M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
16 In the thirty-sixth year of King Asa’s reign, King Baasha of Israel declared war on him and built the fortress[a] of Ramah in order to control the road to Judah. 2 Asa’s response was to take the silver and gold from the Temple and from the palace, and to send it to King Ben-hadad of Syria at Damascus with this message:
3 “Let us renew the mutual security pact that there was between your father and my father. See, here is silver and gold to induce you to break your alliance with King Baasha of Israel, so that he will leave me alone.”
4 Ben-hadad agreed to King Asa’s request and mobilized his armies to attack Israel. They destroyed the cities of Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim and all of the supply centers in Naphtali. 5 As soon as King Baasha of Israel heard what was happening, he discontinued building Ramah and gave up his plan to attack Judah. 6 Then King Asa and the people of Judah went out to Ramah and carried away the building stones and timbers and used them to build Geba and Mizpah instead.
7 About that time the prophet Hanani came to King Asa and told him, “Because you have put your trust in the king of Syria instead of in the Lord your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped from you. 8 Don’t you remember what happened to the Ethiopians and Libyans and their vast army, with all of their chariots and cavalrymen? But you relied then on the Lord, and he delivered them all into your hand. 9 For the eyes of the Lord search back and forth across the whole earth, looking for people whose hearts are perfect toward him, so that he can show his great power in helping them. What a fool you have been! From now on you shall have wars.”
10 Asa was so angry with the prophet for saying this that he threw him into jail. And Asa oppressed all the people at that time.
11 The rest of the biography of Asa is written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel and Judah. 12 In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became seriously diseased in his feet, but he didn’t go to the Lord with the problem but to the doctors. 13-14 So he died in the forty-first year of his reign and was buried in his own vault that he had hewn out for himself in Jerusalem. He was laid on a bed perfumed with sweet spices and ointments, and his people made a very great burning of incense for him at his funeral.
5 And I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one who was sitting on the throne, a scroll with writing on the inside and on the back, and sealed with seven seals. 2 A mighty angel with a loud voice was shouting out this question: “Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and to unroll it?” 3 But no one in all heaven or earth or from among the dead was permitted to open and read it.
4 Then I wept with disappointment[a] because no one anywhere was worthy; no one could tell us what it said.
5 But one of the twenty-four Elders said to me, “Stop crying, for look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, and proved himself worthy to open the scroll and to break its seven seals.”
6 I looked and saw a Lamb standing there before the twenty-four Elders, in front of the throne and the Living Beings, and on the Lamb were wounds that once had caused his death. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the sevenfold Spirit of God, sent out into every part of the world. 7 He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting upon the throne. 8 And as he took the scroll, the twenty-four Elders fell down before the Lamb, each with a harp and golden vials filled with incense—the prayers of God’s people!
9 They were singing[b] him a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it; for you were slain, and your blood has bought people from every nation as gifts for God. 10 And you have gathered them into a kingdom and made them priests of our God; they shall reign upon the earth.”
11 Then in my vision I heard the singing of millions of angels surrounding the throne and the Living Beings and the Elders: 12 “The Lamb is worthy (loudly they sang it!), the Lamb who was slain. He is worthy to receive the power, and the riches, and the wisdom, and the strength, and the honor, and the glory, and the blessing.”
13 And then I heard everyone in heaven and earth, and from the dead beneath the earth and in the sea, exclaiming, “The blessing and the honor and the glory and the power belong to the one sitting on the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever.” 14 And the four Living Beings kept saying, “Amen!” And the twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped him.
1 Subject: messages from the Lord. These messages from the Lord were given to Zechariah (son of Berechiah and grandson of Iddo the prophet) in early November of the second year of the reign of King Darius.
2 The Lord Almighty was very angry with your fathers. 3 But he will turn again and favor you if only you return to him. 4 Don’t be like your fathers were! The earlier prophets pled in vain with them to turn from all their evil ways.
“Come, return to me,” the Lord God said. But no, they wouldn’t listen; they paid no attention at all.
5-6 Your fathers and their prophets are now long dead, but remember the lesson they learned, that God’s Word endures! It caught up with them and punished them. Then at last they repented.
“We have gotten what we deserved from God,” they said. “He has done just what he warned us he would.”
7 The following February, still in the second year of the reign of King Darius, another message from the Lord came to Zechariah (son of Berechiah and grandson of Iddo the prophet), in a vision in the night: 8 I saw a Man sitting on a red horse that was standing among the myrtle trees beside a river. Behind him were other horses, red and bay and white, each with its rider.[a]
9 An angel stood beside me, and I asked him, “Sir, what are all those horses for?”
“I’ll tell you,” he replied.
10 Then the rider on the red horse—he was the Angel of the Lord—answered me, “The Lord has sent them to patrol the earth for him.”
11 Then the other riders reported to the Angel of the Lord, “We have patrolled the whole earth, and everywhere there is prosperity and peace.”
