M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
God Renews His Promises to Solomon
9 When Solomon had finished building the house for the Lord and the house for the king, and he had done all that he desired, 2 the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, just as he had appeared to him in Gibeon. 3 The Lord said to him:
I have heard your prayer and the plea for mercy that you offered before me. I have consecrated this house, which you built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.
4 As for you, if you walk before me in purity of heart and with integrity as your father David did, so that you carry out everything that I command you, and you keep all my statutes and my ordinances, 5 then I will maintain your royal throne over Israel forever, just as I said to your father David, “You will not fail to have a man upon the throne of Israel.”
6 But if any of you[a] or your sons turn away from me and do not keep my commands and statutes, which I set before you, but you serve other gods and bow down to them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the face of the ground which I gave them. I will take my presence away from the house which I consecrated for my Name. Israel will become proverbial as an object of ridicule for all peoples.
8 Though this house is now exalted,[b] all who pass by it will be appalled and will hiss[c] and say, “Why did the Lord do this to this land and to this house?”
9 They will reply, “Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods and worshipped and served them. That is why the Lord brought all this evil on them.”
Solomon Completes His Projects
10 At the end of twenty years, when Solomon had completed these two buildings, the house of the Lord and the house of the king, 11 King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee, because Hiram king of Tyre had been supplying Solomon with cedar and fir wood and with as much gold as he desired. 12 So Hiram left Tyre to see the towns which Solomon had given him, but he was not pleased.
13 He said, “What kind of towns are these towns which you have given me, my brother?” He called them the Land of Kabul,[d] a name they have to this day. 14 Hiram had sent the king one hundred twenty talents[e] of gold.
15 This is the account of the forced labor, which King Solomon raised to build the house for the Lord, his own house, the Millo,[f] and the walls of Jerusalem, as well as Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 (Pharaoh king of Egypt had come up and captured Gezer. He burned it and killed the Canaanites who were living in the city. Then he gave it as a wedding present to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.) 17 So Solomon built Gezer, lower Beth Horon, 18 Baalath, Tadmor[g] in the wilderness, 19 all of Solomon’s towns for storehouses, the towns for his chariots, the towns for charioteers,[h] and everything Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land he ruled.
20 All the people who remained from the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not part of the people of Israel— 21 their descendants who remained in the land, whom the Israelites were not able to destroy completely—were drafted for forced labor by Solomon. They are serving right up to this day. 22 But Solomon did not press the people of Israel into service. Rather, they were his warriors, his government officials, his staff, his military officers, the commanders of his chariots, and his charioteers. 23 These were the officials who were overseeing Solomon’s work. Five hundred fifty officials were overseeing the people doing the work.
24 Pharaoh’s daughter moved up from the City of David to the house Solomon built for her. Then he built the Millo.
25 Three times a year Solomon offered whole burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar which he had built before the Lord, and he burned incense before the Lord. In this way he completed the temple.
26 King Solomon built a fleet at Ezion Geber, which is near Elat on the shore of the Red Sea in the land of Edom. 27 Then, along with that fleet, Hiram sent his servants, men who worked on ships and who knew the sea, to serve with the servants of Solomon. 28 They went to Ophir, and they obtained four hundred twenty talents[i] of gold there and brought it to King Solomon.
Parents and Children
6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother,”[a] which is the first commandment with a promise: 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live a long life on the earth.”[b] 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Slaves and Masters
5 Slaves, obey your human masters[c] with respect and reverence, and with a sincere heart, just as you obey Christ. 6 Do this not just when they are watching, as if merely to please people, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. 7 Serve with eagerness, as for the Lord and not for people, 8 because you know that each person, whether slave or free, will receive back from the Lord whatever good he has done. 9 And masters, do the same for your slaves. Do not threaten them, because you know that the one who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and with him there is no favoritism.
The Armor of God
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the schemes of the Devil. 12 For our[d] struggle is not against flesh and blood,[e] but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 For this reason, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to take a stand on the evil day and, after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness fastened in place, 15 and with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace tied to your feet like sandals. 16 At all times hold up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the Evil One. 17 Also take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Prayer Requests
18 At every opportunity, pray in the Spirit with every kind of prayer and petition. Stay alert for the same reason, always persevering in your intercession for all the saints. 19 Pray for me also, that when I open my mouth a message will be given to me that boldly reveals the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may speak about it boldly, as it is necessary for me to speak.
