M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

7 “When the Lord brings you into the Promised Land, as he soon will, he will destroy the following seven nations, all greater and mightier than you are: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites.

² “When the Lord your God delivers them over to you to be destroyed, do a complete job of it—don’t make any treaties or show them mercy; utterly wipe them out. ³ Do not intermarry with them, nor let your sons and daughters marry their sons and daughters. ⁴ That would surely result in your young people’s beginning to worship their gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be hot against you, and he would surely destroy you.

⁵ “You must break down the heathen altars and shatter the obelisks and cut up the shameful images and burn the idols.

⁶ “For you are a holy people, dedicated to the Lord your God. He has chosen you from all the people on the face of the whole earth to be his own chosen ones. ⁷ He didn’t choose you and pour out his love upon you because you were a larger nation than any other, for you were the smallest of all! ⁸ It was just because he loves you, and because he kept his promise to your ancestors. That is why he brought you out of slavery in Egypt with such amazing power and mighty miracles.

⁹ “Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is the faithful God who for a thousand generations keeps his promises and constantly loves those who love him and who obey his commands. ¹⁰ But those who hate him shall be punished publicly and destroyed. He will deal with them personally. ¹¹ Therefore, obey all these commandments I am giving you today. ¹² Because of your obedience, the Lord your God will keep his part of the contract which, in his tender love, he made with your fathers. ¹³ And he will love you and bless you and make you into a great nation. He will make you fertile and give fertility to your ground and to your animals, so that you will have large crops of grain, grapes, and olives, and great flocks of cattle, sheep, and goats when you arrive in the land he promised your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You will be blessed above all the nations of the earth; not one of you, whether male or female, shall be barren, not even your cattle. ¹⁵ And the Lord will take away all your sickness and will not let you suffer any of the diseases of Egypt you remember so well; he will give them all to your enemies!

¹⁶ “You must destroy all the nations the Lord your God delivers into your hands. Have no pity, and do not worship their gods; if you do, it will be a sad day for you. ¹⁷ Perhaps you will think to yourself, ‘How can we ever conquer these nations that are so much more powerful than we are?’ ¹⁸ But don’t be afraid of them! Just remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the land of Egypt. ¹⁹ Do you remember the terrors the Lord sent upon them—your parents saw it with their own eyes—and the mighty miracles and wonders, and the power and strength of Almighty God that he used to bring you out of Egypt? Well, the Lord your God will use this same might against the people you fear. ²⁰ Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets to drive out those who hide from you!

²¹ “No, do not be afraid of those nations, for the Lord your God is among you, and he is a great and awesome God. ²² He will cast them out a little at a time; he will not do it all at once, for if he did, the wild animals would multiply too quickly and become dangerous. ²³ He will do it gradually, and you will move in against those nations and destroy them. ²⁴ He will deliver their kings into your hands, and you will erase their names from the face of the earth. No one will be able to stand against you.

²⁵ “Burn their idols and do not touch the silver or gold they are made of. Do not take it or it will be a snare to you, for it is horrible to the Lord your God. ²⁶ Do not bring an idol into your home and worship it, for then your doom is sealed. Utterly detest it, for it is a cursed thing.

90 A prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! ² Before the mountains were created, before the earth was formed, you are God without beginning or end.

³ You speak, and man turns back to dust. ⁴ A thousand years are but as yesterday to you! They are like a single hour!^{[a] 5-6} We glide along the tides of time as swiftly as a racing river and vanish as quickly as a dream. We are like grass that is green in the morning but mowed down and withered before the evening shadows fall. ⁷ We die beneath your anger; we are overwhelmed by your wrath. ⁸ You spread out our sins before you—our secret sins—and see them all. ⁹ No wonder the years are long and heavy here beneath your wrath. All our days are filled with sighing.

¹⁰ Seventy years are given us! And some may even live to eighty. But even the best of these years are often empty and filled with pain; soon they disappear, and we are gone. ¹¹ Who can realize the terrors of your anger? Which of us can fear you as he should?

¹² Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.

¹³ O Jehovah, come and bless us! How long will you delay? Turn away your anger from us. ¹⁴ Satisfy us in our earliest^[b] youth with your loving-kindness, giving us constant joy to the end of our lives. ¹⁵ Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good. ¹⁶ Let us see your miracles again; let our children see glorious things, the kind you used to do, ¹⁷ and let the Lord our God favor us and give us success. May he give permanence to all we do.

35 Even the wilderness and desert will rejoice in those days; the desert will blossom with flowers. ² Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the Lebanon mountains, as lovely as Mount Carmel’s pastures and Sharon’s meadows; for the Lord will display his glory there, the excellency of our God.

³ With this news bring cheer to all discouraged ones. ⁴ Encourage those who are afraid. Tell them, “Be strong, fear not, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.” ⁵ And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf. ⁶ The lame man will leap up like a deer, and those who could not speak will shout and sing! Springs will burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. ⁷ The parched ground will become a pool, with springs of water in the thirsty land. Where desert jackals lived, there will be reeds and rushes!

⁸ And a main road will go through that once-deserted land; it will be named “The Holy Highway.” No evil-hearted men may walk upon it. God will walk there with you; even the most stupid cannot miss the way. ⁹ No lion will lurk along its course, nor will there be any other dangers; only the redeemed will travel there. ¹⁰ These, the ransomed of the Lord, will go home along that road to Zion, singing the songs of everlasting joy. For them all sorrow and all sighing will be gone forever; only joy and gladness will be there.

5 And I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one who was sitting on the throne, a scroll with writing on the inside and on the back, and sealed with seven seals. ² A mighty angel with a loud voice was shouting out this question: “Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and to unroll it?” ³ But no one in all heaven or earth or from among the dead was permitted to open and read it.

⁴ Then I wept with disappointment^[a] because no one anywhere was worthy; no one could tell us what it said.

⁵ But one of the twenty-four Elders said to me, “Stop crying, for look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, and proved himself worthy to open the scroll and to break its seven seals.”

⁶ I looked and saw a Lamb standing there before the twenty-four Elders, in front of the throne and the Living Beings, and on the Lamb were wounds that once had caused his death. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the sevenfold Spirit of God, sent out into every part of the world. ⁷ He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting upon the throne. ⁸ And as he took the scroll, the twenty-four Elders fell down before the Lamb, each with a harp and golden vials filled with incense—the prayers of God’s people!

⁹ They were singing^[b] him a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it; for you were slain, and your blood has bought people from every nation as gifts for God. ¹⁰ And you have gathered them into a kingdom and made them priests of our God; they shall reign upon the earth.”

¹¹ Then in my vision I heard the singing of millions of angels surrounding the throne and the Living Beings and the Elders: ¹² “The Lamb is worthy (loudly they sang it!), the Lamb who was slain. He is worthy to receive the power, and the riches, and the wisdom, and the strength, and the honor, and the glory, and the blessing.”

¹³ And then I heard everyone in heaven and earth, and from the dead beneath the earth and in the sea, exclaiming, “The blessing and the honor and the glory and the power belong to the one sitting on the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever.” ¹⁴ And the four Living Beings kept saying, “Amen!” And the twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped him.