M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

David prepares to build God's temple

22 Then David said, ‘This is the place where the temple of the Lord God will be. The altar for Israel's burnt offerings will also be here.’

² So David told his officers to bring together all the foreign men who lived in Israel. He chose some of them to cut the stones to build God's house. They would cut the stones to have the right shape. ³ He supplied a lot of iron to make things for the temple. That was for nails and bars to fix the doors at the entrances. He also supplied more bronze than they could weigh. ⁴ The people from Tyre and Sidon had brought a lot of cedar wood to David. So he provided for the temple more pieces of cedar wood than anyone could count.

⁵ David said, ‘The Lord's temple must be great and beautiful. It must be famous, so that the people of every nation see how great it is. My son Solomon is young and he has no special skills. So I must prepare everything for him to build the temple.’

So before David died, he prepared all these things.

David tells Solomon to build the temple

⁶ David sent someone to fetch his son, Solomon. He told him that he must build a temple for the Lord, Israel's God. ⁷ He said to Solomon, ‘My son, I really wanted to build a house for the Lord my God, to give honour to him. ⁸ But the Lord said to me, “You have killed many people in the battles that you have fought. So you yourself will not build a house to give me honour. I have seen all the blood of the people that you have killed. ⁹ But you will have a son who will be a man who lives in peace. I will cause all his enemies to leave him in peace. Yes, his name will be Solomon. While he is king, I will cause Israel to enjoy peace. I will keep them safe from their enemies.^{[a] 10} He will build a temple to give honour to my name. He will become my son and I will become his father. I will give him descendants to rule Israel as kings for ever.”

¹¹ So, my son, I pray that the Lord will be with you. He will do what he has promised. He will help you to build a temple for the Lord your God. ¹² I also pray that the Lord will make you wise so that you understand things properly. I pray that you will obey the Law of the Lord your God as you rule over Israel. ¹³ You will be successful, if you carefully obey the Lord's commands and rules. Those are the laws that the Lord gave to Moses for Israel. Be strong! Be brave! Do not be afraid, but continue to be strong!

¹⁴ Look! I have been careful to prepare the things that you will need to build the Lord's temple. I have got 4,000 tons of gold and 40,000 tons of silver. I have more bronze and iron than anyone can weigh. I have plenty of wood and stone. You will need to get even more than this. ¹⁵ You have many workers with special skills. Some know how to cut stone. Others know how to build with stones or with wood. There are men who have skills to make many different kinds of things. ¹⁶ They can use gold, silver, bronze and iron to make things. You have more workers than you can count! So now you must start the work! I pray that the Lord will be with you to help you.’

¹⁷ Then David sent messages to all the leaders in Israel. He commanded them to help his son Solomon. ¹⁸ He said to them, ‘You know that the Lord your God is with you. He has kept you safe from all your enemies. He has put the people who live in this region under my authority. So now the Lord and his people rule over all those nations. ¹⁹ So you must serve the Lord your God with all that you are. Start the work! Begin to build the Lord God's holy place. Then you can put the Lord's Covenant Box there, as well as the other holy things. You will put them in the temple that you have built to give honour to the Lord's name.’

Wives and husbands

3 I need to speak to you wives. You should each respect the authority of your own husband. Even if your husband does not believe God's message about Jesus Christ, you should still respect him. If you do that, he may then turn to God and believe his message. You will not need to tell him what is true. He will see the good way that you live. ² He will see that you obey God and that you do things that are completely good.

³ Think about what makes you beautiful. The way that you prepare your hair does not really make you beautiful. Gold things or beautiful clothes do not make you beautiful. ⁴ Do not just think about your body, but think about what you are really like inside yourself. Be patient and do not become angry easily. Then you will always continue to be beautiful. If you are beautiful in your spirit, God likes that very much. ⁵ That was how holy women made themselves beautiful many years ago. They trusted God that he would help them. They respected the authority of their husbands. ⁶ Sarah was a woman like that. She obeyed her husband, Abraham. She called him, ‘My master’. So you wives also should do what is right. Do not let anything make you afraid. Then you will be like true daughters of Sarah.^[a]

⁷ You husbands must also respect your wives. Be kind to your wife and help her. Remember that she is not as strong as you are. Because God is very kind, she has received his gift of true life, as you have. So you should respect her. Then God will answer you when you pray to him.

