M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
26 You must not make idols from stones and worship them. You must not draw things on stones and bend down in front of them. I am the Lord your God.
2 You must rest on Sabbath days and you must keep them holy. You must respect God's house. I am the Lord.
3 The people must carefully obey the rules. 4 If they do, I will send rain at the proper time. Plants for food will grow in the ground. Fruit will grow on your trees. 5 The people will harvest grain until the grapes are ready to eat. They will harvest the grapes until it is the time to plant seeds. They will have all the food to eat that they need. I will keep them safe in their land.
6 I will stop war in Israel. When the people sleep, they will not be afraid. I will take the wild animals away. Other people will not hurt my people. 7 Israel's enemies will run away from them. They will kill their enemies. 8 Five of you will run after 100 of them. And 100 of you will run after 1,000 enemies. You will kill all your enemies.
9 I will do good things for your people and I will give many children to them. Their number will grow. I will do everything that I have promised to do for them. 10 They will have so much food that some will remain after the next harvest. 11 I will have my home among you, my people. I will never turn away from them. 12 I will walk among the people. They will belong to me. 13 I am the Lord your God. I brought you out of Egypt. You will not be the slaves of people in Egypt. I saved you so that you need not be ashamed.
People who do not obey the rules will not give any pleasure to the Lord
14 God will be angry if the people do not listen to him. He will be angry if they do not obey his rules. 15 The people may not respect or obey God's rules. So they will not be doing what they promised to him. 16 So God will send diseases to the people. They will be afraid. The people will have diseases in their eyes. They will get thin and they will die. They will plant their seed and their enemies will eat the fruit. 17 God will fight against you. Your enemies will win the war. They will become your rulers. Your soldiers will run away even when nobody is running after them.
18 The people may not obey God even after this. If they do not, God will punish them seven times more strongly. 19 He will make them ashamed. He will not send any rain and the land will be hard and dry. 20 Even if they do a lot of work, no grain will grow. No fruit will grow on the trees.
21 The people may still not listen to God. If they do not, he will be seven times more angry. If they do not obey him, he will cause their lives to be seven times more difficult. 22 He will send wild animals to kill their children and their animals. The land will be almost empty.
23 The people may still not listen to God. If they do not, he will be angry. 24 He will become their enemy. If they do not obey him, he will punish them seven times more strongly. 25 He will send enemy soldiers to kill the people. They have not done what they promised to do. So he will punish them for that. If they go back to their cities, he will send them diseases. The enemy will win the war. 26 The people will not have any food. A woman will bake one loaf for ten families. They will weigh it to give one part to each family. When a person eats his piece of bread, he will still be hungry.
27 If the people still turn away from God, he will be even more angry. They will not turn away from their sin. 28 So he will turn away from them. He will punish them seven times more again. 29 They will be so hungry that they will eat their own children. 30 The Lord will destroy the places where they worship false gods. He will destroy their very bad incense altars. He will put their dead bodies round their idols. He will hate them. 31 He will destroy the cities. He will destroy the places for wrong worship. Nobody will burn incense to give the Lord pleasure. 32 God will destroy the land. He will cause the enemies who live in your land to hate it. 33 God will push you out. He will send your people away to other countries. He will destroy your cities. And he will make your land a desert. 34 The land will have a Sabbath rest while there are no people in it. 35 All the time that it is empty, the land will have rest. It will have the Sabbath rest that it did not have. It did not have it when you lived in it.
36 Some of Israel's people will remain in other countries. They will be frightened. A leaf that is blowing in the wind will cause them to run away. It will be like when an enemy is running after them. They will fall even if no enemy is running after them. 37 They will fall over each other when nobody is running after them. They will not be strong enough to fight their enemies. 38 They will die in the countries where they are living. Those countries will cause their deaths. 39 Those who remain here will die because of their sins. They will die because their ancestors did not obey God.
