M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
24 Once again the anger of the Lord flared against Israel, and he caused David to harm them by taking a national census. “Go and count the people of Israel and Judah,” the Lord told him.
2 So the king said to Joab, commander-in-chief of his army, “Take a census of all the people from one end of the nation to the other, so that I will know how many of them there are.”
3 But Joab replied, “God grant that you will live to see the day when there will be a hundred times as many people in your kingdom as there are now! But you have no right to rejoice in their strength.”[a]
4 But the king’s command overcame Joab’s remonstrance; so Joab and the other army officers went out to count the people of Israel. 5 First they crossed the Jordan and camped at Aroer, south of the city that lies in the middle of the valley of Gad, near Jazer; 6 then they went to Gilead in the land of Tahtim-hodshi and to Dan-jaan and around to Sidon; 7 and then to the stronghold of Tyre, and all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites, and south to Judah as far as Beersheba. 8 Having gone through the entire land, they completed their task in nine months and twenty days. 9 And Joab reported the number of the people to the king—800,000 men of conscription age in Israel and 500,000 in Judah.
10 But after he had taken the census, David’s conscience began to bother him, and he said to the Lord, “What I did was very wrong. Please forgive this foolish wickedness of mine.”
11 The next morning the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, who was David’s contact with God.
The Lord said to Gad, 12 “Tell David that I will give him three choices.”
13 So Gad came to David and asked him, “Will you choose seven years of famine across the land, or to flee for three months before your enemies, or to submit to three days of plague? Think this over and let me know what answer to give to God.”
14 “This is a hard decision,” David replied, “but it is better to fall into the hand of the Lord (for his mercy is great) than into the hands of men.”
15 So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel that morning, and it lasted for three days; and seventy thousand men died throughout the nation. 16 But as the death angel was preparing to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord was sorry for what was happening and told him to stop. He was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite at the time.
17 When David saw the angel, he said to the Lord, “Look, I am the one who has sinned! What have these sheep done? Let your anger be only against me and my family.”
18 That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went to do what the Lord had commanded him. 20 When Araunah saw the king and his men coming toward him, he came forward and fell flat on the ground with his face in the dust.
21 “Why have you come?” Araunah asked.
And David replied, “To buy your threshing floor, so that I can build an altar to the Lord, and he will stop the plague.”
22 “Use anything you like,” Araunah told the king. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing instruments and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. 23 I will give it all to you, and may the Lord God accept your sacrifice.”
24 But the king said to Araunah, “No, I will not have it as a gift. I will buy it, for I don’t want to offer to the Lord my God burnt offerings that have cost me nothing.”
So David paid him[b] for the threshing floor and the oxen. 25 And David built an altar there to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the Lord answered his prayer, and the plague was stopped.
4 But remember this, that if a father dies and leaves great wealth for his little son, that child is not much better off than a slave until he grows up, even though he actually owns everything his father had. 2 He has to do what his guardians and managers tell him to until he reaches whatever age his father set.
3 And that is the way it was with us before Christ came. We were slaves to Jewish laws and rituals, for we thought they could save us. 4 But when the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew, 5 to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own sons. 6 And because we are his sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, so now we can rightly speak of God as our dear Father. 7 Now we are no longer slaves but God’s own sons. And since we are his sons, everything he has belongs to us, for that is the way God planned.
8 Before you Gentiles knew God you were slaves to so-called gods that did not even exist. 9 And now that you have found God (or I should say, now that God has found you), how can it be that you want to go back again and become slaves once more to another poor, weak, useless religion of trying to get to heaven by obeying God’s laws? 10 You are trying to find favor with God by what you do or don’t do on certain days or months or seasons or years. 11 I fear for you. I am afraid that all my hard work for you was worth nothing.
12 Dear brothers, please feel as I do about these things, for I am as free from these chains as you used to be. You did not despise me then when I first preached to you, 13 even though I was sick when I first brought you the Good News of Christ. 14 But even though my sickness was revolting to you, you didn’t reject me and turn me away. No, you took me in and cared for me as though I were an angel from God or even Jesus Christ himself.
15 Where is that happy spirit that we felt together then? For in those days I know you would gladly have taken out your own eyes and given them to replace mine[a] if that would have helped me.
16 And now have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
17 Those false teachers who are so anxious to win your favor are not doing it for your good. What they are trying to do is to shut you off from me so that you will pay more attention to them. 18 It is a fine thing when people are nice to you with good motives and sincere hearts, especially if they aren’t doing it just when I am with you! 19 Oh, my children, how you are hurting me! I am once again suffering for you the pains of a mother waiting for her child to be born—longing for the time when you will finally be filled with Christ. 20 How I wish I could be there with you right now and not have to reason with you like this, for at this distance I frankly don’t know what to do.
21 Listen to me, you friends who think you have to obey the Jewish laws to be saved: Why don’t you find out what those laws really mean? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave-wife and one from his freeborn wife. 23 There was nothing unusual about the birth of the slave-wife’s baby. But the baby of the freeborn wife was born only after God had especially promised he would come.