Christians must be ready to have trouble

⁸ Now I want to say this to you before I finish my letter. All of you should agree with each other in what you think. You should try to understand how other people are feeling. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be kind to each other. Do not think that you are more important than other people. ⁹ If people do bad things to you, do not do anything bad to them in return. If people insult you, do not insult them in return. Instead, pray that God will bless those people. That is what God wants you to do. Then you will receive the gift of God's blessing. ¹⁰ The Bible says this:

¹³ If you always try to do good things, then nobody should hurt you. ¹⁴ But somebody might give you trouble, even when you do what is right. If that happens, God will bless you. So do not be afraid of what people may do to you. Do not worry about it. ¹⁵ Instead, always remember that Christ is your Lord. Let him rule how you live. People may ask you, ‘Why do you trust God to help you?’ You must always be ready to answer them about that. ¹⁶ But when you tell them, be kind and polite. Do only what you know is right. Then those people will see that you live in a good way because you believe in Christ. When they say bad things against you they will become ashamed. ¹⁷ Sometimes God may let you have trouble and pain even when you have done good things. But that is better than if you have trouble and pain because you have done bad things.

¹⁸ Christ himself always did what was right. But he received pain on behalf of people who do what is wrong. He died once to take away all those wrong things. He did that to bring you near to God. People killed Christ's body, but God's Spirit made him alive again. ¹⁹ Like this, he went to the spirits who were in prison. He told them God's true message. ²⁰ Those were the spirits of people who had refused to obey God long ago. At that time God waited patiently for them to turn to him while Noah was building a large ship. But only a few people agreed to go into that ship. God saved only eight people when the ship sailed on the deep water.^{[c] 21} That shows how God now saves you. It is like a picture of baptism. The water of baptism does not wash dirt from a person's body. Instead, it shows that a person has decided to obey God. He is choosing to do what is right. That saves you, because Jesus Christ became alive again after his death. ²² After that, Jesus went into heaven. Now he is sitting at God's right side. He rules over angels and over everything that has authority and power.^[d]

God will destroy the city of Samaria

1 These are the messages that the Lord gave to Micah.^[a] Then Micah told them to the people during the times that Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah ruled the country called Judah. Micah was born in a small town called Moresheth. God showed Micah about what would happen to the cities called Samaria and Jerusalem.^[b]

⁶ So God says to you:

Micah is sad for the people in Israel and Judah

Jesus sends out 72 disciples

10 After this, Jesus chose another 72 disciples. He sent them out two by two, to every town and village that he would visit soon. ² Before they went, he said to them, ‘Many people are ready to believe God's message. They are like crops in a field at harvest time. But there are very few workers to bring in the crops. So pray to God to send out workers. The field and the plants belong to him.’^[a]

³ Jesus then said, ‘I am sending you out, so go! But listen! You will be like young sheep among wild animals. ⁴ Do not carry a purse or a bag. Do not take extra shoes. When you meet other people on the road, do not stop to say “hello”.^[b]

⁵ In each town, when you go into a house, first say to the people who live there, “We pray that all will be well with you!” ⁶ Someone in the house may accept what you say. If they do, God will bless them. But if nobody accepts your kind words, God will bless you instead of them. ⁷ Stay in the same house there until you leave that town. Accept the food and drink that the people in the house give to you. You are working to help them. So they should give you what you need to live. Do not visit different houses to get food. ⁸ The people may accept you well when you go into a town. Then eat the food that those people give to you. ⁹ Make the sick people well who are there. Give this message to all the people there: “The kingdom of God has now come near to you.” ¹⁰ Sometimes when you go into a town, the people will not accept you. You should then go into the streets of that town and you should say to the people, ¹¹ “There is dirt from your town on our feet. We will clean it off to show that you have not accepted us. God is not happy with you. But listen! You should know that the kingdom of God has come very near.” ¹² One day God will punish the people from that town. Yes, he will punish them more than the people who lived in Sodom long ago.’^[c]

Some towns where people did not believe

¹³ Jesus then said, ‘You people in Chorazin, things will be bad for you! And things will be bad for you, people in Bethsaida. I have done great and powerful things in your cities. If I had done such great things in Tyre and in Sidon, the people there would have changed how they lived. They would have shown that they were sorry for their sins. They would have put on rough clothes. They would also have put ashes on their heads. ¹⁴ Yes, when God judges everyone, he will punish the people of Tyre and Sidon. But he will punish even more you people from Chorazin and Bethsaida. ¹⁵ And what will happen to you people in Capernaum? You think that God will lift you up to heaven, do you? No! He will throw you down to Hades, the place for dead people!’^[d]

¹⁶ Jesus then said to his disciples, ‘Whoever listens to you is also listening to me. Whoever does not accept you does not accept me. And whoever does not accept me does not accept my Father God, who sent me.’

