M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Israel to Remember How They Did Not Obey

9 “Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to take the land that belongs to nations greater and stronger than you, with big cities with walls as high as heaven. ² The people there are strong and tall, the sons of Anakim. You know of them and have heard it said, ‘Who can stand in front of the sons of Anak?’ ³ But know today that it is the Lord your God Who is crossing over before you as a fire that destroys everything. He will destroy them and bring them down before you. So you may drive them out and be quick to destroy them, just as the Lord has told you. ⁴ But after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say in your heart, ‘The Lord has brought me in to take this land because I am right and good.’ It is because of the sin of these nations that the Lord is driving them out in front of you. ⁵ It is not because of your being right with God that you are going to take their land. But it is because of the sin of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out in front of you. By this the Lord is proving that He keeps the promise He made to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ⁶ Understand that it is not because you are right with God that the Lord your God is giving you this good land for your own, for you are a strong-willed people.

⁷ “Remember and do not forget how you made the Lord your God angry in the desert. You have gone against the Lord from the day you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place. ⁸ Even at Mount Sinai you made the Lord angry. The Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you. ⁹ I went up the mountain to receive the pieces of stone, the Laws of the agreement which the Lord had made with you. I stayed on the mountain forty days and nights. I did not eat bread or drink water. ¹⁰ Then the Lord gave me the two pieces of stone written by the finger of God. On them were all the words the Lord had spoken with you on the mountain from the fire on the day of the meeting. ¹¹ At the end of forty days and nights the Lord gave me the two pieces of stone, the Laws of the agreement. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, ‘Get up. Hurry and go down from here. For your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become very sinful. They have been quick to turn away from what I told them. They have made a false god for themselves.’ ¹³ And the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen these people. See, they are strong-willed. ¹⁴ Let Me alone, so I may destroy them and destroy their name from under heaven. I will make you into a nation that will be greater and stronger than they.’ ¹⁵ So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire. The two pieces of stone of the agreement were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And I saw that it was true that you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a calf out of gold. You had been quick to turn away from what the Lord had told you. ¹⁷ So I took the two pieces of stone and threw them from my hands, and broke them in front of your eyes. ¹⁸ Then again I fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights. I did not eat bread or drink water, because of all the sin you had done. You did what was sinful in the eyes of the Lord and made Him angry. ¹⁹ I was afraid of the anger of the Lord which was burning against you to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me again. ²⁰ The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. So I prayed for Aaron at the same time also. ²¹ Then I took your sinful thing, the calf you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it. I ground it into pieces until it was as fine as dust. And I threw its dust into the river that flowed down from the mountain.

²² “You made the Lord angry again at Taberah, Massah and Kibroth-hattaavah. ²³ The Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go and take for your own the land I have given you.’ But you went against what the Lord your God told you to do. You did not believe Him or listen to His voice. ²⁴ You have gone against the Lord from the day I first knew you.

²⁵ “So I fell down before the Lord and lay forty days and nights, because the Lord had said He would destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord God, do not destroy Your people, Your chosen nation, whom You have set free by Your power and brought out of Egypt with a strong hand. ²⁷ Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Do not look at the strong will or sin or wrong-doing of these people. ²⁸ Or the land You brought us from may say, “The Lord was not able to bring them into the land He promised them. Because He hated them, He brought them out to kill them in the desert.” ²⁹ Yet they are Your people, Your chosen nation, whom You have brought out by Your great power and Your long arm.’

A Song of Praise

92 It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and sing praises to Your name, O Most High. ² It is good to tell of Your loving-kindness in the morning, and of how faithful You are at night, ³ with harps, and with music of praise. ⁴ For You have made me glad by what You have done, O Lord. I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands.

⁵ How great are Your works, O Lord! How deep are Your thoughts! ⁶ A man who cannot reason does not have much learning. A fool does not understand this. ⁷ Even if the sinful grow up like grass and all goes well with wrong-doers, they will be destroyed forever. ⁸ But You, O Lord, rule from Your high place forever. ⁹ For, look, those who hate You will be lost from You forever, O Lord. All those who do wrong will be destroyed.

¹⁰ But You have lifted up my horn like that of a wild bull. New oil has been poured upon me. ¹¹ My eyes have seen those who wait to hurt me. My ears hear the bad men who rise up against me. ¹² The man who is right and good will grow like the palm tree. He will grow like a tall tree in Lebanon. ¹³ Planted in the house of the Lord, they will grow well in the home of our God. ¹⁴ They will still give fruit when they are old. They will be full of life and strength. ¹⁵ And they will show that the Lord is faithful. He is my rock. There is nothing in Him that is not right and good.

God Is King

93 The Lord rules. He is dressed with great power. The Lord has dressed Himself with strength. For sure, the world is built to last. It will not be moved. ² Your throne is set up from long ago. You have always been. ³ The floods have lifted up, O Lord. The floods have lifted up their voice. The floods lift up their beating waves. ⁴ The Lord on high is more powerful than the sound of many waters and the strong waves of the sea. ⁵ Your Word is very sure. O Lord, Your house is holy forever.

Jerusalem Will Be Free

37 When King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes. He covered himself with cloth made from hair, and went into the house of the Lord. ² Then he sent Eliakim, the head of the house, and Shebna the writer, and the head religious leaders, covered with cloth made from hair, to Isaiah the man of God, the son of Amoz. ³ They said to him, “Hezekiah says, ‘This day is a day of trouble, pain, and shame. For children have come to birth, and there is no strength for them to be born. ⁴ It may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom his leader the king of Assyria has sent to try to bring shame upon the living God. The Lord your God may speak sharp words against what He has heard. So say a prayer for those who are left of His people.’” ⁵ So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. ⁶ And Isaiah said to them, “Tell your king, ‘This is what the Lord says. “Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have spoken against Me. ⁷ See, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear some news and return to his own land. And I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.”’”

