M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Covenant of Circumcision
17 When Abram was 99 years old, Adonai appeared to Abram, and He said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Continually walk before Me and you will be blameless. 2 My heart’s desire is to make My covenant between Me and you, and then I will multiply you exceedingly much.”
3 Abram fell on his face, and God spoke with him, saying, 4 “For My part, because My covenant is with you, you will be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer will your name be Abram, but your name will be Abraham, because I make you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 Yes, I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings will come forth from you. 7 Yes, I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, in order to be your God and your seed’s God after you. 8 I will give to you and to your seed after you the land where you are an outsider—the whole land of Canaan—as an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
9 God also said to Abraham, “As for you, My covenant you must keep, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. 10 This is My covenant that you must keep between Me and you and your seed after you: all your males must be circumcised. 11 You must be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and this will become a sign of the covenant between Me and you. 12 Also your eight-day-olds must be circumcised, every male, throughout your generations, including a house-born slave or a slave bought with money from any foreigner who is not of your seed. 13 Your house-born slave and your purchased slave must surely be circumcised. So My covenant will be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. 14 But the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin—that person will be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
15 God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her by the name Sarai. Rather, Sarah is her name. 16 And I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son from her. I will bless her and she will give rise to nations. Kings of the peoples will come from her.”
17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to his heart, “Will a son be born to a 100-year-old man? Or will Sarah—who is 90 years old—give birth?” 18 So Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live before you!”
19 But God said, “On the contrary, Sarah your wife will bear you a son and you must name him Isaac. So I will confirm My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his seed after him. 20 As for Ishmael, I have heard you. See, I have blessed him and I will make him fruitful, and I will multiply him very very much. He will father twelve princes and I will make him a great nation. 21 But My covenant will I establish with Isaac whom Sarah will bear to you at this set time next year.”
22 When He finished speaking with him, God went up from Abraham.
23 Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all of his house-born slaves and all his purchased slaves—every male among the men of Abraham’s house—and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskin on this very same day, just as God had spoken with him. 24 Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, 25 and his son Ishmael was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 26 On this very same day Abraham and Ishmael his son were circumcised. 27 Also all the men of his house, house-born slaves and slaves purchased from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.
Religious Leaders Demand Signs
16 Now the Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Yeshua, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven. 2 But He replied to them, “When evening comes, you say, ‘Fair weather coming, for the sky is red,’ 3 and in the morning, ‘Stormy weather today, for the sky is red and gloomy.’ You know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times! 4 An evil and adulterous generation clamors for a sign, yet no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”[a] And leaving them behind, He went away.
5 Now when the disciples came to the other side of the sea, they had forgotten to take bread. 6 “Watch out,” Yeshua said to them, “and beware of the hametz of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
7 And they began to discuss among themselves, saying, “We didn’t bring any bread.”
8 But knowing this, Yeshua said, “O you of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread? 9 You still don’t get it? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets of leftovers you gathered? 10 Or how about the seven loaves for the four thousand and all the baskets of leftovers you gathered? 11 How is it that you don’t understand that I wasn’t talking to you about bread? Now beware of the hametz of the Pharisees and Sadducees!” 12 Then they understood that He wasn’t talking about the hametz in the bread, but about the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
The Father Reveals His Son
13 When Yeshua came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
14 They answered, “Some say John the Immerser, others say Elijah, and still others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
15 He said, “But who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Yeshua said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven! 18 And I also tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My community[b]; and the gates of Sheol will not overpower it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will have been forbidden in heaven and what you permit on earth will have been permitted in heaven.” 20 Then He ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah.
First Prediction: Death and Resurrection
21 From that time on, Yeshua began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and ruling kohanim and Torah scholars, and be killed, and be raised on the third day.
22 Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Never, Master! This must never happen to You!”
23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but the things of men.”
24 Then Yeshua said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is about to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then ‘He will repay everyone according to his deeds.’ [c] 28 Amen, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
Attempts to Intimidate Nehemiah
6 Now it was reported to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and no breach remained in it—even though at that time I had not positioned the doors in the gates. 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent word to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono.”
But they were scheming to do me harm.
3 So I sent messengers to them saying, “I am doing an important work, so I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?”
4 They sent me the same message four times, and each time I returned a similar response to them. 5 But the fifth time Sanballat sent his young aide to me in this way, he had an open letter in his hand. 6 In it was written:
“It has been heard among the nations—and Geshem substantiates it—that you and the Jews are planning to revolt. That is why you are rebuilding the wall. Furthermore, according to these reports, you are to become their king 7 and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem saying, ‘There is a king in Judah.’ Now, the king is going to hear about these reports. So come now! Let us confer together.”
