M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Remember the Lord
8 “You must obey all the commands that I give you today, because then you will live and grow to become a great nation. You will get the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 And you must remember the entire trip that the Lord your God has led you through these 40 years in the desert. He was testing you. He wanted to make you humble. He wanted to know what is in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey his commands. 3 He humbled you and let you be hungry. Then he fed you with manna—something you did not know about before. It was something your ancestors had never seen. Why did the Lord do this? Because he wanted you to know that it is not just bread that keeps people alive. People’s lives depend on what the Lord says. 4 These past 40 years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell. 5 You must remember that the Lord your God teaches and corrects you as a father teaches and corrects his son.
6 “You must obey the commands of the Lord your God. Follow him and respect him. 7 The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with rivers and pools of water. Water flows out of the ground in the valleys and hills. 8 It is a land with wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates. It is a land with olive oil and honey. 9 There you will have plenty of food and everything you need. It is a land where the rocks are iron. You can dig copper out of the hills. 10 You will have all you want to eat. Then you will praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Don’t Forget What the Lord Did
11 “Be careful. Don’t forget the Lord your God! Be careful to obey the commands, laws, and rules that I give you today. 12 Then you will have plenty to eat, and you will build good houses and live in them. 13 Your cattle, sheep, and goats will grow large. You will get plenty of gold and silver. You will have plenty of everything. 14 When that happens, you must be careful not to become proud. You must not forget the Lord your God. You were slaves in Egypt, but he made you free and brought you out of that land. 15 He led you through that great and terrible desert where there were poisonous snakes and scorpions. The ground was dry, and there was no water anywhere. But he gave you water out of a solid rock. 16 In the desert he fed you manna—something your ancestors had never seen. He tested you to make you humble so that everything would go well for you in the end. 17 Don’t ever say to yourself, ‘I got all this wealth by my own power and ability.’ 18 Remember the Lord your God is the one who gives you power to do these things. He does this because he wants to keep the agreement that he made with your ancestors, as he is doing today!
19 “Don’t ever forget the Lord your God. Don’t ever follow other gods or worship and serve them. If you do that, I warn you today: You will surely be destroyed! 20 The Lord is destroying other nations for you. But if you stop listening to the Lord your God, you will be destroyed just like them!
91 You can go to God Most High to hide.
You can go to God All-Powerful for protection.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my place of safety, my fortress.
My God, I trust in you.”
3 God will save you from hidden dangers
and from deadly diseases.
4 You can go to him for protection.
He will cover you like a bird spreading its wings over its babies.
You can trust him to surround and protect you like a shield.
5 You will have nothing to fear at night
and no need to be afraid of enemy arrows during the day.
6 You will have no fear of diseases that come in the dark
or terrible suffering that comes at noon.
7 A thousand people may fall dead at your side
or ten thousand right beside you,
but nothing bad will happen to you!
8 All you will have to do is watch,
and you will see that the wicked are punished.
9 You trust in the Lord for protection.
You have made God Most High your place of safety.
10 So nothing bad will happen to you.
No diseases will come near your home.
11 He will command his angels to protect you wherever you go.
12 Their hands will catch you
so that you will not hit your foot on a rock.
13 You will have power to trample on lions
and poisonous snakes.
14 The Lord says, “If someone trusts me, I will save them.
I will protect my followers who call to me for help.
15 When my followers call to me, I will answer them.
I will be with them when they are in trouble.
I will rescue them and honor them.
16 I will give my followers a long life
and show them my power to save.”
The Assyrians Invade Judah
36 During Hezekiah’s 14th year as king, Sennacherib king of Assyria went to fight against all the strong cities of Judah. Sennacherib defeated those cities. 2 He sent his commander with a large army to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. The commander and his army left Lachish and went to Jerusalem. They stopped near the aqueduct[a] by the Upper Pool,[b] on the street that leads up to Laundryman’s Field.
3 Three men from Jerusalem went out to talk with the commander. These men were Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Joah son of Asaph, and Shebna. Eliakim was the palace manager, Joah was the record keeper, and Shebna was the royal secretary.
4 The commander told them, “Tell Hezekiah this is what the great king, the king of Assyria says:
“‘What are you trusting in to help you? 5 I tell you, if you are trusting in power and great battle plans, that is useless. Those are nothing but empty words. Now I ask you, who do you trust so much that you are willing to rebel against me? 6 Are you depending on Egypt to help you? Egypt is like a broken walking stick. If you lean on it for support, it will only stab you and hurt you. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, cannot be trusted by anyone who depends on him for help.
