M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
20 The Lord will send you curses, confusion, and punishment in everything you do. You will be destroyed and suddenly ruined because you did wrong when you left him. 21 The Lord will give you terrible diseases and destroy you from the land you are going to take. 22 The Lord will punish you with disease, fever, swelling, heat, lack of rain, plant diseases, and mildew until you die. 23 The sky above will be like bronze, and the ground below will be like iron.[a] 24 The Lord will turn the rain into dust and sand, which will fall from the skies until you are destroyed.
25 The Lord will help your enemies defeat you. You will attack them from one direction, but you will run from them in seven directions. And you will become a thing of horror among all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your dead bodies will be food for all the birds and wild animals, and there will be no one to scare them away. 27 The Lord will punish you with boils like those the Egyptians had. You will have bad growths, sores, and itches that can’t be cured. 28 The Lord will give you madness, blindness, and a confused mind. 29 You will have to feel around in the daylight like a blind person. You will fail in everything you do. People will hurt you and steal from you every day, and no one will save you.
30 You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will force her to have sexual relations with him. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not get its grapes. 31 Your ox will be killed before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away from you, and it will not be brought back. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will save you. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will grow tired looking for them every day, but there will be nothing you can do. 33 People you don’t know will eat the crops your land and hard work have produced. You will be mistreated and abused all your life. 34 The things you see will cause you to go mad. 35 The Lord will give you sore boils on your knees and legs that cannot be cured, and they will go from the soles of your feet to the tops of your heads.
36 The Lord will send you and your king away to a nation neither you nor your ancestors know, where you will serve other gods made of wood and stone. 37 You will become a hated thing to the nations where the Lord sends you; they will laugh at you and make fun of you.
38 You will plant much seed in your field, but your harvest will be small, because locusts will eat the crop. 39 You will plant vineyards and work hard in them, but you will not pick the grapes or drink the wine, because the worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees in all your land, but you will not get any olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees. 41 You will have sons and daughters, but you will not be able to keep them, because they will be taken captive. 42 Locusts will destroy all your trees and crops.
43 The foreigners who live among you will get stronger and stronger, and you will get weaker and weaker. 44 Foreigners will lend money to you, but you will not be able to lend to them. They will be like the head, and you will be like the tail.
45 All these curses will come upon you. They will chase you and catch you and destroy you, because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep the commands and laws he gave you. 46 The curses will be signs and miracles to you and your descendants forever. 47 You had plenty of everything, but you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a pure heart, 48 so you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, naked, and poor, and the Lord will put a load on you until he has destroyed you.
The Curse of an Enemy Nation
49 The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the world, and it will swoop down like an eagle. You won’t understand their language, 50 and they will look mean. They will not respect old people or feel sorry for the young. 51 They will eat the calves from your herds and the harvest of your field, and you will be destroyed. They will not leave you any grain, new wine or oil, or any calves from your herds or lambs from your flocks. You will be ruined. 52 That nation will surround and attack all your cities. You trust in your high, strong walls, but they will fall down. That nation will surround all your cities everywhere in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
53 Your enemy will surround you. Those people will make you starve so that you will eat your own babies, the bodies of the sons and daughters the Lord your God gave you. 54 Even the most gentle and kind man among you will become cruel to his brother, his wife whom he loves, and his children who are still alive. 55 He will not even give them any of the flesh of his children he is eating, because it will be all he has left. Your enemy will surround you and make you starve in all your cities. 56 The most gentle and kind woman among you, so gentle and kind she would hardly even walk on the ground, will be cruel to her husband whom she loves and to her son and daughter. 57 She will give birth to a baby, but she will plan to eat the baby and what comes after the birth itself. She will eat them secretly while the enemy surrounds the city. Those people will make you starve in all your cities.
58 Be careful to obey everything in these teachings that are written in this book. You must respect the glorious and wonderful name of the Lord your God, 59 or the Lord will give terrible diseases to you and your descendants. You will have long and serious diseases, and long and miserable sicknesses. 60 He will give you all the diseases of Egypt that you dread, and the diseases will stay with you. 61 The Lord will also give you every disease and sickness not written in this Book of the Teachings, until you are destroyed. 62 You people may have outnumbered the stars, but only a few of you will be left, because you did not obey the Lord your God. 63 Just as the Lord was once happy with you and gave you good things and made you grow in number, so then the Lord will be happy to ruin and destroy you, and you will be removed from the land you are entering to take as your own.
64 Then the Lord will scatter you among the nations—from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve other gods of wood and stone, gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. 65 You will have no rest among those nations and no place that is yours. The Lord will make your mind worried, your sight weak, and your soul sad. 66 You will live with danger and be afraid night and day. You will not be sure that you will live. 67 In the morning you will say, “I wish it were evening,” and in the evening you will say, “I wish it were morning.” Terror will be in your heart, and the things you have seen will scare you. 68 The Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, even though I, Moses, said you would never go back to Egypt. And there you will try to sell yourselves as slaves to your enemies, but no one will buy you.
