M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

The man and the woman turn away from God

3 The Lord God made many wild animals. But the snake was the most clever of them all. The snake asked the woman, ‘Did God say, “You must not eat the fruit from any tree in the garden”? Is that really true?’

² The woman replied, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. ³ But God said, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not even touch it. If you do that, you will die.” ’

⁴ Then the snake said to the woman, ‘No, you will not die. ⁵ God knows that when you eat the fruit from this tree, you will understand things. You will become like God himself. You will know about good things and evil things.’^[a]

⁶ The woman looked at the fruit on the tree. She saw that it would be good to eat, and it was beautiful to look at. She wanted to eat it because it would make her become wise. So she took some fruit and she ate it. Then she gave some of the fruit to her husband who was with her. He also ate it.

⁷ Then they understood what they had done.^[b] They realized that they were not wearing any clothes. So they took some leaves from fig trees. They tied them together to cover their bodies.

⁸ In the evening there was a nice cool wind. The Lord God walked in the garden. The man and the woman heard the sound of the Lord God. They hid themselves behind some trees, so that God would not see them. ⁹ The Lord God called out to the man. He said to him, ‘Where are you?’

¹⁰ The man replied, ‘I heard you in the garden. I was afraid because I had no clothes. So I hid myself from you.’

¹¹ The Lord God said, ‘Who told you that you had no clothes? Have you eaten fruit from the tree that I said you must not eat?’

¹² The man said, ‘It was the woman that you put here with me. She gave me some fruit from the tree. So I ate it.’

¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘Why have you done a thing like that?’ The woman replied, ‘It was the snake. The snake deceived me with a lie. So I ate the fruit.’

¹⁴ The Lord God said to the snake,

¹⁶ God said to the woman, ‘I will cause you to have great pain when you give birth to children. You will want to please your husband. But he will rule over you as your master.’

¹⁷ Then God said to Adam,^[f] ‘You listened to your wife and you did what she said. You ate fruit from the tree after I told you, “You must not eat fruit from this tree.” Because you did that, I will curse the ground. You will have to work very hard to make plants grow in it for your food. It will be like this for your whole life. ¹⁸ Thorn bushes and thistles will grow in the ground.^[g] But you will eat plants that grow in the fields. ¹⁹ You will have to work hard for a long time before you have any food to eat. You will do this for your whole life until you die. Then you will return into the ground. That is where you came from. I made you from the soil of the ground, and you will become soil again.’

²⁰ Adam gave his wife a name. He called her Eve. This was because she would become the mother of all people.^[h]

²¹ The Lord God made clothes for Adam and Eve to wear. He used the skins from animals to make them.

²² The Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us because he understands good and evil. So we must not let him take fruit from the tree that gives life. If he eats that fruit, he will live for ever.’

²³ So the Lord God sent Adam out of the Garden of Eden. To get his food, Adam had to dig the ground that God had used to make him. ²⁴ Then God put cherubs to be guards for the garden. God put them on the east side of the garden. There was also a sword of fire that moved quickly from side to side. As a result, nobody could go near to the tree that gives life.

John the Baptist prepares a way for Jesus

3 While Jesus still lived in Nazareth, a man called John the Baptist was speaking a message from God. He was doing this in the wilderness in Judea.^{[a] 2} He told people, ‘You have done many wrong things. You must turn away from them and change how you live. Do this now, because the kingdom of heaven has come very near.’

³ God's prophet Isaiah spoke about this man John long ago. He said:

⁴ John wore clothes made from the hair of a camel. He also wore a belt made from leather. His usual food was locusts and honey from the wilderness.^[c]

⁵ Many people went to listen to John. They lived in Jerusalem and all over the country called Judea and many other places near the Jordan River. ⁶ The people told God about all the wrong things that they had done. Then John baptized them in the Jordan River.^[d]

⁷ Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to John.^[e] They wanted John to baptize them. He said to them, ‘You are like dangerous snakes. God is angry. You are trying to run away from him. But he will soon punish people like you. ⁸ You have to show that you are sorry. Change how you live. Stop doing things that God does not like. ⁹ Do not say to yourselves, “We are in the family of Abraham. God will surely not punish us.” Listen! God can take these stones and make children for Abraham out of them! ¹⁰ You are like trees that have bad fruit. God has an axe ready to use. He will cut down every tree that does not make good fruit. He will throw those trees into the fire.

