M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

23 These are the last words of David:

⁸ These are the names of the Top Three—the most heroic men in David’s army: the first was Josheb-basshebeth from Tahchemon, known also as Adino, the Eznite. He once killed eight hundred men in one battle.

⁹ Next in rank was Eleazar, the son of Dodo and grandson of Ahohi. He was one of the three men who, with David, held back the Philistines that time when the rest of the Israeli army fled. ¹⁰ He killed the Philistines until his hand was too tired to hold his sword; and the Lord gave him a great victory. (The rest of the army did not return until it was time to collect the loot!)

^11-12 After him was Shammah, the son of Agee from Harar. Once during a Philistine attack, when all his men deserted him and fled, he stood alone at the center of a field of lentils and beat back the Philistines; and God gave him a great victory.

¹³ One time when David was living in the cave of Adullam and the invading Philistines were at the valley of Rephaim, three of the Thirty—the top-ranking officers of the Israeli army—went down at harvest time to visit him. ¹⁴ David was in the stronghold at the time, for Philistine marauders had occupied the nearby city of Bethlehem.

¹⁵ David remarked, “How thirsty I am for some of that good water in the city well!” (The well was near the city gate.)

¹⁶ So the three men broke through the Philistine ranks and drew water from the well and brought it to David. But he refused to drink it! Instead, he poured it out before the Lord.

¹⁷ “No, my God,” he exclaimed, “I cannot do it! This is the blood of these men who have risked their lives.”

^18-19 Of those three men, Abishai, the brother of Joab (son of Zeruiah), was the greatest. Once he took on three hundred of the enemy single-handed and killed them all. It was by such feats that he earned a reputation equal to the Three, though he was not actually one of them. But he was the greatest of the Thirty—the top-ranking officers of the army—and was their leader.

²⁰ There was also Benaiah (son of Jehoiada), a heroic soldier from Kabzeel. Benaiah killed two giants,^[b] sons of Ariel of Moab. Another time he went down into a pit and, despite the slippery snow on the ground, took on a lion that was caught there and killed it. ²¹ Another time, armed only with a staff, he killed an Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear; he wrenched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with it. ²² These were some of the deeds that gave Benaiah almost as much renown as the Top Three. ²³ He was one of the greatest of the Thirty, but was not actually one of the Top Three. And David made him chief of his bodyguard.

^24-39 Asahel, the brother of Joab, was also one of the Thirty. Others were:

3 Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has hypnotized you and cast an evil spell upon you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death as clearly as though I had waved a placard before you with a picture on it of Christ dying on the cross. ² Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by trying to keep the Jewish laws? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you heard about Christ and trusted him to save you. ³ Then have you gone completely crazy? For if trying to obey the Jewish laws never gave you spiritual life in the first place, why do you think that trying to obey them now will make you stronger Christians? ⁴ You have suffered so much for the Gospel. Now are you going to just throw it all overboard? I can hardly believe it!

⁵ I ask you again, does God give you the power of the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you as a result of your trying to obey the Jewish laws? No, of course not. It is when you believe in Christ and fully trust him.

⁶ Abraham had the same experience—God declared him fit for heaven only because he believed God’s promises. ⁷ You can see from this that the real children of Abraham are all the men of faith who truly trust in God.

^8-9 What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would save the Gentiles also, through their faith. God told Abraham about this long ago when he said, “I will bless those in every nation who trust in me as you do.” And so it is: all who trust in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received.

¹⁰ Yes, and those who depend on the Jewish laws to save them are under God’s curse, for the Scriptures point out very clearly, “Cursed is everyone who at any time breaks a single one of these laws that are written in God’s Book of the Law.” ¹¹ Consequently, it is clear that no one can ever win God’s favor by trying to keep the Jewish laws because God has said that the only way we can be right in his sight is by faith. As the prophet Habakkuk says it, “The man who finds life will find it through trusting God.” ¹² How different from this way of faith is the way of law, which says that a man is saved by obeying every law of God, without one slip. ¹³ But Christ has bought us out from under the doom of that impossible system by taking the curse for our wrongdoing upon himself. For it is written in the Scripture, “Anyone who is hanged on a tree is cursed” (as Jesus was hung upon a wooden cross^[a]).