12 Upon hearing this, the Angel of the Lord prayed this prayer: “O Lord Almighty, for seventy years your anger has raged against Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. How long will it be until you again show mercy to them?”
13 And the Lord answered the angel who stood beside me, speaking words of comfort and assurance.
14 Then the angel said, “Shout out this message from the Lord Almighty: ‘Don’t you think I care about what has happened to Judah and Jerusalem? I am as jealous as a husband for his captive wife. 15 I am very angry with the heathen nations sitting around at ease, for I was only a little displeased with my people, but the nations afflicted them far beyond my intentions.’ 16 Therefore the Lord declares: ‘I have returned to Jerusalem filled with mercy; my Temple will be rebuilt,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and so will all Jerusalem.’ 17 Say it again: ‘The Lord Almighty declares that the cities of Israel will again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Jerusalem and bless her and live in her.’ ”
18 Then I looked and saw four animal horns!
19 “What are these?” I asked the angel.
He replied, “They represent the four world powers that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.”
20 Then the Lord showed me four blacksmiths.
21 “What have these men come to do?” I asked.
The angel replied, “They have come to take hold of the four horns that scattered Judah so terribly, and to pound them on the anvil and throw them away.”
4 1-2 When the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard about the greater crowds coming to him than to John to be baptized and to become his disciples—(though Jesus himself didn’t baptize them, but his disciples did)— 3 he left Judea and returned to the province of Galilee.
4 He had to go through Samaria on the way, 5-6 and around noon as he approached the village of Sychar, he came to Jacob’s Well, located on the parcel of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jesus was tired from the long walk in the hot sun and sat wearily beside the well.
7 Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus asked her for a drink. 8 He was alone at the time as his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. 9 The woman was surprised that a Jew would ask a “despised Samaritan” for anything—usually they wouldn’t even speak to them!—and she remarked about this to Jesus.
10 He replied,
11 “But you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this is a very deep well! Where would you get this living water? 12 And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob? How can you offer better water than this which he and his sons and cattle enjoyed?”
13 Jesus replied that people soon became thirsty again after drinking this water. 14 “But the water I give them,” he said, “becomes a perpetual spring within them, watering them forever with eternal life.”
15 “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me some of that water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again and won’t have to make this long trip out here every day.”
16 “Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her.
17-18 “But I’m not married,” the woman replied.
“All too true!” Jesus said. “For you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “you must be a prophet. 20 But say, tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim,[a] where our ancestors worshiped?”
21-24 Jesus replied,
25 The woman said, “Well, at least I know that the Messiah will come—the one they call Christ—and when he does, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus told her, “I am the Messiah!”
27 Just then his disciples arrived. They were surprised to find him talking to a woman, but none of them asked him why, or what they had been discussing.
28-29 Then the woman left her waterpot beside the well and went back to the village and told everyone, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did! Can this be the Messiah?” 30 So the people came streaming from the village to see him.
31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus to eat. 32 “No,” he said, “I have some food you don’t know about.”
33 “Who brought it to him?” the disciples asked each other.
34 Then Jesus explained: “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God who sent me, and from finishing his work. 35 Do you think the work of harvesting will not begin until the summer ends four months from now? Look around you! Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around us, and are ready now for reaping. 36 The reapers will be paid good wages and will be gathering eternal souls into the granaries of heaven! What joys await the sower and the reaper, both together! 37 For it is true that one sows and someone else reaps. 38 I sent you to reap where you didn’t sow; others did the work, and you received the harvest.”
39 Many from the Samaritan village believed he was the Messiah because of the woman’s report: “He told me everything I ever did!” 40-41 When they came out to see him at the well, they begged him to stay at their village; and he did, for two days, long enough for many of them to believe in him after hearing him. 42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe because we have heard him ourselves, not just because of what you told us. He is indeed the Savior of the world.”
43-44 At the end of the two days’ stay he went on into Galilee. Jesus used to say, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own country!” 45 But the Galileans welcomed him with open arms, for they had been in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration and had seen some of his miracles.[b]
46-47 In the course of his journey through Galilee he arrived at the town of Cana, where he had turned the water into wine. While he was there, a man in the city of Capernaum, a government official, whose son was very sick, heard that Jesus had come from Judea and was traveling in Galilee. This man went over to Cana, found Jesus, and begged him to come to Capernaum with him and heal his son, who was now at death’s door.
48 Jesus asked, “Won’t any of you believe in me unless I do more and more miracles?”
49 The official pled, “Sir, please come now before my child dies.”
50 Then Jesus told him, “Go back home. Your son is healed!” And the man believed Jesus and started home. 51 While he was on his way, some of his servants met him with the news that all was well—his son had recovered. 52 He asked them when the lad had begun to feel better, and they replied, “Yesterday afternoon at about one o’clock his fever suddenly disappeared!” 53 Then the father realized it was the same moment that Jesus had told him, “Your son is healed.” And the officer and his entire household believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
54 This was Jesus’ second miracle in Galilee after coming from Judea.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.