24-25 Now this true story is an illustration of God’s two ways of helping people. One way was by giving them his laws to obey. He did this on Mount Sinai, when he gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. Mount Sinai, by the way, is called “Mount Hagar” by the Arabs—and in my illustration, Abraham’s slave-wife Hagar represents Jerusalem, the mother-city of the Jews, the center of that system of trying to please God by trying to obey the Commandments; and the Jews, who try to follow that system, are her slave children. 26 But our mother-city is the heavenly Jerusalem, and she is not a slave to Jewish laws.
27 That is what Isaiah meant when he prophesied, “Now you can rejoice, O childless woman; you can shout with joy though you never before had a child. For I am going to give you many children—more children than the slave-wife has.”
28 You and I, dear brothers, are the children that God promised, just as Isaac was. 29 And so we who are born of the Holy Spirit are persecuted now by those who want us to keep the Jewish laws, just as Isaac, the child of promise, was persecuted by Ishmael, the slave-wife’s son.
30 But the Scriptures say that God told Abraham to send away the slave-wife and her son, for the slave-wife’s son could not inherit Abraham’s home and lands along with the free woman’s son. 31 Dear brothers, we are not slave children, obligated to the Jewish laws, but children of the free woman, acceptable to God because of our faith.
31 In mid-May of the eleventh year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity,[a] this message came to me from the Lord:
2-3 “Son of dust, tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and all his people: ‘You are as Assyria was—a great and mighty nation—like a cedar of Lebanon, full of thick branches and forest shade, with its head high up among the clouds. 4 Its roots went deep into the moist earth. It grew luxuriantly and gave streamlets of water to all the trees around. 5 It towered above all the other trees. It prospered and grew long thick branches because of all the water at its roots. 6 The birds nested in its branches, and in its shade the flocks and herds gave birth to young. All the great nations of the world lived beneath its shadow. 7 It was strong and beautiful, for its roots went deep to water. 8 This tree was taller than any other in the garden of God; no cypress had branches equal to it; none had boughs to compare; none equaled it in beauty. 9 Because of the magnificence that I gave it, it was the envy of all the other trees of Eden.’
10 “But Egypt[b] has become proud and arrogant,” the Lord God says. “Therefore because she has set herself so high above the others, reaching to the clouds, 11 I will deliver her into the hands of a mighty nation, to destroy her as her wickedness deserves. I, myself, will cut her down. 12 A foreign army (from Babylon)—the terror of the nations—will invade her land and cut her down and leave her fallen on the ground. Her branches will be scattered across the mountains and valleys and rivers of the land. All those who live beneath her shade will go away and leave her lying there. 13 The birds will pluck off her twigs, and the wild animals will lie among her branches; 14 let no other nation exult with pride for its own prosperity, though it be higher than the clouds, for all are doomed, and they will land in hell along with all the proud men of the world.”
15 The Lord God says: “When she fell, I made the oceans mourn for her and restrained their tides.[c] I clothed Lebanon in black and caused the trees of Lebanon to weep. 16 I made the nations shake with fear at the sound of her fall, for I threw her down to hell with all the others like her. And all the other proud trees of Eden, the choicest and the best of Lebanon, the ones whose roots went deep into the water, are comforted to find her there with them in hell. 17 Her allies, too, are all destroyed and perish with her. They went down with her to the netherworld—those nations that had lived beneath her shade.
18 “O Egypt, you are great and glorious among the trees of Eden—the nations of the world. And you will be brought down to the pit of hell with all these other nations. You will be among the nations you despise, killed by the sword. This is the fate of Pharaoh and all his teeming masses,” says the Lord.
79 O God, your land has been conquered by the heathen nations. Your Temple is defiled, and Jerusalem is a heap of ruins. 2 The bodies of your people lie exposed—food for birds and animals. 3 The enemy has butchered the entire population of Jerusalem; blood has flowed like water. No one is left even to bury them. 4 The nations all around us scoff. They heap contempt on us.
5 O Jehovah, how long will you be angry with us? Forever? Will your jealousy burn till every hope is gone? 6 Pour out your wrath upon the godless nations—not on us—on kingdoms that refuse to pray, that will not call upon your name! 7 For they have destroyed your people Israel, invading every home. 8 Oh, do not hold us guilty for our former sins! Let your tenderhearted mercies meet our needs, for we are brought low to the dust. 9 Help us, God of our salvation! Help us for the honor of your name. Oh, save us and forgive our sins. 10 Why should the heathen nations be allowed to scoff, “Where is their God?” Publicly avenge this slaughter of your people! 11 Listen to the sighing of the prisoners and those condemned to die. Demonstrate the greatness of your power by saving them. 12 O Lord, take sevenfold vengeance on these nations scorning you.
13 Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will thank you forever and forever, praising your greatness from generation to generation.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.