40 Your sons and your grandsons must tell me, the Lord, that they are sorry. They must be sorry because they did not obey my rules. They must be sorry that they turned away from me. 41 They must remember that they made me angry. They caused me to turn away from them. I am the Lord, and I sent them into their enemies' country. They will be sorry until I have punished them enough. 42 Then I will remember my covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I will remember that I gave their land to them. 43 Before this, the land will be empty and it will have a rest. My people will pay for the bad things that they did. 44 But I, the Lord, will not kill all of them. The people will be living in their enemies' country. Then I will remember them. I will not leave them alone. I will remember my covenant with them. I am the Lord, their God. 45 I will remember my covenant with their ancestors that I brought out of Egypt. The people of other nations saw me do this. I am the Lord.’
46 These are the rules that the Lord gave to Moses on Sinai mountain. They are his covenant with Israel's people.[a]
Praise the Lord![a]
33 You righteous people,
sing to praise the Lord,
and be happy!
It is right for good, honest people to do that.
2 Pick up your harp
and praise the Lord!
Make music for him
with a lyre that has ten strings.
3 Sing to him a new song!
Make beautiful music,
as you sing aloud to praise him.
4 Yes! The Lord's message is true.
We can always trust him to do what is right.
5 He loves everything that is right and fair.
The world is full of his faithful love.
6 The word of the Lord made the heavens.
When he spoke,
all the stars in the sky appeared.
7 He put the water of the sea together in a heap.
He made the deep seas stay in their right places.
8 Everyone who lives on the earth should respect the Lord.
They should bend down to worship him.
9 The Lord spoke,
and the world began!
He spoke his command,
and everything became fixed in its place.[b]
10 Nations decide what they want to do,
but the Lord causes their plans to be useless.
11 But whatever the Lord decides to do
will always happen.
His thoughts will not change
from one century to the next.
12 The Lord blesses the nation
that has him as their God.
He has chosen them to belong to him,
as his own special people.
13 The Lord looks down from heaven.
He sees every man, woman and child.
14 From the place where he lives,
he watches everyone that lives on the earth.
15 He made each person and all their thoughts.
He knows everything that they do.
16 A great army will not save their king.
A soldier does not stay alive because he is strong.
17 In war, do not hope that even a strong horse will help you to win.
You can not trust it to save you.
18 Remember, the Lord takes care of people who respect him.
Those people trust him for his faithful love.
19 They trust him to keep them safe from death,
and to keep them alive during a time of famine.
20 Yes! We will trust the Lord to come and help us.
He is our helper who keeps us safe,
like a soldier's shield.
21 We are happy because he loves us.
We trust in his holy name.
22 Lord, help us to know your faithful love,
because we are trusting in you.
Everyone will die
9 I thought about all these things so that I could understand them. I realized that God controls what happens to people. That includes righteous people and wise people. God decides the things that they do. Nobody knows what will happen in their lives. Other people may love them, or they may hate them.
2 But there is something which happens to everyone. It happens to righteous people and it happens to wicked people. It happens to good people and it happens to bad people. It happens to people who are clean in front of God and it happens to people who are unclean. It happens to people who offer sacrifices to God and it happens to people who do not do that. It happens to good people and to people who turn away from God. It happens to people who make promises to God. It also happens to people who are afraid to do that. 3 Finally, the same thing happens to everyone on the earth. That seems to be a terrible thing. People choose to do evil things. While they are alive, they choose to live like fools. And after that, they die.
4 Anyone who is alive in the world has some hope for good things in the future. It is better to be a dog that is alive than to be a lion that is dead. 5 People who are alive know that they will die one day. But dead people do not know anything. No more good things can happen to them. Nobody remembers them. 6 Everything that they did in the world has finished. If they loved people, if they hated people, if they were jealous of people, all that has finished. They no longer having anything to do with the things that happen on the earth.
Enjoy life
7 So be happy as you eat your food. Be happy as you drink your wine. God is pleased with you as you do these things. 8 Always dress yourself well in good clothes. Use as much sweet oil as you need on your head. 9 Love your wife and enjoy your life together with her. God has given you your life. It is a short life and it is difficult to understand everything that happens. God wants you to enjoy these things as you do hard work during your life on the earth. 10 Use all your strength to do the work that you are doing. One day you will die and you will go into your grave. Then you will not have any work, or ideas, or knowledge or wisdom. So do your work well while you are alive.