The 72 disciples return

¹⁷ Later, the 72 disciples that Jesus had sent out returned to him. They were very happy. ‘Master,’ they said, ‘even bad spirits obey us. When we use your name, they do what we say.’

¹⁸ Jesus replied, ‘I saw the Devil himself fall from heaven like lightning. ¹⁹ Listen! I have given power to you. You will even stand on dangerous snakes and insects and you will have authority over all the power of the Devil. Nothing will hurt you. ²⁰ But do not be happy because you have authority over bad spirits. God has written your names in his book in heaven. That is why you should be happy.’

Jesus is very happy

²¹ At this moment, the Holy Spirit made Jesus very happy. He said, ‘Father, you rule over everything in heaven and on the earth! People that do not know many things now can understand your message. I thank you for this. But you have hidden these things from other people. Those people think that they understand everything. They think that they are wise. Yes, Father, this is how you wanted it to happen.’

²² Jesus then said, ‘My Father has given me authority over all things. Only the Father knows who I am, his Son. Only I know who the Father is, because I am his Son. I also choose to tell some people about him. Then they also know him.’

²³ Then Jesus turned and he spoke only to his disciples. He said to them, ‘Be happy because of the things that you are now able to see and understand. ²⁴ I tell you this: Many prophets and kings from a long time ago wanted to see these things. But they did not see the things that you are seeing. They wanted to hear the message that you are hearing. But they did not hear it.’

A story about a good man from Samaria

²⁵ A teacher of God's Law stood up. He wanted to see how Jesus would answer his question. So he asked Jesus, ‘Teacher, what must I do so that I can live with God for ever?’

²⁶ ‘What does God's Law say?’ Jesus asked. ‘What do you understand when you read it?’

²⁷ The man replied, ‘It says that we must love the Lord our God with all our mind and with all our strength. We must love him with all that we are and in all that we think. It also says that we must love other people as much as we love ourselves.’^[e]

²⁸ ‘You have told me the right answer,’ Jesus said. ‘If you do this, you will have true life with God.’

²⁹ But the man wanted to show that he had been right to ask a question. So he asked, ‘Who are the people near to me that I must love?’

³⁰ Jesus answered him with a story: ‘A man was going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho town. On the way, some men attacked him. They took away all his clothes and they hit him with sticks. He was almost dead when they left him. ³¹ But it happened that a priest from the temple was going down that road. He saw the man, who was lying there. But he walked past him on the other side of the road. ³² A Levite was also going down the road. He came to the place where the man was lying. He saw him. But he also walked past on the other side of the road.^[f]

³³ But then a man from Samaria was also travelling along the road. And he came to the place where the man was lying. When he saw him, he felt very sorry for him. ³⁴ He went across to him. He poured oil and wine on the places where he was bleeding.^[g] Then he tied those places with clean cloths. After that, he put the man on his own donkey to carry him. They arrived at a small hotel. He took the man in there and he was kind to him.^[h]

³⁵ The next day, the man from Samaria took out two silver coins from his purse.^[i] He gave the money to the man that was taking care of the hotel. “Be kind to this man for me,” he said. “This money may not be enough. When I return, I will pay you for any more that you have spent on him.” ’

³⁶ Then Jesus asked the teacher of God's Law a question. He said, ‘Three men saw the man that was lying on the road. Which of them showed love to him, like a real friend?’

³⁷ The teacher answered, ‘It was the man who was kind to him.’

Then Jesus said to him, ‘Yes. So you should go and do the same for other people.’

Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary

³⁸ Jesus and his disciples continued their journey. They arrived at a certain village. There, a woman called Martha asked Jesus to come into her home.^{[j] 39} Martha had a sister called Mary. Mary sat down near Jesus. She was listening to the things that he was teaching. ⁴⁰ But Martha was thinking to herself, ‘I cannot do all this work alone.’ So she went to Jesus. She said, ‘Master, my sister is not helping me with the work. She has left me to do it alone. You surely do not think that this is right! Tell her that she should help me!’

⁴¹ The Lord Jesus replied, ‘Martha, Martha, you have troubles in your mind about many things. ⁴² But only one thing is really important. That is what Mary has chosen to do. Nobody will take it away from her.’^[k]