M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Covenant blessings

26 You must not make any idols, and do not set up any divine image or sacred pillar. You must not place any carved^[a] stone in your land, bowing down to it, because I am the Lord your God. ² You must keep my sabbaths and respect my sanctuary; I am the Lord.

³ If you live according to my rules, keep my commands, and do them, ⁴ I will give you rain at the proper time, the land will produce its yield, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing season will last until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will last until planting time. You will eat your fill of food and live securely in your land. ⁶ I will grant peace in the land so that you can lie down without anyone frightening you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through it. ⁷ You will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you in battle. ⁸ Five of you will chase away a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase away ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you in battle. ⁹ I will turn my face to you, will make you fruitful and numerous, and will keep my covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will still be eating the previous year’s harvest when the time will come to clear it out to make room for the new! ¹¹ I will place my dwelling^[b] among you, and I will not despise you. ¹² I will walk around among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people. ¹³ I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt’s land—who brought you out from being Egypt’s slaves. I broke your bonds and made you stand up straight.

Covenant curses

¹⁴ But if you do not obey me and do not carry out all these commands— ¹⁵ if you reject my rules and despise my regulations, not doing all my commands and breaking my covenant— ¹⁶ then I will do the following to you:

I will bring horrific things:^[c] wasting diseases and fevers that make the eyes fail and drain life away.

You will plant seed for no reason because your enemies will eat the food.

¹⁷ I will turn my face against you: you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you; and you will run away even when no one is chasing you.

¹⁸ If, despite all that, you still do not obey me, I will punish you for your sins seven more times: ¹⁹ I will destroy your prideful power. I will turn your sky to iron and your land to bronze ²⁰ so that your strength will be spent for no reason: your land will not produce its yield, and the trees of the land won’t produce their fruit.

²¹ If you continue to oppose me and are unwilling to obey me, I will strike you for your sins seven more times: ²² I will send wild animals against you, and they will kill your children and destroy your livestock. They will make you so few in number that your roads will seem deserted.

²³ If, despite these things, you still do not accept my discipline and continue to oppose me, ²⁴ then I will continue to oppose you. I will strike you for your sins seven more times: ²⁵ I will bring the sword against you, avenging the breaking of the covenant.^[d] If you retreat into your cities, I will send a plague on you, and you will be handed over to the enemy. ²⁶ When I destroy your food supply, ten women will bake bread in a single oven, and they will ration out bread by weight. You will eat but will never get full.

²⁷ If, despite all this, you still do not obey me and continue to oppose me, ²⁸ then I will continue to oppose you—with anger! I will punish you for your sins seven more times: ²⁹ You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. ³⁰ I will eliminate your shrines, chop down your incense altars, and pile your dead bodies on the dead bodies of your idols. I will despise you. ³¹ I will turn your cities into ruins, I will devastate your sanctuaries, and I will not smell the soothing smells of your offerings. ³² I will personally devastate the land so much that your enemies who resettle it will be astonished by it. ³³ I will scatter you among the nations. I will unsheathe my sword against you. Your land will be devastated and your cities will be ruins.

³⁴ At that time, while it is devastated and you are in enemy territory, the land will enjoy its sabbaths. At that time, the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. ³⁵ During the whole time it is devastated, it will have the rest it didn’t have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

³⁶ I will bring despair into the hearts of those of you who survive in enemy territory. Just the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to running, and they will run scared as if running from a sword! They will fall even when no one is chasing them! ³⁷ They will stumble over each other as they would before a sword, even though no one is chasing them! You will have no power to stand before your enemies. ³⁸ You will disappear among the nations—the land of your enemies will devour you. ³⁹ Any of you who do survive will rot in enemy territory on account of their guilty deeds. And they will rot too on account of their ancestors’ guilty deeds.

Covenant and restoration

⁴⁰ But if they confess their and their ancestors’ guilt for the wrongdoing they did to me, and for their continued opposition to me— ⁴¹ which made me oppose them, so I took them into enemy territory—or if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make up for their guilt, ⁴² then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac. And my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land. ⁴³ The land will be absent of them and will be enjoying its sabbaths while it lies devastated, free of them. They will be making up for their guilty deeds for no other reason than the fact that they rejected my regulations and despised my rules. ⁴⁴ But despite all that, when they are in enemy territory, I will not reject them or despise them to the point of totally destroying them, breaking my covenant with them by doing so, because I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵ But for their sake I will remember the covenant with the first generation, the ones I brought out of Egypt’s land in the sight of all the nations, in order to be their God; I am the Lord.