⁸ Then Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. ⁹ Now the king had heard them say about King Tirhakah of Cush, “He has come out to fight against you.” When he heard it, he sent men to Hezekiah, saying, ¹⁰ “Tell Hezekiah king of Judah, ‘Do not let your God in Whom you trust fool you, saying, “Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ¹¹ See, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands. They have destroyed them all. So will you be kept from trouble? ¹² Did the gods of those nations which my fathers have destroyed take them out of trouble? Did they save Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar? ¹³ Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”

Hezekiah’s Prayer

¹⁴ Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the men from Assyria, and read it. He went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. ¹⁵ And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, ¹⁶ “O Lord of All, the God of Israel, Who sits on the throne above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the nations of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. ¹⁷ Listen, O Lord, and hear. Open Your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to speak against the living God. ¹⁸ It is true, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed all the nations and their lands. ¹⁹ They have thrown their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, made of wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. ²⁰ Now, O Lord our God, take us out of his hand, that all the nations of the earth may know that You alone are the Lord.”

The Word of the Lord to the King

²¹ Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, ²² this is the word the Lord has spoken against him: “She has hated you and made fun of you, the young daughter of Zion who has never had a man! She has shaken her head behind you, the people of Jerusalem! ²³ Whom have you put to shame and spoken against? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted up your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel! ²⁴ Through your servants you have spoken against the Lord. You have said, ‘I came up to the high mountains with my many war-wagons, to the farthest parts of Lebanon. I cut down its tall cedar trees and its best cypress trees. I came to its highest mountain top, and to the place that has the most trees. ²⁵ I dug wells in strange lands and drank water there. With the bottom of my feet I dried up all the rivers of Egypt.’ ²⁶ Have you not heard that I planned this long ago? From days of old I planned it. Now I have made it happen, that you should turn strong cities built for battles into waste lands. ²⁷ So their people did not have any more strength. They were troubled and put to shame. They were like the grass of the field and like the green plant. They were like grass on the housetops, dried up before it is grown. ²⁸ But I know your sitting down, and your going out and your coming in, and your anger against Me. ²⁹ Because of your anger against Me, and because I have heard of your pride, I will put My hook in your nose, and My bit in your mouth. And I will make you return the way you came.

³⁰ “This will be the special thing for you to see: You will eat this year what grows of itself. In the second year you will eat what grows up from the same. Then in the third year you will plant and gather. You will plant grape-fields and eat their fruit. ³¹ And those who are left of the family of Judah will again have their roots grow down and grow their fruit above. ³² For My people who are left will go out from Jerusalem and from Mount Zion. This will be done by the work of the Lord of All.”’” ³³ So the Lord says about the king of Assyria, ‘He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there. He will not come before it with a battle-covering, or build a battle-wall against it. ³⁴ He will return by the same way he came, and he will not come to this city,’ says the Lord. ³⁵ ‘For I will fight for this city to save it for My own good, and for the good of My servant David.’”

³⁶ Then the angel of the Lord went out and killed 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. And when men got up early in the morning, they saw all these dead bodies. ³⁷ So Sennacherib king of Assyria left and returned home, and lived at Nineveh. ³⁸ When he was worshiping in the house of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword. Then they ran away to the land of Ararat. And his son Esarhaddon became king in his place.

The Servants God Owns Are Marked

7 After this I saw four angels. They were standing at the four corners of the earth. They were holding back the four winds of the earth so no wind would blow on the earth or the sea or on any tree. ² I saw another angel coming from the east. He was carrying the mark of the living God. He called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to hurt the earth and sea. ³ The angel from the east said, “Do not hurt the earth or the sea or the trees until we have put the mark of God on the foreheads of the servants He owns.”

⁴ I heard how many there were who received the mark of God. There were 144,000 people of the twelve family groups of Israel. ⁵ These received the mark of God: 12,000 from the family group of Judah, 12,000 from the family group of Reuben, 12,000 from the family group of Gad, ⁶ 12,000 from the family group of Asher, 12,000 from the family group of Naphtali, 12,000 from the family group of Manasseh, ⁷ 12,000 from the family group of Simeon, 12,000 from the family group of Levi, 12,000 from the family group of Issachar, ⁸ 12,000 from the family group of Zebulun, 12,000 from the family group of Joseph, and 12,000 from the family group of Benjamin.

The Many People Who Belonged to God

⁹ After this I saw many people. No one could tell how many there were. They were from every nation and from every family and from every kind of people and from every language. They were standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white clothes and they held branches in their hands. ¹⁰ And they were crying out with a loud voice, “We are saved from the punishment of sin by our God Who sits on the throne and by the Lamb!” ¹¹ Then all of the angels standing around the throne and around the leaders and the four living beings got down on their faces before God and worshiped Him. ¹² They said, “Let it be so! May our God have worship and shining-greatness and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength forever. Let it be so!”

¹³ Then one of the twenty-four leaders asked me, “Who are these people dressed in white clothes? Where did they come from?” ¹⁴ I answered him, “Sir, you know.” Then he said to me, “These are the ones who came out of the time of much trouble. They have washed their clothes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵ For this reason they are before the throne of God. They help Him day and night in the house of God. And He Who sits on the throne will care for them as He is among them. ¹⁶ They will never be hungry or thirsty again. The sun or any burning heat will not shine down on them. ¹⁷ For the Lamb Who is in the center of the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to wells of the water of life. God will take away all tears from their eyes.”