M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Remember the Lord

11 “So you must love the Lord your God. You must do what he tells you to do and always obey his laws, rules, and commands. ² Remember today all the great things the Lord your God has done to teach you. It was you, not your children, who saw those things happen and lived through them. You saw how great he is. You saw how strong he is, and you saw the powerful things he does. ³ You, not your children, saw the miracles he did in Egypt. You saw what he did to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to his whole country. ⁴ You, not your children, saw what he did to the Egyptian army—to their horses and chariots. They were chasing you, but you saw him cover them with the water from the Red Sea. You saw how the Lord completely destroyed them. ⁵ It was you, not your children, who saw everything he did for you in the desert until you came to this place. ⁶ You saw what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab from Reuben’s family. All the Israelites watched as the ground opened up like a mouth and swallowed them, their families, their tents, and all of their servants and animals. ⁷ It was you, not your children, who saw all the great things the Lord did.

⁸ “So you must obey every command I tell you today. Then you will be strong. And you will be able to go across the Jordan River and take the land that you are ready to enter. ⁹ Then you will live a long life in that country. The Lord promised to give that land to your ancestors and all their descendants. It is a land filled with many good things.^{[a] 10} The land that you will get is not like the land of Egypt that you came from. In Egypt you planted your seeds and used your feet to pump water from the canals to water your fields like a vegetable garden. ¹¹ But the land that you will soon get is not like that. In Israel there are mountains and valleys, and the land gets its water from the rain that falls from the sky. ¹² The Lord your God cares for that land. The Lord your God watches over it, from the beginning to the end of the year.

¹³ “The Lord says, ‘You must listen carefully to the commands I give you today: You must love the Lord your God, and serve him with all your heart and all your soul. If you do that, ¹⁴ I will send rain for your land at the right time. I will send the autumn rain and the spring rain. Then you can gather your grain, your new wine, and your oil. ¹⁵ And I will make grass grow in your fields for your cattle. You will have plenty to eat.’

¹⁶ “He says, ‘Be careful! Don’t be fooled. Don’t turn away from me to serve other gods and to bow down to them.’ ¹⁷ If you do that, the Lord will become very angry with you. He will shut the skies, and there will be no rain. The land will not make a harvest, and you will soon die in the good land that the Lord is giving you.

¹⁸ “Remember these commands I give you. Keep them in your hearts. Write them down and tie them on your hands and wear them on your foreheads as a way to remember my laws. ¹⁹ Teach these laws to your children. Talk about these things when you sit in your houses, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. ²⁰ Write these commands on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. ²¹ Then both you and your children will live a long time in the land that the Lord promised to give to your ancestors. You will live there as long as the skies are above the earth.

²² “Be careful to obey every command I have told you to follow: Love the Lord your God, follow all his ways, and be faithful to him. ²³ Then, when you go into the land, the Lord will force all those other nations out. You will take the land from nations that are larger and more powerful than you. ²⁴ All the land you walk on will be yours. Your land will go from the desert in the south all the way to Lebanon in the north. It will go from the Euphrates River in the east all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. ²⁵ No one will be able to stand against you. The Lord your God will make the people fear you wherever you go in that land. That is what he promised you before.

Israel’s Choice: Blessings or Curses

²⁶ “Today I am giving you a choice. You may choose the blessing or the curse. ²⁷ You will get the blessing if you listen and obey the commands of the Lord your God that I have told you today. ²⁸ But you will get the curse if you refuse to listen and obey the commands of the Lord your God. So don’t stop living the way I command you today, and don’t follow other gods that you don’t know.

²⁹ “The Lord your God will lead you to your land. You will soon go in and take that land. At that time you must go to the top of Mount Gerizim and read the blessings to the people from there. And then you must go to the top of Mount Ebal and read the curses to the people from there. ³⁰ These mountains are on the other side of the Jordan River in the land of the Canaanites living in the Jordan Valley. These mountains are toward the west, not far from the oak trees of Moreh near the town of Gilgal. ³¹ You will go across the Jordan River. You will take the land that the Lord your God is giving you. This land will belong to you. When you are living in this land, ³² you must carefully obey all the laws and rules I give you today.

Messengers From Babylon

39 At that time Merodach Baladan son of Baladan was king of Babylon. He sent some men with letters and a gift to Hezekiah when he heard that Hezekiah had been sick. ² This made Hezekiah very happy, so he showed them all the valuable things in his storehouses. He showed them the silver, the gold, the spices, and the expensive perfumes. He showed them the building where he stored the weapons. He showed them everything in his treasuries and everything in his house and throughout his kingdom.

³ Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked him, “What did these men say? Where did they come from?”

Hezekiah said, “These men came all the way from Babylon just to see me.”

⁴ So Isaiah asked him, “What did they see in your house?”

Hezekiah said, “They saw everything in my palace. I showed them all my wealth.”

⁵ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Listen to this message from the Lord All-Powerful: ⁶ ‘The time is coming when everything in your house and everything your ancestors have saved until today will be carried away to Babylon. Nothing will be left!’ The Lord All-Powerful said this. ⁷ The Babylonians will take your own sons, and your sons will become officers^[a] in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

⁸ Then Hezekiah told Isaiah, “This message from the Lord is good.” (Hezekiah said this because he thought, “There will be real peace and security during my lifetime.”)

The Fifth Trumpet Begins the First Terror

9 The fifth angel blew his trumpet. Then I saw a star fall from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the deep hole that leads down to the bottomless pit. ² Then the star opened the hole leading to the pit. Smoke came up from the hole like smoke from a big furnace. The sun and sky became dark because of the smoke from the hole.

³ Then locusts came out of the smoke and went down to the earth. They were given the power to sting like scorpions. ⁴ They were told not to damage the fields of grass or any plant or tree. They were to hurt only those who did not have God’s mark on their foreheads. ⁵ They were not given the power to kill them but only to cause them pain for five months—pain like a person feels when stung by a scorpion. ⁶ During those days people will look for a way to die, but they will not find it. They will want to die, but death will hide from them.

⁷ The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something that looked like a gold crown. Their faces looked like human faces. ⁸ Their hair was like women’s hair. Their teeth were like lions’ teeth. ⁹ Their chests looked like iron breastplates. The sound their wings made was like the noise of many horses and chariots hurrying into battle. ¹⁰ The locusts had tails with stingers like scorpions. The power they had to give people pain for five months was in their tails. ¹¹ They had a ruler, who was the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon.^[a] In Greek it is Apollyon.^[b]

¹² The first terror is now past. There are still two other terrors to come.

The Sixth Trumpet Blast

¹³ The sixth angel blew his trumpet. Then I heard a voice coming from the horns on the four corners of the golden altar that is before God. ¹⁴ It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Free the four angels who are tied at the great river Euphrates.” ¹⁵ These four angels had been kept ready for this hour and day and month and year. The angels were set free to kill a third of all the people on the earth. ¹⁶ I heard how many troops on horses were in their army. There were 200,000,000.

¹⁷ In my vision, I saw the horses and the riders on the horses. They looked like this: They had breastplates that were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow like sulfur. The heads of the horses looked like heads of lions. The horses had fire, smoke, and sulfur coming out of their mouths. ¹⁸ A third of all the people on earth were killed by these three plagues coming out of the horses’ mouths: the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur. ¹⁹ The horses’ power was in their mouths and also in their tails. Their tails were like snakes that have heads to bite and hurt people.

²⁰ The other people on earth were not killed by these plagues. But these people still did not change their hearts and turn away from worshiping the things they had made with their own hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood—things that cannot see or hear or walk. ²¹ They did not change their hearts and turn away from killing other people or from their evil magic, their sexual sins, and their stealing.