M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
11 “You must love the Lord your God and obey every one of his commands. 2 Listen! I am not talking now to your children who have never experienced the Lord’s punishments or seen his greatness and his awesome power. 3 They weren’t there to see the miracles he did in Egypt against Pharaoh and all his land. 4 They didn’t see what God did to the armies of Egypt and to their horses and chariots—how he drowned them in the Red Sea as they were chasing you, and how the Lord has kept them powerless against you until this very day! 5 They didn’t see how the Lord cared for you time and again through all the years you were wandering in the wilderness, until your arrival here. 6 They weren’t there when Dathan and Abiram (the sons of Eliab, descendants[a] of Reuben) sinned, and the earth opened up and swallowed them, with their households and tents and all their belongings, as all Israel watched!
7 “But you have seen these mighty miracles! 8 How carefully, then, you should obey these commandments I am going to give you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and possess the land you are about to enter. 9 If you obey the commandments, you will have a long and good life in the land the Lord promised to your ancestors and to you, their descendants—a wonderful land ‘flowing with milk and honey’! 10 For the land you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt where you have come from, where irrigation is necessary. 11 It is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain— 12 a land that the Lord your God personally cares for! His eyes are always upon it, day after day throughout the year!
13 “And if you will carefully obey all of his commandments that I am going to give you today, and if you will love the Lord your God with all your hearts and souls and will worship him, 14 then he will continue to send both the early and late rains that will produce wonderful crops of grain, grapes for your wine, and olive oil. 15 He will give you lush pastureland for your cattle to graze in, and you yourselves shall have plenty to eat and be fully content.
16 “But beware that your hearts do not turn from God to worship other gods. 17 For if you do, the anger of the Lord will be hot against you, and he will shut the heavens—there will be no rain and no harvest, and you will quickly perish from the good land the Lord has given you. 18 So keep these commandments carefully in mind. Tie them to your hand to remind you to obey them, and tie them to your forehead between your eyes! 19 Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting at home, when you are out walking, at bedtime, and before breakfast! 20 Write them upon the doors of your houses and upon your gates, 21 so that as long as there is sky above the earth, you and your children will enjoy the good life awaiting you in the land the Lord has promised you.[b]
22 “If you carefully obey all the commandments I give you, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and clinging to him, 23 then the Lord will drive out all the nations in your land, no matter how much greater and stronger than you they might be. 24 Wherever you go, the land is yours. Your frontiers will stretch from the southern Negeb to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you, for the Lord your God will send fear and dread ahead of you wherever you go, just as he has promised.
26 “I am giving you the choice today between God’s blessing or God’s curse! 27 There will be blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, 28 and a curse if you refuse them and worship the gods of these other nations. 29 When the Lord your God brings you into the land to possess it, a blessing shall be proclaimed from Mount Gerizim and a curse from Mount Ebal! 30 (Gerizim and Ebal are mountains west of the Jordan River, where the Canaanites live, in the wasteland near Gilgal, where the oaks of Moreh are.) 31 For you are to cross the Jordan and live in the land the Lord is giving you. 32 But you must obey all the laws I am giving you today.
95 Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord! Give a joyous shout in honor of the Rock of our salvation!
2 Come before him with thankful hearts. Let us sing him psalms of praise. 3 For the Lord is a great God, the great King of[a] all gods. 4 He controls the formation of the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains; all are his. 5 He made the sea and formed the land; they too are his. 6 Come, kneel before the Lord our Maker, 7 for he is our God. We are his sheep, and he is our Shepherd. Oh, that you would hear him calling you today and come to him!
8 Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did in the wilderness[b] at Meribah and Massah. 9 For there your fathers doubted me, though they had seen so many of my miracles before. My patience was severely tried by their complaints. 10 “For forty years I watched them in disgust,” the Lord God says. “They were a nation whose thoughts and heart were far away from me. They refused to accept my laws. 11 Therefore, in mighty wrath I swore that they would never enter the Promised Land, the place of rest I planned for them.”
96 Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing it everywhere around the world! 2 Sing out his praises! Bless his name. Each day tell someone that he saves.
3 Publish his glorious acts throughout the earth. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. 4 For the Lord is great beyond description and greatly to be praised. Worship only him among the gods! 5 For the gods of other nations are merely idols, but our God made the heavens! 6 Honor and majesty surround him; strength and beauty are in his Temple.
7 O nations of the world, confess that God alone is glorious and strong. 8 Give him the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him.[c] 9 Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives.[d] Let the earth tremble before him. 10 Tell the nations that Jehovah reigns! He rules the world. His power can never be overthrown. He will judge all nations fairly.
11 Let the heavens be glad, the earth rejoice; let the vastness of the roaring seas demonstrate his glory. 12 Praise him for the growing fields, for they display his greatness. Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise. 13 For the Lord is coming to judge the earth; he will judge the nations fairly and with truth!
39 Soon afterwards, the king of Babylon (Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan) sent Hezekiah a present and his best wishes,[a] for he had heard that Hezekiah had been very sick and now was well again. 2 Hezekiah appreciated this and took the envoys from Babylon on a tour of the palace, showing them his treasure-house full of silver, gold, spices, and perfumes. He took them into his jewel rooms, too, and opened to them all his treasures—everything.
3 Then Isaiah the prophet came to the king and said, “What did they say? Where are they from?”
“From far away in Babylon,” Hezekiah replied.
4 “How much have they seen?” asked Isaiah.
And Hezekiah replied, “I showed them everything I own, all my priceless treasures.”
5 Then Isaiah said to him, “Listen to this message from the Lord Almighty:
6 “The time is coming when everything you have—all the treasures stored up by your fathers—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left. 7 And some of your own sons will become slaves, yes, eunuchs, in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
8 “All right,” Hezekiah replied. “Whatever the Lord says is good. At least there will be peace during my lifetime!”
9 Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw one who had fallen to earth from heaven,[a] and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. 2 When he opened it, smoke poured out as though from some huge furnace, and the sun and air were darkened by the smoke.
3 Then locusts came from the smoke and descended onto the earth and were given power to sting like scorpions. 4 They were told not to hurt the grass or plants or trees, but to attack those people who did not have the mark of God on their foreheads. 5 They were not to kill them, but to torture them for five months with agony like the pain of scorpion stings. 6 In those days men will try to kill themselves but won’t be able to—death will not come. They will long to die—but death will flee away!
7 The locusts looked like horses armored for battle. They had what looked like golden crowns on their heads, and their faces looked like men’s. 8 Their hair was long like women’s, and their teeth were those of lions. 9 They wore breastplates that seemed to be of iron, and their wings roared like an army of chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had stinging tails like scorpions, and their power to hurt, given to them for five months, was in their tails. 11 Their king is the Prince of the bottomless pit whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon (and in English, the Destroyer).[b]
12 One terror now ends, but there are two more coming!
13 The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice speaking from the four horns of the golden altar that stands before the throne of God, 14 saying to the sixth angel, “Release the four mighty demons[c] held bound at the great River Euphrates.” 15 They had been kept in readiness for that year and month and day and hour, and now they were turned loose to kill a third of all mankind. 16 They led an army of 200,000,000 warriors[d]—I heard an announcement of how many there were.
17-18 I saw their horses spread out before me in my vision; their riders wore fiery-red breastplates, though some were sky-blue and others yellow. The horses’ heads looked much like lions’, and smoke and fire and flaming sulphur billowed from their mouths, killing one-third of all mankind. 19 Their power of death was not only in their mouths, but in their tails as well, for their tails were similar to serpents’ heads that struck and bit with fatal wounds.
20 But the men left alive after these plagues still refused to worship God! They would not renounce their demon-worship, nor their idols made of gold and silver, brass, stone, and wood—which neither see nor hear nor walk! 21 Neither did they change their mind and attitude about all their murders and witchcraft, their immorality and theft.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.