, ²¹ and when at last they could no longer keep him hidden and had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him as her own son, ²² and taught him all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he became a mighty prince and orator.

²³ “One day as he was nearing his fortieth birthday, it came into his mind to visit his brothers, the people of Israel. ²⁴ During this visit he saw an Egyptian mistreating a man of Israel. So Moses killed the Egyptian. ²⁵ Moses supposed his brothers would realize that God had sent him to help them, but they didn’t.

²⁶ “The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a peacemaker. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are brothers and shouldn’t be fighting like this! It is wrong!’

²⁷ “But the man in the wrong told Moses to mind his own business. ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ he asked. ²⁸ ‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’

²⁹ “At this, Moses fled the country and lived in the land of Midian, where his two sons were born.

³⁰ “Forty years later, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an Angel appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush. ³¹ Moses saw it and wondered what it was, and as he ran to see, the voice of the Lord called out to him, ³² ‘I am the God of your ancestors—of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses shook with terror and dared not look.

³³ “And the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground. ³⁴ I have seen the anguish of my people in Egypt and have heard their cries. I have come down to deliver them. Come, I will send you to Egypt.’ ³⁵ And so God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected by demanding, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Moses was sent to be their ruler and savior. ³⁶ And by means of many remarkable miracles he led them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, and back and forth through the wilderness for forty years.

³⁷ “Moses himself told the people of Israel, ‘God will raise up a Prophet much like me^[c] from among your brothers.’ ³⁸ How true this proved to be, for in the wilderness, Moses was the go-between—the mediator between the people of Israel and the Angel who gave them the Law of God—the Living Word—on Mount Sinai.

³⁹ “But our fathers rejected Moses and wanted to return to Egypt. ⁴⁰ They told Aaron, ‘Make idols for us, so that we will have gods to lead us back; for we don’t know what has become of this Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’ ⁴¹ So they made a calf idol and sacrificed to it, and rejoiced in this thing they had made.

⁴² “Then God turned away from them and gave them up, and let them serve the sun, moon, and stars as their gods! In the book of Amos’ prophecies the Lord God asks, ‘Was it to me you were sacrificing during those forty years in the desert, Israel? ⁴³ No, your real interest was in your heathen gods—Sakkuth, and the star god Kaiway, and in all the images you made. So I will send you into captivity far away beyond Babylon.’

⁴⁴ “Our ancestors carried along with them a portable Temple, or Tabernacle, through the wilderness. In it they kept the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them. This building was constructed in exact accordance with the plan shown to Moses by the Angel. ⁴⁵ Years later, when Joshua led the battles against the Gentile nations, this Tabernacle was taken with them into their new territory, and used until the time of King David.

⁴⁶ “God blessed David greatly, and David asked for the privilege of building a permanent Temple for the God of Jacob. ⁴⁷ But it was Solomon who actually built it. ^48-49 However, God doesn’t live in temples made by human hands. ‘The heaven is my throne,’ says the Lord through his prophets, ‘and earth is my footstool. What kind of home could you build?’ asks the Lord. ‘Would I stay in it? ⁵⁰ Didn’t I make both heaven and earth?’

⁵¹ “You stiff-necked heathen! Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? But your fathers did, and so do you! ⁵² Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered. ⁵³ Yes, and you deliberately destroyed God’s laws, though you received them from the hands of angels.”^[d]

⁵⁴ The Jewish leaders were stung to fury by Stephen’s accusation and ground their teeth in rage. ⁵⁵ But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily upward into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. ⁵⁶ And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and Jesus the Messiah^[e] standing beside God, at his right hand!”

⁵⁷ Then they mobbed him, putting their hands over their ears, and drowning out his voice with their shouts, ⁵⁸ and dragged him out of the city to stone him. The official witnesses—the executioners—took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Paul.^[f]

⁵⁹ And as the murderous stones came hurtling at him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ And he fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” and with that, he died.