M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Remember the Lord

8 Carefully obey every command I give you today. Then you will live and grow in number, and you will enter and take the land the Lord promised your ancestors. ² Remember how the Lord your God has led you in the desert for these forty years, taking away your pride and testing you, because he wanted to know what was in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey his commands. ³ He took away your pride when he let you get hungry, and then he fed you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever seen. This was to teach you that a person does not live on bread alone, but by everything the Lord says. ⁴ During these forty years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell. ⁵ Know in your heart that the Lord your God corrects you as a parent corrects a child.

⁶ Obey the commands of the Lord your God, living as he has commanded you and respecting him. ⁷ The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with rivers and pools of water, with springs that flow in the valleys and hills, ⁸ a land that has wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey. ⁹ It is a land where you will have plenty of food, where you will have everything you need, where the rocks are iron, and where you can dig copper out of the hills.

¹⁰ When you have all you want to eat, then praise the Lord your God for giving you a good land. ¹¹ Be careful not to forget the Lord your God so that you fail to obey his commands, laws, and rules that I am giving to you today. ¹² When you eat all you want and build nice houses and live in them, ¹³ when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase, when you have more of everything, ¹⁴ then your heart will become proud. You will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. ¹⁵ He led you through the large and terrible desert that was dry and had no water, and that had poisonous snakes and stinging insects. He gave you water from a solid rock ¹⁶ and manna to eat in the desert. Manna was something your ancestors had never seen. He did this to take away your pride and to test you, so things would go well for you in the end. ¹⁷ You might say to yourself, “I am rich because of my own power and strength,” ¹⁸ but remember the Lord your God! It is he who gives you the power to become rich, keeping the agreement he promised to your ancestors, as it is today.

¹⁹ If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship them and bow down to them, I warn you today that you will be destroyed. ²⁰ Just as the Lord destroyed the other nations for you, you can be destroyed if you do not obey the Lord your God.

Safe in the Lord

The Assyrians Invade Judah

36 During Hezekiah’s fourteenth year as king, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the strong, walled cities of Judah and captured them. ² The king of Assyria sent out his field commander with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. When the commander came near the waterway from the upper pool on the road where people do their laundry, he stopped. ³ Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah went out to meet him. Eliakim son of Hilkiah was the palace manager, Shebna was the royal secretary, and Joah son of Asaph was the recorder.

⁴ The field commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah this:

“‘The great king, the king of Assyria, says: What can you trust in now? ⁵ You say you have battle plans and power for war, but your words mean nothing. Whom are you trusting for help so that you turn against me? ⁶ Look, you are depending on Egypt to help you, but Egypt is like a splintered walking stick. If you lean on it for help, it will stab your hand and hurt you. The king of Egypt will hurt all those who depend on him. ⁷ You might say, “We are depending on the Lord our God,” but Hezekiah destroyed the Lord’s altars and the places of worship. Hezekiah told Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship only at this one altar.”

⁸ “‘Now make an agreement with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses if you can find enough men to ride them. ⁹ You cannot defeat one of my master’s least important officers, so why do you depend on Egypt to give you chariots and horsemen? ¹⁰ I have not come to attack and destroy this country without an order from the Lord. The Lord himself told me to come to this country and destroy it.’”

¹¹ Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the field commander, “Please speak to us in the Aramaic language. We understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew, because the people on the city wall can hear you.”

¹² But the commander said, “My master did not send me to tell these things only to you and your king. He sent me to speak also to those people sitting on the wall who will have to eat their own dung and drink their own urine like you.”

¹³ Then the commander stood and shouted loudly in the Hebrew language, “Listen to what the great king, the king of Assyria says, ¹⁴ The king says you should not let Hezekiah fool you, because he can’t save you. ¹⁵ Don’t let Hezekiah talk you into trusting the Lord by saying, ‘The Lord will surely save us. This city won’t be handed over to the king of Assyria.’

¹⁶ “Don’t listen to Hezekiah. The king of Assyria says, ‘Make peace with me, and come out of the city to me. Then everyone will be free to eat the fruit from his own grapevine and fig tree and to drink water from his own well. ¹⁷ After that I will come and take you to a land like your own—a land with grain and new wine, bread and vineyards.’

¹⁸ “Don’t let Hezekiah fool you, saying, ‘The Lord will save us.’ Has a god of any other nation saved his people from the power of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? They did not save Samaria from my power. ²⁰ Not one of all the gods of these countries has saved his people from me. Neither can the Lord save Jerusalem from my power.”

²¹ The people were silent. They didn’t answer the commander at all, because King Hezekiah had ordered, “Don’t answer him.”

²² Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah tore their clothes to show how upset they were. (Eliakim son of Hilkiah was the palace manager, Shebna was the royal secretary, and Joah son of Asaph was the recorder.) The three men went to Hezekiah and told him what the field commander had said.

6 Then I watched while the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” ² I looked, and there before me was a white horse. The rider on the horse held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out, determined to win the victory.

³ When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” ⁴ Then another horse came out, a red one. Its rider was given power to take away peace from the earth and to make people kill each other, and he was given a big sword.

⁵ When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse, and its rider held a pair of scales in his hand. ⁶ Then I heard something that sounded like a voice coming from the middle of the four living creatures. The voice said, “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay, and do not damage the olive oil and wine!”

⁷ When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” ⁸ I looked, and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named death, and Hades^[a] was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill people by war, by starvation, by disease, and by the wild animals of the earth.

⁹ When the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been killed because they were faithful to the word of God and to the message they had received. ¹⁰ These souls shouted in a loud voice, “Holy and true Lord, how long until you judge the people of the earth and punish them for killing us?” ¹¹ Then each one of them was given a white robe and was told to wait a short time longer. There were still some of their fellow servants and brothers and sisters in the service of Christ who must be killed as they were. They had to wait until all of this was finished.

¹² Then I watched while the Lamb opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black like rough black cloth, and the whole moon became red like blood. ¹³ And the stars in the sky fell to the earth like figs falling from a fig tree when the wind blows. ¹⁴ The sky disappeared as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place.

¹⁵ Then the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the rich people, the powerful people, the slaves, and the free people hid themselves in caves and in the rocks on the mountains. ¹⁶ They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us. Hide us from the face of the One who sits on the throne and from the anger of the Lamb! ¹⁷ The great day for their anger has come, and who can stand against it?”