7 “‘So maybe you will say, “We trust the Lord our God to help us.” But Hezekiah destroyed the altars and high places where people worshiped your God, right? Hezekiah told the people of Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship only at this one altar here in Jerusalem.”
8 “‘If you still want to fight, my master, the king of Assyria, will make this agreement with you. I promise that I will give you 2000 horses if you can find enough men to ride them into battle. 9 But even then, you couldn’t beat even one of my master’s lowest ranking officers. So why do you still depend on Egypt’s chariots and horse soldiers?
10 “‘Now, do you think I came to this country to destroy it without the Lord’s help. No, it was the Lord who said to me, “Go up against this country and destroy it!”’”
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the commander, “Please, speak to us in Hebrew.[c] We understand that language. Don’t speak to us in the language of Judah. If you use our language, the people on the city walls will understand you.”
12 But the commander said, “My master sent me to speak to everyone, not just to you and your master. I must also speak to those people sitting there on the wall. When we surround your city, they will suffer too. Like you, they will become so hungry they will eat their own waste and drink their own urine!”
13 Then the commander, shouting loudly in Hebrew,[d] gave this warning to them all:
Hear this message from the great king, the king of Assyria! 14 This is what the king says: Don’t let Hezekiah fool you! He cannot save you from my power. 15 Don’t listen to him when he tells you to trust in the Lord. Don’t believe him when he says, “The Lord will save us. He will not let the king of Assyria defeat the city.”
16 Don’t listen to Hezekiah! This is what the king of Assyria says: Come out here and show me that you want peace. Then you will all be free to have grapes from your own vines, figs from your own trees, and water from your own well. 17 After some time, I will come and take you to a land like your own. In that new land, you will have plenty of grain for making bread and vineyards for producing wine.
18 Don’t believe Hezekiah when he tells you, “The Lord will save us.” He is wrong. Did any of the gods of other nations save their land from the king of Assyria? 19 When I destroyed the cities of Hamath and Arpad, where were their gods? What about the gods of Sepharvaim? Were any gods able to save Samaria from my power? 20 None of the gods of these other places were able to save their land from me! So why do you think the Lord can save Jerusalem from me?
21 But the people were silent. They did not say a word to the commander, because King Hezekiah had commanded them, “Don’t say anything to him.”
22 Then the palace manager (Eliakim son of Hilkiah), the royal secretary (Shebna), and the record keeper (Joah son of Asaph) went to Hezekiah. Their clothes were torn to show they were upset. They told Hezekiah everything the Assyrian commander had said.
The Lamb Opens the Scroll
6 Then I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living beings speak with a voice like thunder. It said, “Come!” 2 I looked, and there before me was a white horse. The rider on the horse held a bow and was given a crown. He rode out to defeat the enemy and win the victory.
3 The Lamb opened the second seal. Then I heard the second living being say, “Come!” 4 Then another horse came out, a red one. The rider on the horse was given power to take away peace from the earth so that people would kill each other. He was given a big sword.
5 The Lamb opened the third seal. Then I heard the third living being say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse. The rider on the horse held a pair of scales in his hand. 6 Then I heard something that sounded like a voice. The voice came from where the four living beings were. It said, “A quart[a] of wheat or three quarts of barley will cost a full day’s pay. But don’t harm the supply of olive oil and wine!”
7 The Lamb opened the fourth seal. Then I heard the voice of the fourth living being say, “Come!” 8 I looked, and there before me was a pale-colored horse. The rider on the horse was death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth—power to kill people with the sword, by starving, by disease, and with the wild animals of the earth.
9 The Lamb opened the fifth seal. Then I saw some souls under the altar. They were the souls of those who had been killed because they were faithful to God’s message and to the truth they had received. 10 These souls shouted in a loud voice, “Holy and true Lord, how long until you judge the people of the earth and punish them for killing us?” 11 Then each one of them was given a white robe. They were told to wait a short time longer. There were still some of their brothers and sisters in the service of Christ who must be killed as they were. These souls were told to wait until all the killing was finished.
12 Then I watched while the Lamb opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth.[b] The full moon became red like blood. 13 The stars in the sky fell to the earth like a fig tree dropping its figs when the wind blows. 14 The sky was split in the middle and both sides rolled up like a scroll. And every mountain and island was moved from its place.
15 Then all the people—the kings of the world, the rulers, the army commanders, the rich people, the powerful people, every slave, and every free person—hid themselves in caves and behind the rocks on the mountains. 16 They said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us. Hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne. Hide us from the anger of the Lamb! 17 The great day for their anger has come. No one can stand against it.”
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International