M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

The parable of the shrewd manager

16 Jesus said to his disciples, “Once there was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were laid against him that he was squandering his property. ² So he called him and said to him, ‘What’s all this I hear about you? Present an account of your stewardship; I’m not going to have you as my steward anymore!’

³ “At this, the steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do? My master is taking away my stewardship from me! I can’t do manual work, and I’d be ashamed to beg . . .

⁴ “ ‘I have an idea what to do!—so that people will welcome me into their households when I am fired from being steward.’

⁵ “So he called his master’s debtors to him, one by one. ‘How much,’ he asked the first, ‘do you owe my master?’

⁶ “ ‘A hundred measures of olive oil,’ he replied.

“ ‘Take your bill,’ he said to him, ‘sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’

⁷ “To another he said, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“ ‘A hundred measures of wheat,’ he replied.

“ ‘Take your bill,’ he said, ‘and make it eighty.’

⁸ “And the master praised the dishonest steward because he had acted wisely. The children of this world, you see, are wiser than the children of light when it comes to dealing with their own generation.

⁹ “So let me tell you this: use that dishonest stuff called money to make yourselves friends! Then, when it gives out, they will welcome you into homes that will last.”

Teachings on stewardship

¹⁰ “Someone who is faithful in a small matter,” Jesus continued, “will also be faithful in a large one. Someone who is dishonest in a small matter will also be dishonest in a large one. ¹¹ If you haven’t been faithful with that wicked thing called money, who is going to entrust you with true wealth? ¹² And if you haven’t been faithful in looking after what belongs to someone else, who is going to give you what is your own?

¹³ “Nobody can serve two masters. You will end up hating one and loving the other, or going along with the first and despising the other. You can’t serve God and money.”

¹⁴ The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this, and mocked Jesus. ¹⁵ So he said to them, “You people let everyone else know that you’re in the right—but God knows your hearts. What people call honorable, God calls abominable!

¹⁶ “The law and the prophets lasted until John. From now on, God’s kingdom is announced, and everyone is trying to attack it. ¹⁷ But it’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of an ‘i’ to drop out of the law.

¹⁸ “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a person who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus

¹⁹ “There was once a rich man,” said Jesus, “who was dressed in purple and fine linen, and feasted in splendor every day. ²⁰ A poor man named Lazarus, who was covered with sores, lay outside his gate. ²¹ He longed to feed himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

²² “In due course the poor man died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried. ²³ As he was being tormented in Hades, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.

²⁴ “ ‘Father Abraham!’ he called out. ‘Have pity on me! Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue! I’m in agony in this fire!’

²⁵ “ ‘My child,’ replied Abraham, ‘remember that in your life you received good things, and in the same way Lazarus received evil. Now he is comforted here, and you are tormented. ²⁶ Besides that, there is a great chasm standing between us. People who want to cross over from here to you can’t do so, nor can anyone get across from the far side to us.’

²⁷ “ ‘Please, then, Father,’ he said, ‘send him to my father’s house. ²⁸ I’ve got five brothers. Let him tell them about it, so that they don’t come into this torture-chamber.’

²⁹ “ ‘They’ve got Moses and the prophets,’ replied Abraham. ‘Let them listen to them.’

³⁰ “ ‘No, Father Abraham,’ he replied, ‘but if someone went to them from the dead, they would repent!’

³¹ “ ‘If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets,’ came the reply, ‘neither would they be convinced, even if someone rose from the dead.’ ”

The God of all comfort

1 Paul, an apostle of Messiah Jesus through God’s will, and Timothy our brother; to God’s assembly in Corinth, with all God’s people in the whole of Achaea: ² grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord, Messiah Jesus!

³ Let us bless God, the father of our Lord, Messiah Jesus; he is the father of mercies and the God of all comfort. ⁴ He comforts us in all our trouble, so that we can then comfort people in every kind of trouble, through the comfort with which God comforts us. ⁵ Just as we have an overflowing share of the Messiah’s sufferings, you see, so we have an overflowing share in comfort through the Messiah. ⁶ If we are troubled, it’s because of your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it’s for the sake of your comfort, which comes about as you bear patiently with the same sufferings that we are going through. ⁷ And our hope about you remains firm, because we know that, just as you’ve shared in our sufferings, so you will also share in our comfort.

Unbearably crushed

⁸ You see, my dear family, we don’t want to keep you in the dark about the suffering we went through in Asia. The load we had to carry was far too heavy for us; it got to the point where we gave up on life itself. ⁹ Yes: deep inside ourselves we received the death sentence. This was to stop us relying on ourselves, and to make us rely on the God who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He rescued us from such a great and deadly peril, and he’ll do it again; we have placed our hope in him, that he’ll do it again! ¹¹ But you must cooperate with us through prayer for us, so that when God gives us this gift, answering the prayers of so many, all the more will give thanks because of what’s happened to us.

¹² This is what we boast of, you see; this is what our conscience is telling us: that our conduct in the world, and in particular in relation to you, has been marked by holiness and godly sincerity, not in merely human wisdom but in God’s grace. ¹³ We are not writing anything to you, after all, except what you can read and understand. And I hope you will go on understanding right through to the end, ¹⁴ just as you have understood us already—well, partly, at least! We are your pride and joy, just as you are ours, on the day of our Lord Jesus.

Paul’s plans and God’s “Yes”

¹⁵ I was quite sure of this. That’s why I wanted to come to you again, so that you could have a double blessing. ¹⁶ I intended to go on to Macedonia by way of you, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on to Judaea. ¹⁷ Was I just fooling around when I was making plans like this? Was I concocting schemes in a merely human way, prepared to say “Yes, yes,” and “No, no,” at the same moment? ¹⁸ God can bear me faithful witness that our word to you was not a mixture of Yes and No. ¹⁹ The son of God, Jesus the Messiah, who was proclaimed among you by Silvanus, Timothy and myself, wasn’t a Yes-and-No person; in him it’s always Yes! ²⁰ All God’s promises, you see, find their Yes in him; and that’s why we say the Yes, the Amen through him when we pray to God and give him glory. ²¹ It’s God who strengthens us with you into the Messiah, the anointed one; and he has anointed us, too. ²² God has stamped his seal on us, by giving us the spirit in our hearts as a down payment and guarantee of what is to come.

Painful visit, painful letter

²³ For my own part, I call on God as witness, against my own life, that the reason I haven’t yet come back to Corinth is because I wanted to spare you. ²⁴ This isn’t because I am making myself the lord and master over your faith; your faith is the reason you stand fast! Rather, it’s because we are cooperating with you for your joy.