M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
9 Listen, Israel, today you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and to take possession of nations larger and stronger than you, nations with large cities that have fortified walls reaching up to the skies, 2 with people strong and tall, the Anakites, whom you know and about whom you have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the descendants of Anak?”
3 So know today that the Lord your God himself is crossing over in front of you. Like a consuming fire he will destroy them, and he will subdue them before you. You will take possession of their land and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord promised you.
4 When the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say in your heart, “Because of my righteousness the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land,” when actually it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is handing over their land to you.
5 You are not entering to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart, but because of the wickedness of these nations. The Lord your God is handing over their land to you, in order to confirm the promise that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, because a stiff-necked people[a] is what you are. 7 Remember and do not forget how you made the Lord your God angry in the wilderness. From the day that you went out of the land of Egypt until your arrival at this place, you have been rebels against the Lord. 8 Even at Horeb you made the Lord angry. Yes, the Lord was angry enough at you to destroy you.
9 When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water. 10 Then the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you from the middle of the fire on the mountain, on the day of the assembly. 11 At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
12 Then the Lord said to me, “Get moving and go down quickly from here because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have acted corruptly. They have turned away quickly from the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a thing of molten metal.”
13 The Lord also said to me, “I have seen these people, and what a stiff-necked people they are! 14 Leave me alone, and I will destroy them. I will blot out their name from under the heavens, and I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”
15 So I turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in my two hands, while the mountain was burning with fire.
16 I saw how you were sinning against the Lord your God by making for yourselves a calf from molten metal and by quickly turning aside from the way that the Lord your God had commanded you to go.
17 I grabbed the two tablets and I threw them from my two hands[b] and I shattered them right before your eyes.
18 Then I lay facedown before the Lord forty days and forty nights like the first time. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water, because of all the sin that you committed by doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and making him angry.
19 I was afraid of the heated anger of the Lord, who was angry enough at you to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me again at that time.
20 The Lord was even angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. So I prayed also for Aaron at that time.
21 Then I took that wicked thing that you had made, the calf. I burned it with fire and crushed it by grinding it until it was as fine as dust. Then I threw its dust into the gully that goes down from the mountain.
22 Again and again, at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth Hatta’avah, you made the Lord angry.
23 Then, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, and he said, “Go up and take possession of the land that I have given to you,” you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not put your faith in him, and you did not obey him. 24 You have been rebels against the Lord ever since I have known you.
25 So I lay facedown before the Lord for forty days and forty nights. I lay facedown because the Lord said he would destroy you. 26 So I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your inheritance that you have redeemed by your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a strong hand.
27 “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of these people and at their wickedness and their sin. 28 Otherwise the land out of which you brought us will say, ‘This happened because the Lord did not have the power to bring them to the land that he had promised to them, or this happened because he hated them and brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.’
29 “But they are your people and your possession, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.”
Psalm 92
It Is Good to Praise the Lord
Heading
A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath.
A Call to Praise
1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to make music to your name, O Most High,
2 to proclaim your mercy in the morning
and your faithfulness every night,
3 with a ten-stringed instrument and with a harp,
with a melody on a lyre.
The Blessings of Praise
4 Yes, you make me glad by your work, O Lord.
I sing loudly at the works of your hands.
5 How great are your works, O Lord.
Your thoughts are very deep!
The Folly and Fall of the Wicked
6 The senseless man does not know,
and the fool does not understand this—
7 when the wicked spring up like weeds,
and all evildoers bloom like flowers,
they will be destroyed forever.
Central Affirmation
8 But you are exalted forever, O Lord.
The Fall of the Wicked
9 Without a doubt your enemies, O Lord,
without a doubt your enemies will perish.
All evildoers will be scattered.
The Blessing of the Righteous
10 But you have raised my horn like that of a wild ox.[a]
I am drenched with fresh oil.[b]
11 My eyes have looked in triumph over my adversaries.
When evildoers rise against me, my ears hear their defeat.
12 The righteous will shoot up like a palm tree.
They will grow tall like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 Planted in the house of the Lord,
they will shoot up in the courtyards of our God.
14 They will still produce fruit in old age.
They will stay fresh and green.
Closing Praise
15 Yes, they can proclaim, “The Lord is upright.
He is my Rock, and he does no wrong.”
Psalm 93
The Lord Rules the World
1 The Lord reigns. He is clothed in majesty.
The Lord is clothed—he wears strength like a belt.
Yes, the world stands firm. It will not be moved.
2 Your throne was established long ago.
You are from eternity.
3 The waves[c] have lifted up, O Lord,
the waves have lifted up their voice.
The waves roar loudly.
4 Mightier than the thundering of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea,
the Lord on high is mighty.
5 Your testimonies stand very firm.
Holiness beautifies your house for endless days, O Lord.
Hezekiah Seeks Isaiah’s Advice
37 When King Hezekiah heard the report, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the House of the Lord. 2 He sent Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, who were wearing sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
3 They told him what Hezekiah said: “This is a day of distress, rebuke, and humiliation, because children are about to be born, but there is no strength left to give birth. 4 Perhaps the Lord your God will take note of the words of this herald, who was sent by his lord, the king of Assyria, in defiance of the living God, and perhaps the Lord your God will rebuke him for what he has heard. So please, pray for the small group that is left here.”
