M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

The Death of Samuel

25 Samuel died, and all the Israelites came together and mourned for him. Then they buried him at his home in Ramah.

David and Abigail

After this, David went to the wilderness of Paran. ^2-3 There was a man of the clan of Caleb named Nabal, who was from the town of Maon, and who owned land near the town of Carmel. He was a very rich man, the owner of three thousand sheep and one thousand goats. His wife Abigail was beautiful and intelligent, but he was a mean, bad-tempered man.

Nabal was shearing his sheep in Carmel, ⁴ and David, who was in the wilderness, heard about it, ⁵ so he sent ten young men with orders to go to Carmel, find Nabal, and give him his greetings. ⁶ He instructed them to say to Nabal: “David sends you greetings, my friend, with his best wishes for you, your family, and all that is yours. ⁷ He heard that you were shearing your sheep, and he wants you to know that your shepherds have been with us and we did not harm them. Nothing that belonged to them was stolen all the time they were at Carmel. ⁸ Just ask them, and they will tell you. We have come on a feast day, and David asks you to receive us kindly. Please give what you can to us your servants and to your dear friend David.”

⁹ David's men delivered this message to Nabal in David's name. Then they waited there, ¹⁰ and Nabal finally answered, “David? Who is he? I've never heard of him! The country is full of runaway slaves nowadays! ¹¹ I'm not going to take my bread and water, and the animals I have butchered for my sheepshearers, and give them to people who come from I don't know where!”

¹² David's men went back to him and told him what Nabal had said. ¹³ “Buckle on your swords!” he ordered, and they all did. David also buckled on his sword and left with about four hundred of his men, leaving two hundred behind with the supplies.

¹⁴ One of Nabal's servants said to Nabal's wife Abigail, “Have you heard? David sent some messengers from the wilderness with greetings for our master, but he insulted them. ¹⁵ Yet they were very good to us; they never bothered us, and all the time we were with them in the fields, nothing that belonged to us was stolen. ¹⁶ They protected us day and night the whole time we were with them looking after our flocks. ¹⁷ Please think this over and decide what to do. This could be disastrous for our master and all his family. He is so mean that he won't listen to anybody!”

¹⁸ Abigail quickly gathered two hundred loaves of bread, two leather bags full of wine, five roasted sheep, two bushels of roasted grain, a hundred bunches of raisins, and two hundred cakes of dried figs, and loaded them on donkeys. ¹⁹ Then she said to the servants, “You go on ahead and I will follow you.” But she said nothing to her husband.

²⁰ She was riding her donkey around a bend on a hillside when suddenly she met David and his men coming toward her. ²¹ David had been thinking, “Why did I ever protect that fellow's property out here in the wilderness? Not a thing that belonged to him was stolen, and this is how he pays me back for the help I gave him! ²² May God strike me^[a] dead if I don't kill every last one of those men before morning!”

²³ When Abigail saw David, she quickly dismounted and threw herself on the ground ²⁴ at David's feet, and said to him, “Please, sir, listen to me! Let me take the blame. ²⁵ Please, don't pay any attention to Nabal, that good-for-nothing! He is exactly what his name means—a fool!^[b] I wasn't there when your servants arrived, sir. ²⁶ It is the Lord who has kept you from taking revenge and killing your enemies. And now I swear to you by the living Lord that your enemies and all who want to harm you will be punished like Nabal. ²⁷ Please, sir, accept this present I have brought you, and give it to your men. ²⁸ Please forgive me, sir, for any wrong I have done. The Lord will make you king, and your descendants also, because you are fighting his battles; and you will not do anything evil^[c] as long as you live. ²⁹ If anyone should attack you and try to kill you, the Lord your God will keep you safe, as someone guards a precious treasure. As for your enemies, however, he will throw them away, as someone hurls stones with a sling. ³⁰ And when the Lord has done all the good things he has promised you and has made you king of Israel, ³¹ then you will not have to feel regret or remorse, sir, for having killed without cause or for having taken your own revenge. And when the Lord has blessed you, sir, please do not forget me.”

³² David said to her, “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you today to meet me! ³³ Thank God for your good sense and for what you have done today in keeping me from the crime of murder and from taking my own revenge. ³⁴ The Lord has kept me from harming you. But I swear by the living God of Israel that if you had not hurried to meet me, all of Nabal's men would have been dead by morning!” ³⁵ Then David accepted what she had brought him and said to her, “Go back home and don't worry. I will do what you want.”

³⁶ Abigail went back to Nabal, who was at home having a feast fit for a king. He was drunk and in a good mood, so she did not tell him anything until the next morning. ³⁷ Then, after he had sobered up, she told him everything. He suffered a stroke and was completely paralyzed. ³⁸ Some ten days later the Lord struck Nabal and he died.

³⁹ When David heard that Nabal had died, he said, “Praise the Lord! He has taken revenge on Nabal for insulting me and has kept me his servant from doing wrong. The Lord has punished Nabal for his evil.”

Then David sent a proposal of marriage to Abigail. ⁴⁰ His servants went to her at Carmel and said to her, “David sent us to take you to him to be his wife.”

⁴¹ Abigail bowed down to the ground and said, “I am his servant, ready to wash the feet of his servants.” ⁴² She rose quickly and mounted her donkey. Accompanied by her five maids, she went with David's servants and became his wife.

⁴³ David had married Ahinoam from Jezreel, and now Abigail also became his wife. ^44 (A)Meanwhile, Saul had given his daughter Michal, who had been David's wife, to Palti son of Laish, who was from the town of Gallim.

Lawsuits against Fellow Christians

6 If any of you have a dispute with another Christian, how dare you go before heathen judges instead of letting God's people settle the matter? ² Don't you know that God's people will judge the world? Well, then, if you are to judge the world, aren't you capable of judging small matters? ³ Do you not know that we shall judge the angels? How much more, then, the things of this life! ⁴ If such matters come up, are you going to take them to be settled by people who have no standing in the church? ⁵ Shame on you! Surely there is at least one wise person in your fellowship who can settle a dispute between fellow Christians. ⁶ Instead, one Christian goes to court against another and lets unbelievers judge the case!

⁷ The very fact that you have legal disputes among yourselves shows that you have failed completely. Would it not be better for you to be wronged? Would it not be better for you to be robbed? ⁸ Instead, you yourselves wrong one another and rob one another, even other believers! ⁹ Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts ¹⁰ or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves—none of these will possess God's Kingdom. ¹¹ Some of you were like that. But you have been purified from sin; you have been dedicated to God; you have been put right with God by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Use Your Bodies for God's Glory

^12 (A)Someone will say, “I am allowed to do anything.” Yes; but not everything is good for you. I could say that I am allowed to do anything, but I am not going to let anything make me its slave. ¹³ Someone else will say, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food.” Yes; but God will put an end to both. The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body. ¹⁴ God raised the Lord from death, and he will also raise us by his power.

¹⁵ You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible! ^16 (B)Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, “The two will become one body.” ¹⁷ But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him.

¹⁸ Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body. ^19 (C)Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; ²⁰ he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God's glory.

Ezekiel Acts Out the Siege of Jerusalem

4 God said, “Mortal man, get a brick, put it in front of you, and scratch lines on it to represent the city of Jerusalem. ² Then, to represent a siege, put trenches, earthworks, camps, and battering rams all around it. ³ Take an iron pan and set it up like a wall between you and the city. Face the city. It is under siege, and you are the one besieging it. This will be a sign to the nation of Israel.

^4-5 “Then lie down on your left side, and I^[a] will place on you the guilt of the nation of Israel. For 390 days you will stay there and suffer because of their guilt. I have sentenced you to one day for each year their punishment will last. ⁶ When you finish that, turn over on your right side and suffer for the guilt of Judah for forty days—one day for each year of their punishment.

⁷ “Fix your eyes on the siege of Jerusalem. Shake your fist at the city and prophesy against it. ⁸ I will tie you up so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until the siege is over.

⁹ “Now take some wheat, barley, beans, peas, millet, and spelt. Mix them all together and make bread. That is what you are to eat during the 390 days you are lying on your left side. ¹⁰ You will be allowed eight ounces of bread a day, and it will have to last until the next day. ¹¹ You will also have a limited amount of water to drink, two cups a day. ¹² You are to build a fire out of dried human excrement, bake bread on the fire, and eat it where everyone can see you.”

¹³ The Lord said, “This represents the way the Israelites will have to eat food which the Law forbids,^[b] when I scatter them to foreign countries.”

¹⁴ But I replied, “No, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From childhood on I have never eaten meat from any animal that died a natural death or was killed by wild animals. I have never eaten any food considered unclean.”

¹⁵ So God said, “Very well. I will let you use cow dung instead, and you can bake your bread on that.”

¹⁶ And he added, “Mortal man, I am going to cut off the supply of bread for Jerusalem. The people there will be distressed and anxious as they measure out the food they eat and the water they drink. ¹⁷ They will run out of bread and water; they will be in despair, and they will waste away because of their sins.”

A Song of Praise^[a]

A Prayer for Help^(B)

A Prayer in Sickness^[c]