¹⁴ Now God can bless the Gentiles, too, with this same blessing he promised to Abraham; and all of us as Christians can have the promised Holy Spirit through this faith.

¹⁵ Dear brothers, even in everyday life a promise made by one man to another, if it is written down and signed, cannot be changed. He cannot decide afterward to do something else instead.

¹⁶ Now, God gave some promises to Abraham and his Child. And notice that it doesn’t say the promises were to his children, as it would if all his sons—all the Jews—were being spoken of, but to his Child—and that, of course, means Christ. ¹⁷ Here’s what I am trying to say: God’s promise to save through faith—and God wrote this promise down and signed it—could not be canceled or changed four hundred and thirty years later when God gave the Ten Commandments. ¹⁸ If obeying those laws could save us, then it is obvious that this would be a different way of gaining God’s favor than Abraham’s way, for he simply accepted God’s promise.

¹⁹ Well then, why were the laws given? They were added after the promise was given, to show men how guilty they are of breaking God’s laws. But this system of law was to last only until the coming of Christ, the Child to whom God’s promise was made. (And there is this further difference. God gave his laws to angels to give to Moses, who then gave them to the people; ²⁰ but when God gave his promise to Abraham, he did it by himself alone, without angels or Moses as go-betweens.)

^21-22 Well then, are God’s laws and God’s promises against each other? Of course not! If we could be saved by his laws, then God would not have had to give us a different way to get out of the grip of sin—for the Scriptures insist we are all its prisoners. The only way out is through faith in Jesus Christ; the way of escape is open to all who believe him.

²³ Until Christ came we were guarded by the law, kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could believe in the coming Savior.

²⁴ Let me put it another way. The Jewish laws were our teacher and guide until Christ came to give us right standing with God through our faith. ²⁵ But now that Christ has come, we don’t need those laws any longer to guard us and lead us to him. ²⁶ For now we are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, ²⁷ and we who have been baptized into union with Christ are enveloped by him. ²⁸ We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free men or even merely men or women, but we are all the same—we are Christians; we are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And now that we are Christ’s we are the true descendants of Abraham, and all of God’s promises to him belong to us.

30 Another message from the Lord!

^2-3 “Son of dust, prophesy and say: The Lord God says, ‘Weep, for the terrible day is almost here; the day of the Lord; a day of clouds and gloom; a day of despair for the nations! ⁴ A sword shall fall on Egypt; the slain shall cover the ground. Her wealth is taken away, her foundations destroyed. The land of Cush has been ravished. ⁵ For Cush, Put, Lud, Arabia, and Libya, and all the countries leagued with them shall perish in that war.’”

⁶ For the Lord says: “All Egypt’s allies shall fall, and the pride of her power shall end. From Migdol to Syene they shall perish by the sword. ⁷ She shall be desolate, surrounded by desolate nations, and her cities shall be in ruins, surrounded by other ruined cities. ⁸ And they will know I am the Lord when I have set Egypt on fire and destroyed her allies. ⁹ At that time I will send swift messengers to bring panic to the Ethiopians; great terror shall befall them at that time of Egypt’s doom. This will all come true.”

¹⁰ For the Lord God says: “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, will destroy the multitudes of Egypt. ¹¹ He and his armies—the terror of the nations—are sent to demolish the land. They shall war against Egypt and cover the ground with the slain. ¹² I will dry up the Nile and sell the whole land to wicked men. I will destroy Egypt and everything in it, using foreigners to do it. I, the Lord, have spoken it.

¹³ “And I will smash the idols of Egypt and the images at Memphis, and there will be no king in Egypt; anarchy shall reign!

¹⁴ “The cities of Pathros along the upper Nile,^[a] Zoan, and Thebes shall lie in ruins by my hand. ¹⁵ And I will pour out my fury upon Pelusium, the strongest fortress of Egypt, and I will stamp out the people of Thebes. ¹⁶ Yes, I will set fire to Egypt; Pelusium will be racked with pain. Thebes will be torn apart; Memphis will be in daily terror. ¹⁷ The young men of Heliopolis and Bubastis shall die by the sword, and the women will be taken away as slaves. ¹⁸ When I come to break the power of Egypt, it will be a dark day for Tahpanhes too; a dark cloud will cover her, and her daughters will be taken away as captives. ¹⁹ And so I will greatly punish Egypt and they shall know I am the Lord.”

²⁰ A year later,^[b] around the middle of March of the eleventh year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, this message came to me:

²¹ “Son of dust, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh,^[c] king of Egypt, and it has not been set nor put into a cast to make it strong enough to hold a sword again. ²² For the Lord God says, I am against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and I will break both his arms—the strong one and the one that was broken before, and I will make his sword clatter to the ground. ²³ And I will banish the Egyptians to many lands. ²⁴ And I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon and place my sword in his hand. But I will break the arms of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he shall groan before the king of Babylon as one who has been wounded unto death. ²⁵ I will strengthen the hands of the king of Babylon, while the arms of Pharaoh fall useless to his sides. Yes, when I place my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he swings it over the land of Egypt, Egypt shall know I am the Lord. ²⁶ I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations; then they shall know I am the Lord.”

³⁸ Yet he was merciful and forgave their sins and didn’t destroy them all. Many and many a time he held back his anger. ³⁹ For he remembered that they were merely mortal men, gone in a moment like a breath of wind.

⁴⁰ Oh, how often they rebelled against him in those desert years and grieved his heart. ⁴¹ Again and again they turned away and tempted God to kill them, and limited the Holy One of Israel from giving them his blessings. ⁴² They forgot his power and love and how he had rescued them from their enemies; ⁴³ they forgot the plagues he sent upon the Egyptians in Tanis^[a]— ⁴⁴ how he turned their rivers into blood so that no one could drink, ⁴⁵ how he sent vast swarms of flies to fill the land, and how the frogs had covered all of Egypt!

⁴⁶ He gave their crops to caterpillars. Their harvest was consumed by locusts. ⁴⁷ He destroyed their grapevines and their sycamores with hail. ⁴⁸ Their cattle died in the fields, mortally wounded by huge hailstones from heaven. Their sheep were killed by lightning. ⁴⁹ He loosed on them the fierceness of his anger, sending sorrow and trouble. He dispatched against them a band of destroying angels. ⁵⁰ He gave free course to his anger and did not spare the Egyptians’ lives, but handed them over to plagues and sickness. ⁵¹ Then he killed the eldest son^[b] in each Egyptian family—he who was the beginning of its strength and joy.

⁵² But he led forth his own people like a flock, guiding them safely through the wilderness. ⁵³ He kept them safe, so they were not afraid. But the sea closed in upon their enemies and overwhelmed them. ⁵⁴ He brought them to the border of his land of blessing, to this land of hills he made for them. ⁵⁵ He drove out the nations occupying the land and gave each tribe of Israel its apportioned place as its home.

⁵⁶ Yet though he did all this for them, they still rebelled against the God above all gods and refused to follow his commands. ⁵⁷ They turned back from entering the Promised Land and disobeyed as their fathers had. Like a crooked arrow, they missed the target of God’s will. ⁵⁸ They made him angry by erecting idols and altars to other gods.

⁵⁹ When God saw their deeds, his wrath was strong and he despised his people. ⁶⁰ Then he abandoned his Tabernacle at Shiloh, where he had lived among mankind, ⁶¹ and allowed his Ark to be captured; he surrendered his glory into enemy hands. ⁶² He caused his people to be butchered because his anger was intense. ⁶³ Their young men were killed by fire, and their girls died before they were old enough to sing their wedding songs. ⁶⁴ The priests were slaughtered, and their widows died before they could even begin their lament. ⁶⁵ Then the Lord rose up as though awakening from sleep, and like a mighty man aroused by wine, ⁶⁶ he routed his enemies; he drove them back and sent them to eternal shame. ⁶⁷ But he rejected Joseph’s family, the tribe of Ephraim, ⁶⁸ and chose the tribe of Judah—and Mount Zion, which he loved. ⁶⁹ There he built his towering temple, solid and enduring as the heavens and the earth. ⁷⁰ He chose his servant David, taking him from feeding sheep ^71-72 and from following the ewes with lambs; God presented David to his people as their shepherd, and he cared for them with a true heart and skillful hands.