5 When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, 6 he said to them, “Tell your master that this is what the Lord says. Do not be afraid of what you have heard. The lackeys[a] of the king of Assyria have blasphemed against me. 7 Watch! I will put a spirit in him, so that when he hears certain news, he will return to his own land. There I will cause him to be killed.”
8 Then the herald went back. He heard that the king of Assyria had already left Lachish and was fighting against Libnah.
9 When Sennacherib heard that Tirhakah king of Cush[b] had set out to fight against him, he sent messengers to Hezekiah 10 to say this to Hezekiah king of Judah:
Do not let the God you trust deceive you, saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria. 11 Listen, you yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the other lands, destroying them completely. And you expect to be saved? 12 Did the gods of the nations whom my fathers destroyed save them—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden, who were in Tel Assar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the kings of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?
14 Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. He went up to the House of the Lord and placed it there before the Lord. 15 Then he prayed to the Lord.
16 O Lord of Armies, God of Israel, seated above the cherubim, you alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. 17 Turn your ear toward me, Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, Lord, and see. Listen to all of the words of Sennacherib, who has defied the living God. 18 It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these lands and their territory. 19 They have thrown their gods into the fire, for they were not gods at all, but the work of human hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. 20 Now, Lord our God, save us from his power, and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that you are the Lord, and you alone.
The Lord Replies to Hezekiah Through Isaiah
21 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah.
The Lord, the God of Israel, says that because you have prayed to him about Sennacherib king of Assyria, 22 the Lord sends you this reply about him.
The virgin daughter of Zion[c] despises you and jeers at you.
The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you in scorn.
23 Who is it whom you have mocked and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted up your proud eyes?
It is against the Holy One of Israel.
24 You have used your servants to mock the Lord.
You have boasted, “I have driven my many chariots
up the high mountains, to the most remote parts of Lebanon.
I cut down its tallest cedars and its best fir trees.
I have reached its highest peak, its most lush forest.
25 I dug wells and drank their water,
and I dried up all the rivers of Egypt with the soles of my feet.”
26 Have you not heard?
I did all this long ago.
I formed all this in ancient times.
Now I caused it all to take place.
I enabled you to destroy fortified cities,
reducing them to heaps of ruins.
27 Their inhabitants were powerless.
Overwhelmed and ashamed,
they were like plants in the field,
like fresh green grass, like grass on a housetop,
and like a field before it has grown.[d]
28 But I know when you stand and when you sit,[e]
when you go out and when you come in,
and how you rage wildly against me.
29 Because you rage against me,
and because your arrogance has reached my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth,
and I will make you go back by the same way that you came.
30 This will be a sign for you:
This year you will eat what grows by itself.
Next year you will eat what springs up from that.
But in the third year, you will sow crops and harvest them.
You will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
31 The surviving remnant of the house of Judah
will again put down roots below and bear fruit above.
32 For from Jerusalem a remnant will go out,
and survivors from Mount Zion.
The zeal of the Lord of Armies will accomplish this.
33 This is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:
He will not enter this city.
He will not shoot an arrow there.
He will not advance against it with a shield,
and he will not build a siege ramp against it.
34 He will go back by the same route that he came,
and he will not enter this city, declares the Lord.
35 For I will defend this city to save it,
for my own sake,
and for the sake of my servant David.
The Destruction of Sennacherib
36 Then an angel of the Lord went and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. Early in the morning, there they were—all the dead bodies. 37 Then Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and left. He returned to Nineveh and remained there. 38 One day when Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. They fled to the land of Ararat,[f] and his son Esarhaddon became king in his place.
The Church on Earth
7 After this I saw four angels, who stood at the four corners of the earth. They were holding back the four winds of the earth so that the wind could not blow on the earth, the sea, or any tree.
2 And I saw another angel coming up from the east, who had the seal of the living God. He called out with a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to harm the earth and the sea. He said, 3 “Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees until we have placed a seal on the foreheads of God’s servants.”
4 And I heard the number of those sealed:
144,000 sealed from all the tribes of the people of Israel:
| 5 from the tribe of Judah, | 12,000, who were sealed, |
| from the tribe of Reuben, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Gad, | 12,000, |
| 6 from the tribe of Asher, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Naphtali, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Manasseh, | 12,000, |
| 7 from the tribe of Simeon, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Levi, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Issachar, | 12,000, |
| 8 from the tribe of Zebulun, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Joseph, | 12,000, |
| from the tribe of Benjamin, | 12,000, who were sealed. |
The Church in Heaven
9 After these things I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing in front of the throne and of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. 10 They called out with a loud voice and said:
Salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne, and from
the Lamb.
11 All the angels stood around the throne, the elders, and the four living creatures. They fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, 12 saying:
Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and
power and might belong to our God forever and ever. Amen.
13 One of the elders spoke to me and said, “These people dressed in white robes, who are they and where did they come from?”
And I answered him, “Sir, you know.”
14 And he said to me:
These are the ones who are coming out of the great tribulation.
They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb.
15 Because of this they are in front of the throne of God,
and they serve him day and night in his temple.
He who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.
16 They will never be hungry or thirsty ever again.
The sun will never beat upon them, nor will any scorching heat,
17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd.
He will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.