11 I have seen another thing that happens here on the earth.
The runner who runs fastest does not always win the race.
The strongest soldiers do not always win the battle.
Very wise people do not always have food to eat.
Very clever people do not always become rich.
People who have learned many things are not always successful.
Yes, anything may happen to anyone at any time.
12 Nobody knows the time when trouble may come to them.
A fish does not know when somebody will catch it in a net.
A bird does not know when somebody will catch it in a trap.
In the same way, terrible trouble suddenly happens to people when they do not expect it.
Better to be wise than to be a fool
13 I saw something else that happens on the earth. It is a good example of what wisdom is like. 14 There was a small city and only a few people lived in it. A powerful king came to attack that city. His army made their camp around the city. They built heaps of earth all around it. 15 There was a man who lived in the city. He was poor but he was also wise. Because he was wise, he knew how to save the city. But after he saved it, nobody remembered that poor man.
16 So I realized that wisdom is better than power. But if you are poor, nobody accepts that you are also wise. People soon forget what you said.
17 A wise person speaks quietly.
But it is good to listen carefully to him.
His words have more value than a king
who is shouting to a crowd of fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons that are used to fight a war.
But one bad person can destroy many good things.
Paul says ‘Hello’ to Titus
1 This letter is from me, Paul. I am God's servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ. God has sent me to help the people that he has chosen. I teach them to understand his true message and to trust him. As a result they will live in a way that pleases God. 2 They will also be sure that they will live with God for ever. Before the world began, God promised that his people would have life with him. And God never tells lies. 3 God is the one who saves us. Now, at the proper time, he has made his message clear. He has given his message to me so that I can tell it to people. That is what he has told me to do.
4 I am writing to you, Titus. I told you the message about Jesus and now we both believe in him. So you are like my own child.
I pray that God, the Father, and Christ Jesus, our Saviour, will continue to help you. I pray that they will give you peace in your mind.
Titus's work in Crete
5 I left you in Crete so that you could finish certain things. You should make right some things that were wrong. And you should choose leaders of the believers in every town, as I told you.
6 This is what a leader in the church must be like. Nobody should have a reason to say that he has done something wrong. He must be the husband of only one wife. He must have children who respect him. Nobody should say that they enjoy bad things or that they do not obey their parents.[a] 7 A leader in the church serves the believers on God's behalf. Because of that, nobody should have a reason to say that the leader has done anything wrong. A leader must not be proud. He must not become angry easily. He should not like to drink too much wine. He must not be someone who likes to fight. He must not want to get a lot of money for himself. 8 Instead, he must be happy to have visitors in his home. He must want to do good things. He must be careful in how he lives. He must do what is right. He must want to serve God well. He must control himself well.
9 A leader in the church must continue to believe the true message very well. That is the message which we have taught. Then he will be able to teach people what is true and right. He will also show that people who speak against the true message are wrong.
10 I say this because there are many people who refuse to obey their leaders. They speak about useless things and they deceive people. Many of them want the believers to obey all the Jewish rules.[b] 11 You must stop those people from teaching false things like that. They are causing whole families to believe their lies. They teach things that they should not teach. They deceive people because they want people to give them money. 12 Many years ago, there was a certain man who lived on Crete. The people there called him their prophet. Even he said, ‘People who live on Crete are always telling lies and doing wicked things. They are lazy and they eat too much food.’
13 What that man said is true. So you must warn the people there. Help them to believe the true message about Jesus more and more. 14 They must not listen to Jewish stories that are not true, or to human rules. Those things are the ideas of people who refuse to obey God's true message.
15 If someone is clean and good inside, everything is clean and good for them to enjoy. But if someone is not a believer and has an unclean mind, nothing is clean or good for that person. Their minds no longer think properly. They no longer feel guilty when they do something wrong. 16 People like that say that they know God. But they do disgusting things. This shows that they do not know him. They are completely bad. They refuse to obey God. They are not able to do anything good.
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