M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
King Solomon speaks to his people
1 David's son Solomon made himself a strong ruler over his kingdom.[a] The Lord his God was with Solomon, so that he became a great king.[b]
2 Solomon called all the people of Israel to come together. They included the army officers who had authority over 1,000 men, and those who had authority over 100 men. They also included the judges, the leaders in Israel and the leaders of families. 3 Then Solomon went with all those people to Gibeon town to worship God. The special tent that the Lord's servant Moses had made in the desert was there. It was the tent where God met with his people. 4 Before that, King David had brought God's Covenant Box from Kiriath-Jearim to Jerusalem. He had prepared a place for it in a tent there. 5 But the bronze altar that Bezalel had made was in Gibeon, in front of the Lord's tent. (Bezalel was the son of Uri, and the grandson of Hur.) So Solomon and the people went to meet the Lord there in Gibeon. 6 Solomon went up to the bronze altar which was in front of the Lord's special tent. He offered 1,000 burnt offerings on the altar to the Lord.
God meets with Solomon
7 That night, God showed himself to Solomon. God said, ‘Ask me to give you whatever you want.’
8 Solomon answered God, ‘You always showed your faithful love to my father David. Now you have chosen me to be king after him. 9 Now, Lord God, please do as you promised to my father David. You have chosen me to rule as king over a great nation with as many people as the dust on the ground. 10 So please give me wisdom and knowledge, so that I can be a good leader of these people. I will only be able to rule this great nation of your people if you do that for me.’
11 God said to Solomon, ‘I am pleased that you have not asked to have riches or many valuable things. You have not asked me to give you great honour or for me to punish your enemies with death. You have not asked for a long life. Instead you asked me to give you wisdom and knowledge to rule over my people that I have chosen you to rule as king. 12 Because of that, I will give to you wisdom and knowledge, as you asked. But I will also give you riches, valuable things and honour. You will have more of those than any king who has lived before you and more than any king who will live after you.’
13 Solomon left the special tent in Gibeon where God met with his people. He returned to Jerusalem. There he ruled over Israel as king.
Solomon buys horses and chariots
14 Solomon brought together many chariots and horses for his soldiers to ride. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses. He kept some of them in Jerusalem where he lived as king. He kept the others in cities that he had chosen for this. 15 While Solomon ruled as king, there was as much silver and gold in Jerusalem as stones! There was as much wood from cedar trees as there were fig trees that grew in the low hills in the west. 16 Solomon brought his horses from Egypt and from Kue. He sent traders to Kue to buy them for him. 17 They paid 600 pieces of silver for each chariot that they bought in Egypt. They paid 150 pieces of silver for each horse. They also sold chariots and horses to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Syria.[c]
Jesus is God's message to people
1 We have an important message to tell you. We want to tell you about the person who was already there before the beginning of the world. We have heard him speak. We have seen him with our own eyes. We watched him and we touched him. He is the Word that gives us life with God.[a]
2 He showed himself clearly when he lived on this earth. From long ago he was together with God the Father, and he lives for ever. We saw him and we are telling you what is true. He is the one who has shown himself to us. 3 We also want you to share this new life with us. We share this life with God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son. That is why we are telling you about everything that we have seen and heard. 4 We are writing to you so that together we all may be completely happy.
God is light
5 We are telling you the good news that Jesus Christ told to us. This is the message: God is completely good and clean. He is like light. There is nothing dark about him. 6 Do you say that you share in the life that God gives? If you say that, but if you still live in the dark, you are telling a lie. You are not living in God's true way. 7 But when we live in a right way, it is like living in the light. God is always in the light. So, if we live in the light, we share together in the life which God gives. And when Jesus, the Son of God, died on the cross, he saved us from all our sins. The blood of his sacrifice makes us clean.
8 If we say that we never do any wrong thing, we are deceiving ourselves. Even though we may think it is true, it is a lie. 9 Instead, we should agree that we have done wrong things and tell that to God. Then God will forgive us for our sins. He always does what he has promised to do. He always does what is right. He will forgive us and he will make us clean again, whatever bad things we may have done. 10 God says that all people have done wrong things. So, if we say that we have not done any wrong thing, we are saying that God tells lies. It shows that we have not accepted his message at all.