Final Comments
21 Tychicus, our dear brother and a faithful minister in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. 22 I am sending him to you for this very reason, that you may know how we are, and that he may comfort your hearts. 23 Peace to the brothers,[f] and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Grace be with all who have an undying[g] love for our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.[h]
The Lord Will Defeat Gog and
Pour Out His Spirit on His People
39 Now you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say this.
This is what the Lord says to you. I am against you, Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshek, and Tubal. 2 I will turn you around. I will show you the way. I will lead you up from the remotest regions of the north, and I will bring you against the mountains of Israel. 3 But there I will knock your bow out of your left hand, and I will make your arrows fall from your right hand. 4 On the mountains of Israel you will fall—you, all your troops, and the peoples who are with you. I will give you as food to scavenging birds of every kind and to the wild animals. 5 In the open country you will fall, for I have spoken, declares the Lord God. 6 I will also send fire on Magog and on those who live in security on the coastlands. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
7 I will make my holy name known among my people Israel. I will not let my holy name be profaned anymore, and the nations will know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. 8 It is coming! It will surely take place, declares the Lord God. This is the day of which I have spoken. 9 Then those who live in the cities of Israel will go out and set the weapons on fire and burn the small shields and large shields, bows and arrows, clubs and spears. They will use them as firewood for seven years. 10 They will not take wood from the open country or gather it from the forests because they will use the weapons as firewood. They will loot those who looted them and plunder those who plundered them, declares the Lord God.
11 On that day I will give Gog a burial place there in Israel, in the valley used by those who travel east toward the sea,[a] and it will block the way for travelers. There they will bury Gog and all his horde and call it the Valley of Gog’s Horde. 12 The house of Israel will spend seven months burying them in order to cleanse the land. 13 All the people of the land of Israel will join in burying them, and it will bring honor to them on that day when I display my glory, declares the Lord God. 14 In addition, they will assign men to work full-time, passing through the land together with others, to bury those who are left on the surface of the ground in order to cleanse it. At the end of seven months, they will still be searching. 15 Whenever those who pass through the land see a human bone, they will set up a marker beside it until the burial squad has buried it in the Valley of Gog’s Horde. 16 So the name of a city there will be Hamonah.[b] In this way they will cleanse the land.
17 This is what the Lord God says to you, son of man. Speak to the birds, to every winged creature, and to all the wild animals. Tell them this.
Assemble yourselves and come. From all around gather yourselves to my sacrificial meal, which I am preparing for you as a sacrificial meal on the mountains of Israel. You will eat meat and drink blood. 18 You will eat the meat of warriors and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, like rams and lambs, goats and bulls, all of them fattened animals from Bashan. 19 You will eat fat until you are full and drink blood until you are drunk from my sacrificial meal, which I have prepared for you. 20 At my table you will be filled with horses and charioteers, with warriors and soldiers of every kind, declares the Lord God.
21 In this way I will establish my glory among the nations, and all the nations will see my justice which I have carried out and my hand which I have laid upon them. 22 The house of Israel will know from that day forward that I am the Lord, their God. 23 Then the nations will know that the house of Israel went into exile because of their guilt, because they were unfaithful to me. So I hid my face from them and delivered them into the hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. 24 I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their rebellion, and I hid my face from them.
25 Therefore, this is what the Lord God says. Now I will bring about the restoration of Jacob. I will have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name. 26 They will bear their shame and all the unfaithfulness that they displayed toward me, even when they lived securely in their own land with no one to make them afraid. 27 When I bring them back from the nations and gather them from the lands of their enemies, I will show myself to be holy among them in the sight of many nations. 28 They will know that I am the Lord their God, because, even though I sent them into captivity among the nations, I also gathered them again to their own land, and I will never again leave any of them there in captivity. 29 Nor will I ever hide my face from them again, because I will have poured out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Lord God.
Book IV
Psalms 90–106
Psalm 90
Teach Us to Number Our Days
Heading
A prayer of Moses, the man of God.
God Is Eternal
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity you are God.
Man Is Mortal
3 You grind people to dust,
and you say, “Return, children of Adam.”
4 For a thousand years in your sight are like a day,
like yesterday that has gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away like a flood.
They are like sleep in the morning,
like grass which changes quickly.
6 In the morning it sprouts and grows.
By evening it is cut down, and it withers.
7 Surely, we are consumed by your anger,
and by your wrath we are terrified.
8 You have laid out our guilty deeds in front of you.
Our hidden sins are revealed in the light of your face.
9 For all our days pass away under your fury.
We finish our years like a sigh.
10 The days of our lives add up to seventy years,
or eighty years if we are strong.
Yet the best of them are trouble and sorrow,
for they disappear quickly, and we fly away.
11 Who can understand the power of your anger?
But your fury is consistent with the fear that is owed to you.
Mortal Man Needs God’s Grace
12 Teach us to number our days in such a way
that we bring a heart of wisdom.
13 Turn, O Lord! How long!
Change your mind toward your servants.
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your mercy,
so that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
16 Let your deeds be seen by your servants
and your majesty by their children.
17 May the kindness of the Lord our God rest upon us.
Establish the work of our hands for us.
Yes, establish the work of our hands.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.