M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

17 After David had been living in his new palace for some time he said to Nathan the prophet, “Look! I’m living here in a cedar-paneled home while the Ark of the Covenant of God is out there in a tent!”

² And Nathan replied, “Carry out your plan in every detail, for it is the will of the Lord.”

³ But that same night God said to Nathan, ⁴ “Go and give my servant David this message: ‘You are not to build my temple! ⁵ I’ve gone from tent to tent as my home from the time I brought Israel out of Egypt. ⁶ In all that time I never suggested to any of the leaders of Israel—the shepherds I appointed to care for my people—that they should build me a cedar-lined temple.’

⁷ “Tell my servant David, ‘The Lord of heaven says to you, I took you from being a shepherd and made you the king of my people. ⁸ And I have been with you everywhere you’ve gone; I have destroyed your enemies, and I will make your name as great as the greatest of the earth. ⁹ And I will give a permanent home to my people Israel and will plant them in their land. They will not be disturbed again; the wicked nations won’t conquer them as they did before ¹⁰ when the judges ruled them. I will subdue all of your enemies. And I now declare that I will cause your descendants to be kings of Israel just as you are.

¹¹ “‘When your time here on earth is over and you die, I will place one of your sons upon your throne; and I will make his kingdom strong. ¹² He is the one who shall build me a temple, and I will establish his royal line of descent forever. ¹³ I will be his father, and he shall be my son; I will never remove my mercy and love from him as I did from Saul. ¹⁴ I will place him over my people and over the kingdom of Israel forever—and his descendants will always be kings.’”

¹⁵ So Nathan told King David everything the Lord had said.

¹⁶ Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family that you have given me all this? ¹⁷ For all the great things you have already done for me are nothing in comparison to what you have promised to do in the future! For now, O Lord God, you are speaking of future generations of my children being kings too! You speak as though I were someone very great. ¹⁸ What else can I say? You know that I am but a dog, yet you have decided to honor me! ¹⁹ O Lord, you have given me these wonderful promises just because you want to be kind to me, because of your own great heart. ²⁰ O Lord, there is no one like you—there is no other God. In fact, we have never even heard of another god like you!

²¹ “And what other nation in all the earth is like Israel? You have made a unique nation and have redeemed it from Egypt so that the people could be your people. And you made a great name for yourself when you did glorious miracles in driving out the nations from before your people. ²² You have declared that your people Israel belong to you forever, and you have become their God.

²³ “And now I accept your promise, Lord, that I and my children will always rule this nation. ²⁴ And may this bring eternal honor to your name as everyone realizes that you always do what you say. They will exclaim, ‘The Lord of heaven is indeed the God of Israel!’ And Israel shall always be ruled by my children and their posterity! ²⁵ Now I have the courage to pray to you, for you have revealed this to me. ²⁶ God himself has promised this good thing to me! ²⁷ May this blessing rest upon my children forever, for when you grant a blessing, Lord, it is an eternal blessing!”

4 What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Isn’t it because there is a whole army of evil desires within you? ² You want what you don’t have, so you kill to get it. You long for what others have, and can’t afford it, so you start a fight to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. ³ And even when you do ask you don’t get it because your whole aim is wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

⁴ You are like an unfaithful wife who loves her husband’s enemies. Don’t you realize that making friends with God’s enemies—the evil pleasures of this world—makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, that if your aim is to enjoy the evil pleasure of the unsaved world, you cannot also be a friend of God. ⁵ Or what do you think the Scripture means when it says that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, watches over us with tender jealousy? ⁶ But he gives us more and more strength to stand against all such evil longings. As the Scripture says, God gives strength to the humble but sets himself against the proud and haughty.

⁷ So give yourselves humbly to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸ And when you draw close to God, God will draw close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and let your hearts be filled with God alone to make them pure and true to him. ⁹ Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and sincere grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. ¹⁰ Then when you realize your worthlessness before the Lord, he will lift you up, encourage and help you.

¹¹ Don’t criticize and speak evil about each other, dear brothers. If you do, you will be fighting against God’s law of loving one another, declaring it is wrong. But your job is not to decide whether this law is right or wrong, but to obey it. ¹² Only he who made the law can rightly judge among us. He alone decides to save us or destroy. So what right do you have to judge or criticize others?

¹³ Look here, you people who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to such and such a town, stay there a year, and open up a profitable business.” ¹⁴ How do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? For the length of your lives is as uncertain as the morning fog—now you see it; soon it is gone. ¹⁵ What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we shall live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ Otherwise you will be bragging about your own plans, and such self-confidence never pleases God.

¹⁷ Remember, too, that knowing what is right to do and then not doing it is sin.

1 The Lord sent this message to Jonah, the son of Amittai:

² “Go to the great city of Nineveh, and give them this announcement from the Lord: ‘I am going to destroy you, for your wickedness rises before me; it smells to highest heaven.’”

³ But Jonah was afraid to go and ran away from the Lord. He went down to the seacoast, to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket, went on board, and climbed down into the dark hold of the ship to hide there from the Lord.

⁴ But as the ship was sailing along, suddenly the Lord flung a terrific wind over the sea, causing a great storm that threatened to send them to the bottom. ⁵ Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. And all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold.

⁶ So the captain went down after him. “What do you mean,” he roared, “sleeping at a time like this? Get up and cry to your god, and see if he will have mercy on us and save us!”

⁷ Then the crew decided to draw straws to see which of them had offended the gods and caused this terrible storm; and Jonah drew the short one.

⁸ “What have you done,” they asked, “to bring this awful storm upon us? Who are you? What is your work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?”

^9-10 And he said, “I am a Jew;^[a] I worship Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the earth and sea.” Then he told them he was running away from the Lord.

The men were terribly frightened when they heard this. “Oh, why did you do it?” they shouted. ¹¹ “What should we do to you to stop the storm?” For it was getting worse and worse.

¹² “Throw me out into the sea,” he said, “and it will become calm again. For I know this terrible storm has come because of me.”

¹³ They tried harder to row the boat ashore, but couldn’t make it. The storm was too fierce to fight against. ¹⁴ Then they shouted out a prayer to Jehovah, Jonah’s God. “O Jehovah,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin, and don’t hold us responsible for his death, for it is not our fault—you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.”

¹⁵ Then they picked up Jonah and threw him overboard into the raging sea—and the storm stopped!

¹⁶ The men stood there in awe before Jehovah, and they sacrificed to him and vowed to serve him.

¹⁷ Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.

6 One Sabbath as Jesus and his disciples were walking through some grainfields, they were breaking off the heads of wheat, rubbing off the husks in their hands and eating the grains.

² But some Pharisees said, “That’s illegal! Your disciples are harvesting grain, and it’s against the Jewish law to work on the Sabbath.”

³ Jesus replied, “Don’t you read the Scriptures? Haven’t you ever read what King David did when he and his men were hungry? ⁴ He went into the Temple and took the shewbread, the special bread that was placed before the Lord, and ate it—illegal as this was—and shared it with others.” ⁵ And Jesus added, “I am^[a] master even of the Sabbath.”

⁶ On another Sabbath he was in the synagogue teaching, and a man was present whose right hand was deformed. ⁷ The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees watched closely to see whether he would heal the man that day, since it was the Sabbath. For they were eager to find some charge to bring against him.

⁸ How well he knew their thoughts! But he said to the man with the deformed hand, “Come and stand here where everyone can see.” So he did.

⁹ Then Jesus said to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, “I have a question for you. Is it right to do good on the Sabbath day, or to do harm? To save life, or to destroy it?”

¹⁰ He looked around at them one by one and then said to the man, “Reach out your hand.” And as he did, it became completely normal again. ¹¹ At this, the enemies of Jesus were wild with rage and began to plot his murder.

¹² One day soon afterwards he went out into the mountains to pray, and prayed all night. ¹³ At daybreak he called together his followers and chose twelve of them to be the inner circle of his disciples. (They were appointed as his “apostles,” or “missionaries.”) ^14-16 Here are their names: Simon (he also called him Peter), Andrew (Simon’s brother), James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (the son of Alphaeus), Simon (a member of the Zealots, a subversive political party), Judas (son of James), Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).

^17-18 When they came down the slopes of the mountain, they stood with Jesus on a large, level area, surrounded by many of his followers who, in turn, were surrounded by the crowds. For people from all over Judea and from Jerusalem and from as far north as the seacoasts of Tyre and Sidon had come to hear him or to be healed. And he cast out many demons. ¹⁹ Everyone was trying to touch him, for when they did, healing power went out from him and they were cured.

²⁰ Then he turned to his disciples and said, “What happiness there is for you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours! ²¹ What happiness there is for you who are now hungry, for you are going to be satisfied! What happiness there is for you who weep, for the time will come when you shall laugh with joy! ²² What happiness it is when others hate you and exclude you and insult you and smear your name because you are mine!^{[b] 23} When that happens, rejoice! Yes, leap for joy! For you will have a great reward awaiting you in heaven. And you will be in good company—the ancient prophets were treated that way too!

²⁴ “But, oh, the sorrows that await the rich. For they have their only happiness down here. ²⁵ They are fat and prosperous now, but a time of awful hunger is before them. Their careless laughter now means sorrow then. ²⁶ And what sadness is ahead for those praised by the crowds—for false prophets have always been praised.

²⁷ “Listen, all of you. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. ²⁸ Pray for the happiness of those who curse you; implore God’s blessing on those who hurt you.

²⁹ “If someone slaps you on one cheek, let him slap the other too! If someone demands your coat, give him your shirt besides. ³⁰ Give what you have to anyone who asks you for it; and when things are taken away from you, don’t worry about getting them back. ³¹ Treat others as you want them to treat you.

³² “Do you think you deserve credit for merely loving those who love you? Even the godless do that! ³³ And if you do good only to those who do you good—is that so wonderful? Even sinners do that much! ³⁴ And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, what good is that? Even the most wicked will lend to their own kind for full return!

³⁵ “Love your enemies! Do good to them! Lend to them! And don’t be concerned about the fact that they won’t repay. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as sons of God: for he is kind to the unthankful and to those who are very wicked.

³⁶ “Try to show as much compassion as your Father does.

³⁷ “Never criticize or condemn—or it will all come back on you. Go easy on others; then they will do the same for you.^{[c] 38} For if you give, you will get! Your gift will return to you in full and overflowing measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use to give—large or small—will be used to measure what is given back to you.”

³⁹ Here are some of the story-illustrations Jesus used in his sermons: “What good is it for one blind man to lead another? He will fall into a ditch and pull the other down with him. ⁴⁰ How can a student know more than his teacher? But if he works hard, he may learn as much.

⁴¹ “And why quibble about the speck in someone else’s eye—his little fault^[d] —when a board is in your own? ⁴² How can you think of saying to him, ‘Brother, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the board in yours? Hypocrite! First get rid of the board, and then perhaps you can see well enough to deal with his speck!

⁴³ “A tree from good stock doesn’t produce scrub fruit nor do trees from poor stock produce choice fruit. ⁴⁴ A tree is identified by the kind of fruit it produces. Figs never grow on thorns, or grapes on bramble bushes. ⁴⁵ A good man produces good deeds from a good heart. And an evil man produces evil deeds from his hidden wickedness. Whatever is in the heart overflows into speech.

⁴⁶ “So why do you call me ‘Lord’ when you won’t obey me? ^47-48 But all those who come and listen and obey me are like a man who builds a house on a strong foundation laid upon the underlying rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against the house, it stands firm, for it is strongly built.

⁴⁹ “But those who listen and don’t obey are like a man who builds a house without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it crumbles into a heap of ruins.”