M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

19 ^1-3 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Here is another of my laws: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, one that has never been yoked. Give her to Eleazar the priest and he shall take her outside the camp and someone shall kill her as he watches. ⁴ Eleazar shall take some of her blood upon his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tabernacle. ⁵ Then someone shall burn the heifer as he watches—her hide, meat, blood, and dung. ⁶ Eleazar shall take cedar wood and hyssop branches and scarlet thread, and throw them into the burning pile.

⁷ “Then he must wash his clothes, and bathe, and afterwards return to the camp and be ceremonially defiled until the evening. ⁸ And the one who burns the animal must wash his clothes and bathe, and he too shall be defiled until evening. ⁹ Then someone who is not ceremonially defiled shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and place them in some purified place outside the camp, where they shall be kept for the people of Israel as a source of water for the purification ceremonies, for removal of sin. ¹⁰ And the one who gathers up the ashes of the heifer must wash his clothes and be defiled until evening; this is a permanent law for the benefit of the people of Israel and any foreigners living among them.

¹¹ “Anyone who touches a dead human body shall be defiled for seven days, ¹² and must purify himself the third and seventh days with water run through the ashes of the red heifer^[a]; then he will be purified; but if he does not do this on the third day, he will continue to be defiled even after the seventh day. ¹³ Anyone who touches a dead person and does not purify himself in the manner specified has defiled the Tabernacle of the Lord, and shall be excommunicated from Israel. The cleansing water was not sprinkled upon him, so the defilement continues.

¹⁴ “When a man dies in a tent, these are the various regulations: Everyone who enters the tent, and those who are in it at the time, shall be defiled seven days. ¹⁵ Any container in the tent without a lid over it is defiled.

¹⁶ “If someone out in a field touches the corpse of someone who has been killed in battle or who has died in any other way, or if he even touches a bone or a grave, he shall be defiled seven days. ¹⁷ To become purified again, ashes from the red heifer sin offering^[b] are to be added to spring water in a kettle. ¹⁸ Then a person who is not defiled shall take hyssop branches and dip them into the water and sprinkle the water upon the tent and upon all the pots and pans in the tent, and upon anyone who has been defiled by being in the tent, or by touching a bone, or touching someone who has been killed or is otherwise dead, or has touched a grave. ¹⁹ This shall take place on the third and seventh days; then the defiled person must wash his clothes and bathe himself, and that evening he will be out from under the defilement.

²⁰ “But anyone who is defiled and doesn’t purify himself shall be excommunicated, for he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord, and the water to cleanse him has not been sprinkled upon him; so he remains defiled. ²¹ This is a permanent law. The man who sprinkles the water must afterwards wash his clothes; and anyone touching the water shall be defiled until evening. ²² And anything a defiled person touches shall be defiled until evening.”

56 ^1-2 Lord, have mercy on me; all day long the enemy troops press in. So many are proud to fight against me; how they long to conquer me.

^3-4 But when I am afraid, I will put my confidence in you. Yes, I will trust the promises of God. And since I am trusting him, what can mere man do to me? ⁵ They are always twisting what I say. All their thoughts are how to harm me. ⁶ They meet together to perfect their plans; they hide beside the trail, listening for my steps, waiting to kill me. ⁷ They expect to get away with it. Don’t let them, Lord. In anger cast them to the ground.

⁸ You have seen me tossing and turning through the night. You have collected all my tears and preserved them in your bottle! You have recorded every one in your book.

⁹ The very day I call for help, the tide of battle turns. My enemies flee! This one thing I know: God is for me! ^10-11 I am trusting God—oh, praise his promises! I am not afraid of anything mere man can do to me! Yes, praise his promises. ¹² I will surely do what I have promised, Lord, and thank you for your help. ¹³ For you have saved me from death and my feet from slipping, so that I can walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

57 O God, have pity, for I am trusting you! I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until this storm is past. ² I will cry to the God of heaven who does such wonders for me. ³ He will send down help from heaven to save me because of his love and his faithfulness. He will rescue me from these liars who are so intent upon destroying me. ⁴ I am surrounded by fierce lions—hotheads whose teeth are sharp as spears and arrows. Their tongues are like swords. ⁵ Lord, be exalted above the highest heavens! Show your glory high above the earth. ⁶ My enemies have set a trap for me. Frantic fear grips me. They have dug a pitfall in my path. But look! They themselves have fallen into it!

⁷ O God, my heart is quiet and confident. No wonder I can sing your praises! ⁸ Rouse yourself, my soul! Arise, O harp and lyre! Let us greet the dawn with song! ⁹ I will thank you publicly throughout the land. I will sing your praises among the nations. ¹⁰ Your kindness and love are as vast as the heavens. Your faithfulness is higher than the skies.

¹¹ Yes, be exalted, O God, above the heavens. May your glory shine throughout the earth.

8 Again the Lord sent me a message: “Make a large signboard and write on it the birth announcement of the son I am going to give you. Use capital letters! His name will be Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means ‘Your enemies will soon be destroyed.’”^{[a] 2} I asked Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, both known as honest men, to watch me as I wrote so they could testify that I had written it before the child was even on the way.^{[b] 3} Then I had sexual intercourse with my wife and she conceived and bore me a son. And the Lord said, “Call him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. ⁴ This name prophesies that within a couple of years, before this child is even old enough to say ‘Daddy’ or ‘Mommy,’ the king of Assyria will invade both Damascus and Samaria and carry away their riches.”

⁵ Then the Lord spoke to me again and said:

⁶ “Since the people of Jerusalem are planning to refuse my gentle care^[c] and are enthusiastic about asking King Rezin and King Pekah to come and aid them, ^7-8 therefore I will overwhelm my people with Euphrates’ mighty flood; the king of Assyria and all his mighty armies will rage against them. This flood will overflow all its channels and sweep into your land of Judah, O Immanuel, submerging it from end to end.”

^9-10 Do your worst, O Syria and Israel,^[d] our enemies, but you will not succeed—you will be shattered. Listen to me, all you enemies of ours: Prepare for war against us—and perish! Yes! Perish! Call your councils of war, develop your strategies, prepare your plans of attacking us, and perish! For God is with us.

¹¹ The Lord has said in strongest terms: Do not under any circumstances go along with the plans of Judah to surrender to Syria and Israel. ¹² Don’t let people call you a traitor for staying true to God. Don’t you panic as so many of your neighbors are doing when they think of Syria and Israel attacking you. ¹³ Don’t fear anything except the Lord of the armies of heaven! If you fear him, you need fear nothing else. ^14-15 He will be your safety; but Israel and Judah have refused his care and thereby stumbled against the Rock of their salvation and lie fallen and crushed beneath it: God’s presence among them has endangered them! ¹⁶ Write down all these things I am going to do, says the Lord, and seal them up for the future. Entrust them to some godly man to pass on down to godly men of future generations.

¹⁷ I will wait for the Lord to help us, though he is hiding now. My only hope is in him. ¹⁸ I and the children God has given me have symbolic names that reveal the plans of the Lord of heaven’s armies for his people: Isaiah means “Jehovah will save (his people),” Shear-jashub means “A remnant shall return,” and Maher-shalal-hash-baz means “Your enemies will soon be destroyed.” ¹⁹ So why are you trying to find out the future by consulting witches and mediums? Don’t listen to their whisperings and mutterings. Can the living find out the future from the dead? Why not ask your God?

²⁰ “Check these witches’ words against the Word of God!” he says. “If their messages are different than mine, it is because I have not sent them; for they have no light or truth in them. ²¹ My people will be led away captive, stumbling, weary and hungry. And because they are hungry, they will rave and shake their fists at heaven and curse their King and their God. ²² Wherever they look there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair. And they will be thrust out into the darkness.”

9 Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair shall not go on forever. Though soon the land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be under God’s contempt and judgment, yet in the future these very lands, Galilee and northern Transjordan, where lies the road to the sea, will be filled with glory. ² The people who walk in darkness shall see a great Light—a Light that will shine on all those who live in the land of the shadow of death. ³ For Israel will again be great, filled with joy like that of reapers when the harvesttime has come, and like that of men dividing up the plunder they have won. ⁴ For God will break the chains that bind his people and the whip that scourges them, just as he did when he destroyed the vast host of the Midianites by Gideon’s little band. ⁵ In that glorious day of peace there will no longer be the issuing of battle gear; no more the bloodstained uniforms of war; all such will be burned.

⁶ For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. These will be his royal titles: “Wonderful,” “Counselor,” “The Mighty God,” “The Everlasting Father,” “The Prince of Peace.” ⁷ His ever-expanding, peaceful government will never end. He will rule with perfect fairness and justice from the throne of his father David. He will bring true justice and peace to all the nations of the world. This is going to happen because the Lord of heaven’s armies has dedicated himself to do it!

2 Dear brothers, how can you claim that you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, if you show favoritism to rich people and look down on poor people?

² If a man comes into your church dressed in expensive clothes and with valuable gold rings on his fingers, and at the same moment another man comes in who is poor and dressed in threadbare clothes, ³ and you make a lot of fuss over the rich man and give him the best seat in the house and say to the poor man, “You can stand over there if you like or else sit on the floor”—well, ⁴ judging a man by his wealth shows that you are guided by wrong motives.

⁵ Listen to me, dear brothers: God has chosen poor people to be rich in faith, and the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, for that is the gift God has promised to all those who love him. ⁶ And yet, of the two strangers, you have despised the poor man. Don’t you realize that it is usually the rich men who pick on you and drag you into court? ⁷ And all too often they are the ones who laugh at Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear.

⁸ Yes indeed, it is good when you truly obey our Lord’s command, “You must love and help your neighbors just as much as you love and take care of yourself.” ⁹ But you are breaking this law of our Lord’s when you favor the rich and fawn over them; it is sin.

¹⁰ And the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is. ¹¹ For the God who said you must not marry a woman who already has a husband also said you must not murder, so even though you have not broken the marriage laws by committing adultery, but have murdered someone, you have entirely broken God’s laws and stand utterly guilty before him.

¹² You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what Christ wants you to. So watch what you do and what you think; ¹³ for there will be no mercy to those who have shown no mercy. But if you have been merciful, then God’s mercy toward you will win out over his judgment against you.

¹⁴ Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, ¹⁶ and you say to him, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty,” and then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do?

¹⁷ So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.

¹⁸ But someone may well argue, “You say the way to God is by faith alone, plus nothing; well, I say that good works are important too, for without good works you can’t prove whether you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith by the way I act.”

¹⁹ Are there still some among you who hold that “only believing” is enough? Believing in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe this too—so strongly that they tremble in terror! ²⁰ Fool! When will you ever learn that “believing” is useless without doing what God wants you to? Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.

²¹ Don’t you remember that even our father Abraham was declared good because of what he did when he was willing to obey God, even if it meant offering his son Isaac to die on the altar? ²² You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to; his faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions, his good deeds. ²³ And so it happened just as the Scriptures say, that Abraham trusted God, and the Lord declared him good in God’s sight, and he was even called “the friend of God.” ²⁴ So you see, a man is saved by what he does, as well as by what he believes.

²⁵ Rahab, the prostitute, is another example of this. She was saved because of what she did when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. ²⁶ Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds.