M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
20 The Lord will send calamity, confusion, and frustration on you no matter what work you are doing until you are wiped out and until you disappear—it’ll be quick!—because of the evil acts by which you have abandoned him.[a] 21 The Lord will make a plague stick to you until he has totally wiped you off the fertile land you are entering to possess. 22 The Lord will strike you with consumption, fever, and inflammation; with scorching heat and drought;[b] with destruction and disease for your crops.[c] These things will chase you until you are dead and gone. 23 The sky over your head will be as hard as bronze; the earth under your feet will be like iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rain on your land into dust. Only dirt will fall down on you from the sky until you are completely wiped out. 25 The Lord will hand you over defeated to your enemies. You will go out against them by one direction, but you will run for your life away from them in seven different directions. All the earth’s kingdoms will be horrified by you. 26 Your corpses will be food for every bird in the sky and animal on earth; no one will frighten them off. 27 The Lord will afflict you with Egyptian inflammation, hemorrhoids,[d] rash, and itch. You will be untreatable. 28 The Lord will make you go crazy, make you blind, make your mind confused. 29 You will fumble around at high noon as blind people fumble around in darkness. Your plans won’t prosper. Instead, you will be constantly oppressed and taken advantage of without any savior. 30 You might get engaged to a woman, but another man will have sex with her. You might build a house, but you won’t get to live in it. You might plant a vineyard, but you won’t enjoy it. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered while you watch, but you won’t get to eat any of it. Your donkey will be stolen right out from under you, and it won’t come back. Your flocks will be given to your enemies. No one will save you. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation while you watch; you will long for them constantly, but you won’t have the power to do anything about it. 33 The produce of your land and all your hard work will be consumed by people you don’t know. You will be nothing but oppressed and mistreated constantly. 34 The sights your eyes see will drive you insane. 35 The Lord will strike you with horrible inflammation in your knees and legs, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. You will be untreatable. 36 The Lord will send you and the king that you appoint over you far away to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known. There you will worship other gods made of wood and stone. 37 You will become a horror, fit only for use in proverbs and in insults by all the nations where the Lord drives you. 38 You might scatter a lot of seed on the field, but you will gather almost nothing because the locusts will eat it all. 39 You might plant lots of vineyards and work hard in them, but you won’t drink any wine or harvest the grapes because worms will devour them. 40 You might have many olive trees throughout your territories, but you won’t cover yourself with their oil because your olive trees will fail. 41 You might have sons and daughters, but they won’t be yours for long because they will be taken away as prisoners. 42 Crickets will take over all your trees and your soil’s produce. 43 The immigrants who live among you will be promoted over you, higher and higher! But you will be demoted, lower and lower! 44 They will lend to you, but you will have nothing to lend to them. They will be the head of things; you will be the tail.
45 That’s how all these curses will come over you, pursuing you, reaching you until you are completely wiped out, because you didn’t obey the Lord your God’s voice by keeping his commandments and his regulations that he gave you. 46 These things will be a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you didn’t serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly above all else,[e] 48 you will serve your enemies—the ones the Lord will send against you—during famine, drought, nakedness, and total deprivation. God will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has wiped you out. 49 The Lord will bring a distant nation—one from the far ends of the earth—against you as fast as the eagle flies: a nation that speaks a language you can’t understand, 50 a stern nation that doesn’t go easy on the very old or show pity to the very young. 51 That nation will devour your livestock’s offspring and your soil’s produce until you yourselves are destroyed because you will have no grain, wine, or oil left—nor any young from your cattle or offspring from your flocks—that is, until that nation annihilates you. 52 That nation will attack you in all your cities until your high, reinforced walls that you thought were so safe fall down across your entire countryside. That nation will attack you in all your cities throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. 53 You will eat the offspring of your own womb—the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God gave you—because of the desperate and dire circumstances that your enemy has brought on you.
54 Even the most gentle and refined man among you will scowl at his brother or his own dear wife, or the last of his surviving children. 55 He won’t want to give them any of his children’s flesh that he will be eating because he has no other food due to the desperate and dire circumstances that your enemy has brought on you in all your cities. 56 Even the most gentle and refined woman among you, who is so refined and gentle she wouldn’t stomp her foot on the ground, will scowl at her own dear husband, her son, or her daughter— 57 not wanting to give them any of the afterbirth she pushed out or the babies she bore, because she will be eating them secretly while starving due to the desperate and dire circumstances that your enemy will bring on you in your cities.
58 If you don’t carefully keep all the words of this Instruction that are written in this scroll, by fearing the awesome and glorious name of the Lord your God— 59 the Lord will overwhelm you and your descendants with severe and chronic afflictions, and with terrible and untreatable sicknesses. 60 He’ll put on you all the Egyptian diseases about which you were so afraid; they will stick to you! 61 What’s more, the Lord will bring on you all the other diseases and plagues that aren’t written in this Instruction scroll until you are completely wiped out. 62 Once as countless as the stars in the night sky, only a few of you will be left alive—all because you didn’t obey the Lord your God’s voice. 63 And just as before, the Lord enjoyed doing good things for you and increasing your numbers, now the Lord will enjoy annihilating and destroying you. You will be torn off the very fertile land you are entering to possess. 64 The Lord will scatter you among every nation, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known—gods of wood and stone. 65 Among those nations you will have no rest and no place to call your own.[f] There the Lord will give you an agitated mind, failing eyes, and a depressed spirit. 66 Your life will seem to dangle before your very eyes. You will be afraid night and day. You won’t be able to count on surviving for long. 67 In the morning you will say: “I wish it was nighttime,” but at nighttime you will say, “I wish it was morning”—on account of your tortured mind, which will be terrified, and because of the horrible sights that your eyes will see. 68 Finally, the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the route I promised you would never see again. There you will try to sell yourselves as slaves—both male and female—but no one will want to buy you.
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25 My life is stuck in the dirt.
Now make me live again according to your promise!
26 I confessed my ways and you answered me.
Now teach me your statutes!
27 Help me understand what your precepts are about
so I can contemplate your wondrous works!
28 My spirit sags because of grief.
Now raise me up according to your promise!
29 Remove all false ways from me;
show mercy to me by means of your Instruction.
30 I’ve chosen the way of faithfulness;
I’m set on your rules.
31 I’m holding tight to your laws, Lord.
Please don’t let me be put to shame.
32 I run the same path as your commandments
because you give my heart insight.
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33 Lord, teach me what your statutes are about,
and I will guard every part of them.
34 Help me understand so I can guard your Instruction
and keep it with all my heart.
35 Lead me on the trail of your commandments
because that is what I want.
36 Turn my heart to your laws,
not to greedy gain.
37 Turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things.
Make me live by your way.
38 Confirm your promise to your servant—
the promise that is for all those who honor you.
39 Remove the insults that I dread
because your rules are good.
40 Look how I desire your precepts!
Make me live by your righteousness.
ו waw
41 Lord, let your faithful love come to me—
let your salvation come to me according to your promise—
42 so I can have a response for those who mock me
because I have trusted in your word!
43 Please don’t take your true word out of my mouth,
because I have waited for your rules.
44 I will always keep your Instruction,
always and forever!
45 I will walk around in wide-open spaces,
because I have pursued your precepts.
46 I will talk about your laws
before rulers with no shame whatsoever.
47 I will rejoice in your commandments
because I love them.
48 I will lift up my hands to your commandments
because I love them,
and I will contemplate all your statutes.
Invitation to the feast
55 All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!
Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk!
2 Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts.
3 Listen and come to me;
listen, and you will live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful loyalty to David.
4 Look, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a prince and commander of peoples.
5 Look, you will call a nation you don’t know,
a nation you don’t know will run to you
because of the Lord your God,
the holy one of Israel, who has glorified you.
6 Seek the Lord when he can still be found;
call him while he is yet near.
7 Let the wicked abandon their ways
and the sinful their schemes.
Let them return to the Lord so that he may have mercy on them,
to our God, because he is generous with forgiveness.
8 My plans aren’t your plans,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my plans than your plans.
10 Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky
and don’t return there without watering the earth,
making it conceive and yield plants
and providing seed to the sower and food to the eater,
11 so is my word that comes from my mouth;
it does not return to me empty.
Instead, it does what I want,
and accomplishes what I intend.
12 Yes, you will go out with celebration,
and you will be brought back in peace.
Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you;
all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
13 In place of the thorn the cypress will grow;
in place of the nettle the myrtle will grow.
This will attest to the Lord’s stature,
an enduring reminder that won’t be removed.
Ministry of John the Baptist
3 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, 2 “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” 3 He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said:
The voice of one shouting in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.”[a]
4 John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.
5 People from Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and all around the Jordan River came to him. 6 As they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 7 Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized by John. He said to them, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8 Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. 9 And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. 11 I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.”
Baptism of Jesus
13 At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. 14 John tried to stop him and said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?”
15 Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”
So John agreed to baptize Jesus. 16 When Jesus was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water. Heaven was opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him. 17 A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love; I find happiness in him.”
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible