M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
5 After that, the Jews had a feast and Jesus went to Jerusalem.
2 In Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, there is a wide water hole. The Jews called this water hole Bethesda. It had five places with roofs for people to stand under.
3 Many sick people were lying on these places. Some of them were blind. Some were lame. Some were very thin and stiff so that they could not move by themselves. All of them were waiting for the water to move.
4 An angel came down into the water at a certain time and made it move. The first person who stepped into the water when it moved was healed of any sickness that he had.
5 A man was there who had been sick for thirty eight years.
6 Jesus saw the man lying there. He knew that he had been sick for a long time. He said to him, `Do you want to be healed?'
7 The sick man said to him, `Sir, I have no man to put me into the water when it moves. While I am trying to get in, some other person comes and gets in before me.'
8 Jesus said, `Get up. Take up your bed and walk!'
9 The man was healed right away. He took up his bed and walked. This happened on the Sabbath day.
10 So the leaders of the Jews talked to the man who was healed. They said, `It is the Sabbath day. It is not right for you to carry your bed.'
11 But he answered them, `The man who healed me said to me, "Take up your bed and walk." '
12 They asked him, `Who is the man who told you to take up your bed and walk?'
13 The man who was healed said, `I do not know who he is.' Many people were at the place and Jesus had gone away.
14 After that, Jesus saw the man in the temple. He said to him, `See, you are healed. Do no more wrong things. If you do, something worse may happen to you.'
15 The man went away and told the leaders of the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.
16 The Jewish leaders made trouble for Jesus because he did this on the Sabbath day.
17 But Jesus answered them, `My Father is still working and I am working also.'
18 This was why the leaders of the Jews tried much more to kill Jesus. He had broken the law of the Sabbath day. And also he called God his Father. In that way, he was making himself equal with God.
19 Jesus said to them, `l tell you the truth. The Son cannot do anything alone. He sees what his Father is doing and he does the same.
20 My Father loves his Son. He shows him all that he himself is doing. He will show his Son bigger works than these so that you may be surprised.
21 My Father raises people who were dead, and gives them life. So his Son gives life to anyone he wants to.
22 My Father judges no one, but he has made his Son to be the judge of everything.
23 He did this so that all people would respect the Son, just as they respect his Father. My Father has sent his Son. Anyone who does not respect his Son does not respect the Father.
24 `I tell you the truth. The person who hears what I say and believes in him that sent me will live for ever. He will not be judged. He has already passed from death to life.
25 `I tell you the truth. The time is coming. Yes, the time is here when the dead people will hear the voice of the Son of God. Those who hear his voice will live.
26 My Father has life in himself. And so he has made his Son to have life in himself.
27 He has given his Son power also to judge because he is the Son of Man.
28 Do not be surprised at what I say. The time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice.
29 They will come out of the graves. Those who have done what is good will come out to live. But those who have done what is wrong will come out to be punished.
30 `I have no right to do anything myself. I judge the way I am told to judge. The way I judge people is right. I do not do what I myself want to do, but I do what my Father wants me to do. He sent me.
31 `If I talk about myself, then what I say is not true.
32 But someone else also speaks about me. I know what he says about me is true.
33 You sent someone to John and he has told you the truth about me.
34 I do not need to listen to what a person says about me. But I tell you this so that you may be saved.
35 John was a light burning and shining. For a while you were happy to be in his light.
36 But I have something greater than John to talk for me. It is the works that I do. My Father has given me works to finish. The works that I do tell that he sent me.
37 And my Father who sent me has himself talked about me. You have never heard him speak and you do not know what he is like.
38 The word he talks is not in your hearts, because you do not believe the one he sent to you.
39 `You read holy writings carefully. You think that there you will find out how to live for ever. In the same writings you will read about me.
40 And yet you will not come to me for that life.
41 I do not want people to call me great.
42 But I know that you do not love God in your hearts.
43 I have come in my Father's name, but you will not receive me. If another person comes in his own name, then you will receive him.
44 How can you believe? You are always calling each other great, but you do not want the only God to make you great.
45 Do not think that I will carry a complaint against you to my Father. Moses has already carried the complaint against you. He is the very one you trust.
46 If you really believed Moses, you would believe me too, because he wrote about me.
47 But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?'
1 I am Paul the apostle, a messenger from God. Men did not call me to be an apostle. Men did not make me an apostle. Jesus Christ and God the Father made me an apostle. It was the same God the Father who raised Jesus from death.
2 All the Christian brothers who are with me and I, send greetings. To the churches in the province of Galatia:
3 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ bless you with his loving kindness and give you peace.
4 Christ gave his life to pay for the wrong things we have done. He did this to set us free from the wrong ways of this world. This is what our God and Father wanted him to do.
5 All the praise for this belongs to God for ever and ever. Yes, it does!
6 I am very much surprised. It is so soon, and you are leaving God who called you by the love of Christ. Instead you are listening to another good news.
7 There is really no other good news. But some people are making you think wrong things. They want to change the good news of Christ.
8 We are wrong if we tell you a different kind of good news. Even an angel from heaven is wrong to tell you something different. Let a punishment from God come upon us if we tell you a different kind of good news.
9 We have said it before, and I say it again now. A curse be on any one who tells you a kind of good news which is not the good news we have already told you.
10 Now, am I trying to please men or God? If I were still trying to please men, then I would not be the servant of Christ.
11 My brothers, I want you to know this. The good news which I told you is not man's good news.
12 No man told it to me. No man taught it to me. But it was Jesus Christ who showed it to me.
13 You have heard how I lived while I was still under the law of the Jews. I troubled the church of God very much. And I even tried to stop the church people altogether.
14 I knew more about the law of the Jews than many of my own age among my people. I wanted much more than they did to obey the laws which our fathers passed down to us, even the ones that were not written.
15 But God chose me to be an apostle before I was born. And he called me by his love.
16 God wanted to show his Son to me so that I might tell people who are not Jews about him. I did not go and ask any other person about the good news.
17 I did not go to Jerusalem to the men who were apostles before I was. But I went away into the country of Arabia. Then afterwards, I came back to the city of Damascus.
18 Three years later, I went to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days.
19 James, the brother of the Lord, was the only other apostle I saw. I did not see any of the other apostles.
20 God knows that what I am writing to you is not a lie.
21 After I had been at Jerusalem, I went to the countries of Syria and Cilicia.
22 At that time the churches of Christ in Judea did not know me. They had never seen me.
23 They only heard people say, `This is the man who used to trouble us and he is now telling others to believe what he once tried to stop.'
24 And they praised God for what had happened to me.
© 1969, 1971, 1996, 1998 by SOON Educational Publications