25 I am about to die.
Give me life, as you have promised.
26 I told you about my life, and you answered me.
Teach me your demands.
27 Help me understand your orders.
Then I will think about your miracles.
28 I am sad and tired.
Make me strong again as you have promised.
29 Don’t let me be dishonest;
have mercy on me by helping me obey your teachings.
30 I have chosen the way of truth;
I have obeyed your laws.
31 I hold on to your rules.
Lord, do not let me be disgraced.
32 I will quickly obey your commands,
because you have made me happy.
33 Lord, teach me your demands,
and I will keep them until the end.
34 Help me understand, so I can keep your teachings,
obeying them with all my heart.
35 Lead me in the path of your commands,
because that makes me happy.
36 Make me want to keep your rules
instead of wishing for riches.
37 Keep me from looking at worthless things.
Let me live by your word.
38 Keep your promise to me, your servant,
so you will be respected.
39 Take away the shame I fear,
because your laws are good.
40 How I want to follow your orders.
Give me life because of your goodness.
41 Lord, show me your love,
and save me as you have promised.
42 I have an answer for people who insult me,
because I trust what you say.
43 Never keep me from speaking your truth,
because I depend on your fair laws.
44 I will obey your teachings
forever and ever.
45 So I will live in freedom,
because I want to follow your orders.
46 I will discuss your rules with kings
and will not be ashamed.
47 I enjoy obeying your commands,
which I love.
48 I praise your commands, which I love,
and I think about your demands.
God Gives What Is Good
55 The Lord says, “All you who are thirsty,
come and drink.
Those of you who do not have money,
come, buy and eat!
Come buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend your money on something that is not real food?
Why work for something that doesn’t really satisfy you?
Listen closely to me, and you will eat what is good;
your soul will enjoy the rich food that satisfies.
3 Come to me and listen;
listen to me so you may live.
I will make an agreement with you that will last forever.
I will give you the blessings I promised to David.
4 I made David a witness of my power for all nations,
a ruler and commander of many nations.
5 You will call for nations that you don’t yet know.
And these nations that do not know you will run to you
because of the Lord your God,
because of the Holy One of Israel who honors you.”
6 So you should look for the Lord before it is too late;
you should call to him while he is near.
7 The wicked should stop doing wrong,
and they should stop their evil thoughts.
They should return to the Lord so he may have mercy on them.
They should come to our God, because he will freely forgive them.
8 The Lord says, “My thoughts are not like your thoughts.
Your ways are not like my ways.
9 Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
10 Rain and snow fall from the sky
and don’t return without watering the ground.
They cause the plants to sprout and grow,
making seeds for the farmer
and bread for the people.
11 The same thing is true of the words I speak.
They will not return to me empty.
They make the things happen that I want to happen,
and they succeed in doing what I send them to do.
12 “So you will go out with joy
and be led out in peace.
The mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the trees in the fields will clap their hands.
13 Large cypress trees will grow where thornbushes were.
Myrtle trees will grow where weeds were.
These things will be a reminder of the Lord’s promise,
and this reminder will never be destroyed.”
The Work of John the Baptist
3 About that time John the Baptist began preaching in the desert area of Judea. 2 John said, “Change your hearts and lives because the kingdom of heaven is near.” 3 John the Baptist is the one Isaiah the prophet was talking about when he said:
“This is a voice of one
who calls out in the desert:
‘Prepare the way for the Lord.
Make the road straight for him.’” Isaiah 40:3
4 John’s clothes were made from camel’s hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food, he ate locusts and wild honey. 5 Many people came from Jerusalem and Judea and all the area around the Jordan River to hear John. 6 They confessed their sins, and he baptized them in the Jordan River.
7 Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to the place where John was baptizing people. When John saw them, he said, “You are snakes! Who warned you to run away from God’s coming punishment? 8 Do the things that show you really have changed your hearts and lives. 9 And don’t think you can say to yourselves, ‘Abraham is our father.’ I tell you that God could make children for Abraham from these rocks. 10 The ax is now ready to cut down the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.[a]
11 “I baptize you with water to show that your hearts and lives have changed. But there is one coming after me who is greater than I am, whose sandals I am not good enough to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 He will come ready to clean the grain, separating the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into his barn, but he will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out.”[b]
Jesus Is Baptized by John
13 At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River and wanted John to baptize him. 14 But John tried to stop him, saying, “Why do you come to me to be baptized? I need to be baptized by you!”
15 Jesus answered, “Let it be this way for now. We should do all things that are God’s will.” So John agreed to baptize Jesus.
16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he came up out of the water. Then heaven opened, and he saw God’s Spirit coming down on him like a dove. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love, and I am very pleased with him.”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.