¹¹ I baptize you with water. This shows that you want to change the way that you live. But another person will come soon.^[f] He is greater than I am. I am not good enough even to carry his shoes for him. This other person will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹² He is like a farmer that brings the wheat home from his field. He uses a special tool to throw the wheat up in the air. He does this to make the wheat seeds separate from what remains. Then he cleans his yard. He carefully stores all the seeds to keep them safe. But he burns everything else in a great fire that nobody can put out.’

John baptizes Jesus

¹³ Then Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River. He wanted John to baptize him. ¹⁴ But John tried to stop him. He said to Jesus, ‘I should ask you to baptize me. You should not ask me to baptize you.’

¹⁵ Jesus replied, ‘This time, do what I ask you to do. We must do everything correctly, as God wants it.’ So John did what Jesus asked him to do.

¹⁶ When John baptized him, Jesus came up out of the water. At that moment, the skies opened. Jesus saw God's Spirit coming down. He came down like a dove and he stayed on Jesus. ¹⁷ Then a voice spoke from heaven, which said, ‘This man is my Son and I love him. He makes me very happy.’

They build the altar

3 When all the people were now living in their towns, they went to meet together in Jerusalem. It was the seventh month of the year. ² Jozadak's son, Jeshua, and some of the other priests in his family began to build the altar of Israel's God. Shealtiel's son, Zerubbabel, and some of his family also began to build it. They wanted to make burnt offerings on it. God's servant, Moses, had written about this in the law. ³ The people who already lived near there made them afraid. But they built the altar on its foundation. Then they made burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar. They offered sacrifices on it every day, in the morning and in the evening. ⁴ Then they had the Feast of Huts, as the law said they should do.^[a] On each day of the feast they made the right number of burnt offerings. ⁵ After that, they made burnt offerings every day, and also at the time of each new moon. They made the right sacrifices for the special festivals, when people met together to worship the Lord. They also offered special gifts that people had chosen to give to the Lord. ⁶ They began to offer those burnt offerings on the first day of the seventh month. That was before they had started to build the temple.

They prepare to build the temple

⁷ The leaders gave money to men who could work with stone and wood. They sent food, drink and olive oil to the people in Tyre and Sidon. This was to pay for beams of wood from cedar trees. They would bring the wood from Lebanon on ships that came to Joppa. Cyrus, king of Persia, had commanded them to do this.

⁸ The Israelites began to build the Lord's temple two years after they arrived in Jerusalem. In the second month of the year, Shealtiel's son, Zerubbabel, and Jozadak's son, Jeshua, began the work. All the priests and the Levites who worked with them in Jerusalem joined them. All the people who had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon helped in the work. The leaders chose Levites who were 20 years old, or older, to have authority over the work.

⁹ These are their names:

¹⁰ The men who were building the Lord's temple finished the foundations. Then the priests put on their special clothes. They made a noise with their trumpets. The Levites (sons of Asaph) made a noise with their cymbals.^[b] They all stood to praise the Lord, in the way that Israel's King David had told them many years before. ¹¹ They sang together to praise the Lord. Group by group, they sang these words:

Then all the people shouted loudly to praise the Lord. They praised him because they had finished work on the temple's foundation.

¹² But many of the older priests, Levites and leaders wept aloud. They were sad because they had seen the temple as it had been before. They remembered how beautiful it had been. At the same time, many other people shouted because they were happy. ¹³ The happy shouts and the noise of people who were weeping were both very loud. People far away could hear the noise. The different sounds mixed together, so nobody could say which was which.

A man walks again!

3 One day, Peter and John went to the temple in Jerusalem. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. This was the time that everyone went there to pray. ² There was a man who could not walk. He had never been able to walk. Every day, his friends put him at the gate of the temple. It was called the Beautiful Gate. As people were going in through the gate, the man asked them for money. His friends were carrying him there when Peter and John arrived. ³ The man saw Peter and John as they were coming through the gate. So he asked them to give him some money. ⁴ Peter looked carefully at the man and so did John. Peter said to him, ‘Look at us!’ ⁵ So the man looked at Peter and John. He thought that they would give him some money.

⁶ Then Peter said to the man, ‘I do not have any money. But I do have something else that I will give to you. Jesus Christ from Nazareth gave me authority to do this. So now I tell you to walk!’ ⁷ Peter held the man's right hand and he helped him to stand up. Immediately the man's feet and ankles became strong. ⁸ The man jumped up and he stood on his feet. Then he began to walk about. He went into the temple with Peter and John. He was walking and jumping and he was praising God. ⁹ A large crowd of people were there. They saw the man walking. They heard him praising God. ¹⁰ ‘Look!’ they said. ‘We know this man. He usually sits at the Beautiful Gate of the temple and he asks people for money. What has happened to him?’ They were all very surprised.

Peter speaks to the crowd in the temple

¹¹ The man was still holding Peter and John as they went into the yard of the temple. All the people were very surprised about what they saw. So they ran to Peter and John at the place called Solomon's porch. ¹² Peter saw all the people who had come together. So he said to them, ‘People of Israel, you should not be so surprised about what you have seen. You should not look at us as if we ourselves are powerful. It is not because we obey God that we could cause this man to walk again. ¹³ It happened because of Jesus, who was the special servant of God. That is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and our other ancestors who lived long ago.^[a] God has raised his servant Jesus up to a place of honour.

You helped the rulers to take hold of Jesus. The Roman ruler Pilate had decided to let Jesus go free. But you turned against Jesus. ¹⁴ Jesus was God's Holy One who always did what was right. But you did not accept him. You told Pilate to let another man go free instead of Jesus. That man was in prison because he had killed people. ¹⁵ But Jesus is the person who leads people to true life. When you refused him, it meant that you killed him. But God made him alive again and raised him up from death. We ourselves saw him alive after he had died and we are telling you about it.

¹⁶ It is the power of Jesus that has made this man completely well again. We believe in him. We know that he has authority. You know this man. You saw that he had weak legs. Jesus has caused this man's legs to become strong. You can all see for yourselves what has happened. Yes, he is now well because we havetrusted Jesus and his power.

¹⁷ Friends, when you did all this to Jesus, you did not really know what you were doing. Your leaders also did not understand. ¹⁸ Jesus was God's Messiah. A long time ago, many of God's prophets spoke about him. They spoke God's message about what would happen to the Messiah. They said that he would suffer. God has now caused these things to happen. ¹⁹ So you must stop doing wrong things. Change how you live and turn to God. Then God will forgive you for all the wrong things that you have done. ²⁰ The Lord God will help you. Times will come when he will cause your spirit to be strong. He has already chosen Jesus as the one to help you. He is God's Messiah, and God will send him back to you again. ²¹ Jesus must stay in heaven until the day that God will cause everything to become new again. Long ago God gave his prophets a message about this, and they told that message to people. ²² For example, Moses said this about the Messiah a long time ago: “The Lord your God will send you a prophet. He will be one of your own people. He will speak God's message as I have done. You must obey everything that he says to you. ²³ God will punish anyone who does not obey that prophet. He will no longer be one of God's people and God will destroy him.” ’^[b]

²⁴ Peter then said, ‘All of God's prophets spoke about what is happening in these days. Samuel was one of them, and all the prophets who came later also spoke the same message. ²⁵ You are the people who receive that message from God today. The promise that God made to bless our ancestors is the same promise that he makes to you. God said to our ancestor Abraham, “Through your descendants, I will bless all the people on the earth.”^[c]

²⁶ God chose Jesus to be his special servant. God sent him to you first. He wants to help you, so that you stop doing bad things. That is how he will bless you.’