M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
20 The Lord will send curses, confusion, and vexation upon you in all of your undertakings until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin on account of the wickedness of what you have done by forsaking me.
21 Illness and Deprivation. The Lord will cover you with diseases until you are wiped out from the land to which you are going to possess. 22 The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammations, with scorching heat, with drought, with blight, and mildew. These will plague you until you perish. 23 The heavens over your head shall be like bronze, while the ground under you shall be like iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rains into dust and powder. It shall pour down upon you from the heavens until you cease to exist. 25 The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You shall go out toward them in one direction, but you shall flee away in seven different directions. You shall be considered to be a thing of horror to all of the nations upon the earth. 26 Your bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the fields, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. 27 The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and tumors, scab and itching sores, from which you cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will strike you with mental illness, blindness, and dementia. 29 At noon you shall grope around like a blind man in the darkness. Nothing you do shall prosper, and you shall be beset by robbers all the time, and there shall be no one to rescue you. 30 The woman to whom you are betrothed shall be seized by another man who shall ravish her. You shall not be able to live in the house that you have built, and you shall not taste the fruit of the vineyard you have planted. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not get to eat any of it. Your donkey shall be stolen away from you and not returned. Your sheep shall be given over to your enemies, and there shall be no one to rescue you. 32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and you shall wear out your eyes looking for them all day long, powerless to lift a finger on their behalf. 33 A people whom you do not know shall devour all of the produce of the land and of your work. You shall know nothing but crushing oppression all of your days. 34 What your eyes behold shall drive you insane. 35 The Lord will strike you with painful boils that cannot be healed on your knees and your legs, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36 A Place of Exile. The Lord will bring you and the king you have placed over yourselves to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you shall serve other gods, gods made from wood and stone. 37 You shall become an object of horror and a byword among all the nations to which the Lord will bring you.
38 Fruitless Labor. You shall sow much seed in your fields, but you shall harvest little, for the locusts shall devour it. 39 You shall plant and care for vineyards, but you shall not drink its wine or gather its grapes, for the worms will eat it. 40 You shall have olive trees throughout your land, but you shall not have olive oil, for the olives will drop off. 41 You shall have sons and daughters, but you shall not enjoy them, for they shall go off into captivity. 42 Locusts shall consume your trees and the produce of your land. 43 The foreigner who is living with you shall rise higher and higher, but you shall sink lower and lower. 44 He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.
45 All of these curses shall come upon you. They shall pursue and overtake you until you have been destroyed, for you did not obey the voice of the Lord, your God, and observe the commandments and statutes that he gave you. 46 This shall be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever,[a] 47 for you shall not have served the Lord, your God, joyfully and gladly in a time of prosperity. 48 Therefore, you shall serve the enemies that the Lord sends against you in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty. He will place an iron yoke upon your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 Invasion and Destruction. The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth. A nation whose language you do not understand shall swoop down like an eagle, 50 a fierce nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They shall devour the young of your cattle and the produce of your land until you have been destroyed. They will leave you no grain, wine, oil, or calves in your herds, or lambs in your flocks, until you have been annihilated. 52 They shall lay siege to all of your towns until all of the high fortified walls in which you place your trust have fallen down. He will besiege you in your towns all throughout your land, all throughout your land that the Lord, your God, has given you. 53 Because of the hunger and the suffering that your enemies bring upon you during the siege, you shall eat your own children, your sons and your daughters, whom the Lord, your God, has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and most sensitive among you shall treat his brother or the wife whom he loves or his surviving children poorly. 55 He shall not give any of them the flesh of the children that he is eating. He shall have nothing left because of the siege and the suffering the enemy has inflicted upon you in all of your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you, so gentle and sensitive that she would not step upon the ground with the soles of her feet, shall be hostile to the husband whom she loves and her own son and daughter. 57 She shall eat the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears secretly because of hunger during the siege and the distress that your enemy shall inflict upon you in your cities.
58 Plagues. If you do not carefully observe the words of the law that are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name, the Lord, your God, 59 then the Lord will send these fearful plagues upon you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, wretched and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring upon you all the illness that Egypt dreaded, and they will persist among you. 61 The Lord will also bring upon you every type of illness and disaster that is not recorded in this book until you shall have been annihilated. 62 You who were once as numerous as the stars in the heavens shall only be left with a few survivors, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord, your God.