Israel's people are very bad, but Micah still believes God
7 I am very sad!
I am like someone who comes to trees with no fruit on them.
Other people have picked the fruit already.
So I am like those people who can only pick the last grapes.
Those are the grapes that other people leave behind.
Really, there are no grapes there to eat.
There are none of the first figs that I like so much.
2 There are no longer any people here who obey God.
There are no good, honest people.
Everyone is waiting to kill someone else.
They are all like hunters, who try to catch each other.
3 They know very well how to work together to do bad things.
Rulers demand gifts and judges ask for money.[a]
Powerful bad people always get what they want.
All these people work together to do what is bad.
4 The best of them are dangerous like wild plants with thorns.[b]
The most honest of them are worse than thorn bushes.
The bad time that your prophets told you about is coming.
Soon God will punish you,
and you will be confused.
5 Do not believe anyone, even somebody that you know well.
You cannot be sure that your friend will always be honest with you.
Be careful what you say to your wife.
Be careful even when you are hugging her.
6 Sons think that their fathers are fools.
And daughters refuse to obey their mothers.
Wives quarrel with their husbands' mothers.
A man's enemies are the people who live in his own house now.
7 But as for me, I will watch for what the Lord will do.
I will wait for God, who saves me.
I know that he hears me.
Israel's enemies will be ashamed
8 My enemy, do not be happy because I am in trouble.[c]
I have fallen down, but I will get up.
I am in the dark, but the Lord will be a light to me.
9 I have not obeyed the Lord,
so he is angry with me.
He will continue to punish me,
until the time when he speaks for me.
Then he will make things right for me.
He will bring me out into the light.
He always does what is really right.
And I will see that then.
10 ‘Why does the Lord your God not help you?’ my enemies say to me.
They will see what God does for me.
Then they will be very ashamed.
And I will see the bad things that happen to them.
Soon other people will crush them and beat them.
Then they will be like wet ground in the streets under people's feet.
Jerusalem will be great again
11 But the time will come for you to build the walls of your cities again.
You will make the borders of your country much wider then.
12 At that time many of Assyria's people and Egypt's people will come to you.
People will come to you from the countries between Egypt and the River Euphrates.
They will come to you from all over the earth,
from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
13 The other parts of the earth will become sad places where nobody lives.
God will destroy them because of the people who live there.
Those people have done what is bad.
Micah talks to God
14 Rule us and lead us, Lord.
You are like a man who leads his sheep.
He uses a strong stick to lead them.
We are your own special people.
We are like a group of sheep that lives by itself in a forest.
There is good grass all round them.
Let your sheep eat grass in Bashan and Gilead,
as they did a long time ago.[d]
15 Lord, you did great things long ago,
when you brought us out of the land of Egypt.
Do great things like that again.
16 The people in other countries will see what you do.
They will understand that they are not really powerful.
So then they will be ashamed.
They will be like deaf people and dumb people.
17 They will be like snakes that move along the ground.
They will be afraid and they will eat dust like snakes.[e]
They will come carefully out of their safe places,
because they are afraid of you, the Lord our God.
18 No other god is like you.
You chose us to be your people.
And you decide not to remember what we have done wrong.
Not many of your people remain and we have done bad things.
But you choose to forget those bad things.
You will not always be angry,
because you want very much to be kind.
19 You like to be kind because you love us.
You will remove everything that we have done wrong.
You will crush those bad things.
You will throw all of them into the deep sea.
20 You will continue to be kind to us,
because we are Jacob's and Abraham's people.[f]
That is what you promised to our grandfathers a long time ago.
A story about a man who thought carefully
16 Jesus told another story to his disciples: ‘A rich man had a servant who worked for him. The servant took care of the money and things that belonged to the man. Then some people told the rich man that his servant was wasting his master's things. 2 So the master sent someone to bring his servant to him. He said to his servant, “I am hearing bad stories about you. So write down everything that you have done with my money and my things. Then you must stop working for me.”
3 “I must think about what I can do,” the servant said to himself. “My master will not let me work for him any longer. I am not strong enough to dig in the ground. I would be ashamed to ask other people for money. 4 I must stop working for my master. But I know what I can do so that people will then accept me into their homes.”
5 Many people had a debt that they had not paid back to the master. So the servant told those people to come to him. He asked the first man, “How big is your debt to my master?” 6 The man replied, “I have to give him 100 barrels of oil.”[a] The servant said to him, “Here is the paper with your debt written down on it. Take the paper. Sit down now and write 50 barrels there.”[b]
7 He asked the next man, “How big is your debt to my master?” The man replied, “I have to give him 100 baskets of wheat.” The servant replied, “Here is the paper with your debt written down on it. Take the paper and write 80 baskets.” ’[c]
8 Jesus then said, ‘The servant in the story was not honest. But his master spoke well about what he had done. It would help the servant later in his life. People that do not obey God think carefully. They know how to do well with people who are like themselves. But people who live in God's light often think less carefully. 9 So I tell you this. People may get money in wrong ways. But you should use it to do good to those who need help. Then they will be your friends. You will die, one day. Then those people will be happy to see you in that place where people live for all time.
10 If you can trust a person with a very small thing, you can also trust him with bigger things. And if you cannot trust a person with a very small thing, you cannot trust him with big things. 11 So if people cannot trust you with money in this world, nobody will trust you with really valuable things. 12 And if people cannot trust you with other people's things, nobody will give you things for yourself.
13 A slave cannot work for two masters at the same time. Maybe he will hate one of the masters, but he will love the other one. Or he will work well for one master, but he will think bad things about the other one. God and money are like different masters. You cannot work for both of them.’
14 The Pharisees heard all this. They loved money very much, so they laughed at Jesus. They said to him, ‘You are wrong.’ 15 Jesus replied, ‘You are happy when people like you. You want them to think that you are good people. But God sees inside you. He knows what you are thinking. The things that many people think are valuable are not valuable to God. He hates those things.’[d]
16 Jesus then said, ‘The books of God's Law and God's prophets spoke God's message until John the Baptist came. Since then, God's servants tell people the good news about the kingdom of God. Everyone is now trying very much to get into that kingdom. 17 But this does not mean that anyone can destroy God's Law. One day, the earth and the sky will finish. But until that time, nobody can remove even a small thing from God's Law.
18 A man must not send his wife away and then marry another woman. If he does that, it is the same as if he had sex with another man's wife. Also, if a woman has left her husband, another man must not marry her. That is the same as if he had sex with another man's wife.’
Jesus tells a story about a rich man and a poor man
19 Jesus then said, ‘At one time, there was a rich man who wore very expensive clothes. This rich man ate big meals every day. 20 There was also a poor man called Lazarus. He had sores all over his body. He lay outside the gate of the rich man. 21 He was very hungry. He wanted to eat the bits of food that the rich man threw away. Even the dogs came and they tasted the sores on his body. 22 Then Lazarus died and God's angels carried him away. They put him at the side of Abraham in heaven. The rich man then also died and his family buried him in the ground. 23 He went to Hades, the place for dead people. He was in a lot of pain there. He saw Abraham far away in heaven. He also saw Lazarus at Abraham's side. 24 So he shouted out, “Father Abraham, please be kind to me. Please send Lazarus here to help me. I am in great pain because I am in a fire that burns me. Let him put his finger into some water. Then he can use the water to make my mouth cool.”
25 Abraham replied, “My child, remember the time when you were alive on earth. Remember what happened then. You had many good things, and Lazarus had many bad things. Now I am taking care of Lazarus, and you are in pain. 26 But that is not everything. Between you and us, there is a big hole. It is wide and long and deep. There is a reason why that hole is there. Nobody can cross from here to where you are. And nobody can cross from where you are to come here.”
27 The rich man said, “If that is true, father Abraham, please send Lazarus to my family. 28 I have five brothers that are still alive. He can tell them not to do the same things as I did. Then they will not also come here when they die. They will not be in great pain, as I am.”
29 Abraham replied, “They have the books that Moses and God's prophets wrote. Your family should read them and do what they say.”[e]
30 The rich man said, “That is not enough, father Abraham. But if someone goes to them from among the dead people, they will listen. Then they will turn away from the wrong things that they do.”
31 But Abraham said to him, “They do not listen to what Moses and God's prophets have said. So they will not believe God's message even if someone comes back from among the dead people.” ’[f]
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