⁴⁶ These are the rules, regulations, and instructions between the Lord and the Israelites that he gave through Moses on Mount Sinai.

Psalm 33

Everyone faces the same fate

9 So I considered all of this carefully, examining all of it: The righteous and the wise and their deeds are in God’s hand, along with both love and hate. People don’t know anything that’s ahead of them. ² Everything is the same for everyone. The same fate awaits the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad,^[a] the pure and the impure, those who sacrifice and those who don’t sacrifice. The good person is like the wrongdoer; the same holds for those who make solemn pledges and those who are afraid to swear. ³ This is the sad thing about all that happens under the sun: the same fate awaits everyone. Moreover, the human heart is full of evil; people’s minds are full of madness while they are alive, and afterward they die. ⁴ Whoever is among the living can be certain about this. A living dog is definitely better off than a dead lion, ⁵ because the living know that they will die. But the dead know nothing at all. There is no more reward for them; even the memory of them is lost. ⁶ Their love and their hate, as well as their zeal, are already long gone. They will never again have a stake in all that happens under the sun.

⁷ Go, eat your food joyfully and drink your wine happily because God has already accepted what you do. ⁸ Let your garments always be white; don’t run short of oil for your head. ⁹ Enjoy life with your dearly loved spouse all the days of your pointless life that God^[b] gives you under the sun—all the days of your pointless life!^[c]—because that’s your part to play^[d] in this life and in your hard work under the sun. ¹⁰ Whatever you are capable of doing, do with all your might because there’s no work, thought, knowledge, or wisdom in the grave,^[e] which is where you are headed.

Listen to common wisdom, not fools

¹¹ I also observed under the sun that the race doesn’t always go to the swift, nor the battle to the mighty, nor food to the wise, nor wealth to the intelligent, nor favor to the knowledgeable, because accidents can happen to anyone. ¹² People most definitely don’t know when their time will come. Like fish tragically caught in a net or like birds trapped in a snare, so are human beings caught in a time of tragedy that suddenly falls to them.

¹³ I also observed the following example of wisdom under the sun—it impressed me greatly: ¹⁴ There was a small town with only a few residents. A mighty king came against it, surrounded it, and waged a terrible war against it. ¹⁵ Now there lived in that town a poor but wise man who saved everyone by his wisdom. But no one remembered that poor man. ¹⁶ So I thought, Wisdom is better than might, but the wisdom of commoners is despised and their words aren’t heeded.

¹⁷ The calm words of the wise are better heeded than the racket caused by a ruler among fools.

¹⁸ Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one incompetent person destroys much good.

Greeting

1 From Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. I’m sent to bring about the faith of God’s chosen people and a knowledge of the truth that agrees with godliness.

² Their faith and this knowledge are based on the hope of eternal life that God, who doesn’t lie, promised before time began. ³ God revealed his message at the appropriate time through preaching, and I was trusted with preaching this message by the command of God our savior.

⁴ To Titus, my true child in a common faith.

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our savior.

Appointing elders

⁵ The reason I left you behind in Crete was to organize whatever needs to be done and to appoint elders in each city, as I told you. ⁶ Elders should be without fault. They should be faithful to their spouse,^[a] and have faithful children who can’t be accused of self-indulgence or rebelliousness. ⁷ This is because supervisors^[b] should be without fault as God’s managers: they shouldn’t be stubborn, irritable, addicted to alcohol, a bully, or greedy. ⁸ Instead, they should show hospitality, love what is good, and be reasonable, ethical, godly, and self-controlled. ⁹ They must pay attention to the reliable message as it has been taught to them so that they can encourage people with healthy instruction and refute those who speak against it.

Correcting rebellious people

¹⁰ In fact, there are many who are rebellious people, loudmouths, and deceivers, especially some of those who are Jewish believers.^{[c] 11} They must be silenced because they upset entire households. They teach what they shouldn’t to make money dishonestly. ¹² Someone who is one of their own prophets said, “People from Crete are always liars, wild animals, and lazy gluttons.” ¹³ This statement is true. Because of this, correct them firmly, so that they can be healthy in their faith. ¹⁴ They shouldn’t pay attention to Jewish myths and commands from people who reject the truth. ¹⁵ Everything is clean to those who are clean, but nothing is clean to those who are corrupt and without faith. Instead, their mind and conscience are corrupted. ¹⁶ They claim to know God, but they deny God by the things that they do. They are detestable, disobedient, and disqualified to do anything good.