63 Punishment and Exile. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and to multiply your numbers, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You shall be uprooted from the land that you are entering to possess. 64 The Lord will scatter you among every people, from one end of the earth to the other. There you shall worship other gods whom neither you nor your fathers knew, gods made of wood and stone. 65 Among these nations you shall find no rest, no repose for the soles of your feet. There the Lord will give you an anxious heart, weary eyes, and a spirit of despair. 66 You shall live with constant doubt, filled with dread day and night, never sure of your life. 67 In the morning you shall say, “I wish it were evening.” In the evening you shall say, “I wish it were morning.” This will be because of the terrors in your heart and dread at what your eyes will have seen. 68 The Lord will send you back to Egypt on ships, making a journey that I said you would never make again. You shall offer yourselves for sale there to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one shall buy you.
25 [a]My soul lies prostrate in the dust;[b]
revive me in accordance with your word.
26 I proclaim my ways and you answer me;
teach me your decrees.
27 Help me to understand the way of your commandments,
and I will meditate on your wonders.
28 My soul is wasting away in sorrow;
renew my strength in accordance with your word.
29 Keep me from the way of falsehood,
and let me live according to your law.
30 [c]I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I have set your judgments before me.
31 I cling to your statutes, O Lord;
do not allow me to be put to shame.
32 I run in the way of your precepts,
for you have set my heart free.
He
33 [d]Teach me, O Lord, the way of your decrees,
and I will follow it to the end.[e]
34 Give me understanding, and I will observe your law
and obey it with all my heart.[f]
35 Guide me in the way of your precepts,
for in them is my delight.
36 Dispose my heart to follow your statutes
and to flee selfish gain.
37 Turn my eyes away from what is unimportant,
and let me live in your way.
38 Fulfill your word to your servant,
so that you may be feared.[g]
39 Let me escape the disgrace that I dread,
for your judgments are good.
40 See, I long for your commandments;
in your righteousness preserve my life.
Waw
41 [h]Let your kindness[i] descend on me, O Lord,
your salvation in accord with your promise.
42 Then I will respond to those who insult me,
because I trust in your word.
43 Do not remove from my mouth the word of truth,[j]
for I place my hope in your judgment.
44 I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever.
45 I will walk in complete freedom
because I have sought your commands.[k]
46 I will speak of your statutes in the presence of kings
and will not be ashamed.
47 Your precepts fill me with delight
because I love them.
48 I lift up my hands[l] to your precepts, which I love,
and I meditate on your decrees.
Zayin
Chapter 55
An Everlasting Covenant
1 All you who are thirsty,
come to the water;
all you who have no money,
come forward, buy, and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk,
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money for that which is not bread,
your wages for that which fails to satisfy.
Listen carefully to me, and you will eat well
and delight in rich food.
3 Come to me and pay close attention;
listen so that you may have life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you
to love you with the faithful love promised to David.
4 I appointed him to be a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander of nations.
5 You in turn will summon nations unknown to you,
and nations that do not know you will hasten to you,
because of the Lord, your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
6 Seek the Lord while he still may be found;
call to him when he is close at hand.
7 Let the wicked abandon their ways
and those who are evil their thoughts.
Let them return to the Lord
so that he may have mercy upon them;
and to our God,
for he is rich in forgiveness.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.
10 For just as the rain and the snow
come down from the heavens
and do not return there
until they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
giving seed for the one who sows
and bread for those who eat,
11 so shall my word be
that issues forth from my mouth.
It will not return to me unfulfilled,
but it will accomplish my purpose
and achieve what I sent it forth to do.
12 Yes, you will go forth in joy,
and you will be led back in peace.
The mountains and hills before you
will burst forth into song,
and all the trees in the countryside
will clap their hands.
13 A cypress will grow in place of the thornbush,
and myrtles will come up instead of briars.
All this will increase the Lord’s renown,
an everlasting sign that will not be cut off.
Jesus Inaugurates His Ministry as Savior
Chapter 3
John the Baptist Preaches and Baptizes.[a]1 In those days, John the Baptist[b] appeared in the desert of Judea, preaching: 2 “Repent,[c] for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.” This was the man of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said:
3 “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ ”[d]
4 John’s clothing was made of camel’s hair, with a leather loincloth around his waist, and his food consisted of locusts and wild honey.[e] 5 The people of Jerusalem and the whole of Judea and the entire region along the Jordan went out to him, 6 and as they confessed their sins they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
7 [f]But when he observed many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Produce good fruit as proof of your repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves: ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. 10 Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 [g]“I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I am. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”[h]
13 Jesus Is Baptized.[i] Then Jesus arrived from Galilee and came to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. 14 John tried to dissuade him, saying, “Why do you come to me? I am the one who needs to be baptized by you.” 15 But Jesus said to him in reply, “For the present, let it be thus. It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all that righteousness demands.”[j] Then he acquiesced.
16 After Jesus had been baptized, as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened and he beheld the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”[k]
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