8 Then I sent a message to him, saying, “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are devising them from your own heart.”
9 For they were all trying to intimidate us, thinking, “Their hands will become weak from the work and it will not be done.”
So now, strengthen my hands!
10 Then I went to the house of Shemaiah, son of Delaiah, son of Mehetabel. He was confined to his home. He said, “Let us meet in the House of God, within the Temple. Let us shut the doors of the Temple, for they are coming to kill you. Indeed, they will come to kill you at night.”
11 But I said, “Should a man like me flee? Who in my position could go into the Temple and live? I will not go in.”
12 I recognized that God had not really sent him, for he had pronounced the prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. 13 He had been hired so that I might become so frightened that I would do this and thereby sin. Then they would give me a bad name in order to discredit me.
14 Remember, my God, Tobiah and Sanballat according to these works of theirs, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.
15 So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in just 52 days. 16 When all our enemies heard, all the surrounding nations were afraid and fell greatly in their own eyes, because they realized that this work had been accomplished by our God.
17 Also in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah and replies from Tobiah kept coming to them. 18 For many in Judah were under oath to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shecaniah son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berechiah. 19 Moreover, they kept telling me about his good deeds and then reporting my words to him. Also Tobiah sent letters to intimidate me.
16 Now Paul came to Derbe and Lystra. There was a disciple there named Timothy, son of a woman who was a Jewish believer and a Greek father, 2 who was well-spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. 3 Paul wanted this man to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him for the sake of the Jewish people in those places—for they all knew that his father was Greek.
4 As they were traveling through the cities, they were handing down the rulings that had been decided upon by the emissaries and elders in Jerusalem, for them to keep. 5 So Messiah’s communities were strengthened in the faith and kept increasing daily in number.
Going West to Macedonia
6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Ruach ha-Kodesh to speak the word in Asia. [a] 7 When they came to Mysia, they were trying to proceed into Bithynia, but the Ruach of Yeshua would not allow them. 8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas.
9 Now a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man from Macedonia was standing and pleading with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” 10 As soon as he had seen the vision, immediately we tried to go to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the Good News to them.
11 So we put out to sea from Troas and made a straight course for Samothrace, the next day on to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi—which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia as well as a Roman colony. We stayed in this city for several days.
13 On Yom Shabbat, we went outside the gate to the river, where we expected a place of prayer to be. We sat down and began speaking with the women who had gathered. 14 A woman named Lydia—a seller of purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, a God-fearer—was listening. The Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying.
15 When she was immersed, along with her household, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my house.” And she insisted.[b]
16 It so happened that as we were going to prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination, who was bringing her masters much profit from her fortune-telling. [c] 17 Following after Paul and us, she kept shouting, saying, “These men are servants of El Elyon, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” 18 She kept doing this for many days. But Paul was irritated and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Messiah Yeshua to come out of her!” And it came out of her that very moment.
19 But when her masters saw that the hope of profit was gone, they grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20 And when they brought them to the chief authorities, they said, “These men are throwing our city into an uproar! Being Jewish, 21 they advocate customs which are not permitted for us to accept or practice,[d] being Romans.”
22 Then the crowd joined in the attack on them. So the chief authorities ripped their clothes off them and commanded them to be beaten with rods. 23 After inflicting many blows on them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to guard them securely. 24 Having received this charge, he threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.[e]
Salvation for a Jailer’s Household
25 But about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a great earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. Immediately all the doors were unlocked, and everyone’s chains came loose.
27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Don’t harm yourself! We’re all here!”
29 The jailer called for lights and rushed in; and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 After he brought them out, he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31 They said, “Put your trust in the Lord Yeshua[f] and you will be saved—you and your household!”
32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him, along with everyone in his household. 33 He took them that very hour and washed their wounds, and at once he was immersed—he and all his household. 34 The jailer brought them to his house and set food before them, and he was overjoyed that he with his entire household had put their trust in God.
35 When day came, the chief authorities sent their police officers, saying, “Release those men.”
36 But the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The chief authorities have sent orders to release you. So come out now, and go in shalom.”
37 But Paul said to the officers, “They have beaten us publicly without a trial—men who are Roman citizens—and have thrown us into prison. And now they are sending us away secretly? No! Let them come themselves and lead us out!”
38 The police officers reported these words to the chief authorities. They became afraid when they heard they were Romans, 39 so they came and apologized to them. After they escorted them out, they kept begging them to leave the city. 40 When Paul and Silas went out of the prison, they visited Lydia’s house. And when they saw the brothers, they encouraged them and then departed.
Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society.