M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Love and obey the Lord

11 Love the Lord your God. Do what he tells you to do. Always obey his rules, his laws and his commands. ² Remember that today I am speaking to you who have seen his powerful acts! Your children did not see the great things that the Lord your God did to teach you. You saw for yourselves how great, strong and powerful he is. ³ But your children did not see the great miracles that he did in Egypt. He punished Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and all his people. ⁴ You saw how God destroyed Egypt's army, with all their horses and chariots. They were chasing after you to catch you. But God caused the water of the Red Sea to cover them, so that they drowned. ⁵ Your children did not see all the things that the Lord did in the desert as he brought you here. ⁶ They did not see how he punished Dathan and Abiram, Eliab's sons, from Reuben's tribe. God caused the earth to open up in the middle of the Israelites' camp. These men fell down into the hole and they disappeared. Their families, their tents and everything that they had all disappeared in the hole. ⁷ Remember that I am speaking to you, the people who have seen the Lord's powerful acts.

God's blessings in Canaan

⁸ So you must obey all the commands that I am giving to you today. If you do that, you will be able to go across the Jordan River into Canaan. You will be strong enough to take the land for yourselves and live there. ⁹ Then you will enjoy a long life in that land. It is the land that the Lord promised to give to your ancestors and to their descendants. It is a land where there is plenty of food and drink, enough for everyone.

¹⁰ The land that you are going into is not like the land of Egypt, where you lived before. There, when you planted seeds, you had to take water to them. It was like a garden where you grow vegetables. ¹¹ But now you are going across the Jordan River into a different kind of land. It has hills and valleys. Rain falls from the sky and makes the ground wet. ¹² The Lord your God takes care of the land there. He watches over it every day, through the whole year.

¹³ So listen carefully to the commands that I am giving to you today. Love the Lord your God and serve him in everything that you think and in everything that you do. ¹⁴ If you do that, he makes this promise to you: ‘I will send rain on your land at the right time each year. There will be rain in autumn and rain in spring.^[a] Then your crops will give you food. You will also have grapes to make wine and olives to make oil. ¹⁵ I will make grass grow in your fields for your animals to eat. You will have as much food as you want to eat.’

¹⁶ But be careful! Do not turn away from the Lord so that you worship other gods. Do not let those things deceive you. ¹⁷ If you do that, the Lord will be very angry with you. He will not send rain down from the sky. The land will no longer give you food to eat. Then you will soon die. You will no longer be able to live in the good land that the Lord is giving to you.

¹⁸ Continue to think carefully about these commands in everything that you do. Tie them as signs onto your hands so that you remember them. Also tie them around your heads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you sit together at home. Talk about them as you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the wood beside the doors of your houses and on your gates. ²¹ Do these things so that you and your descendants will live long lives in the land. It is the land that the Lord promised to give to your ancestors. You will continue to live there while there is still a sky above the earth.

²² Be careful to obey these commands that I am giving to you. Love the Lord your God. Live in a way that pleases him. Be faithful to him.

²³ If you do that, the Lord will chase out all those nations as you move into the land. They are greater and stronger than you are, but you will take the land from them. ²⁴ Every piece of ground that you walk on will belong to you. The borders of your land will go from the desert in the south as far as Lebanon in the north. They will go from the Euphrates river in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. ²⁵ Nobody will be able to stop you. The Lord your God will cause everyone in the other nations to be afraid of you. They will shake with fear. He has promised to do that, everywhere that you go in the land.

²⁶ Today I am telling you to choose. Do you want God to bless you? Or do you want God to curse you? ²⁷ The Lord your God will bless you if you obey his commands that I am giving to you today. ²⁸ But he will curse you if you refuse to obey his commands. If you turn away from him and you serve other gods that are new to you, he will curse you! ²⁹ When the Lord brings you into the land where you will live, do this: Speak aloud God's blessings from Mount Gerizim. Speak his curses from Mount Ebal. ³⁰ You know where these mountains are. They are west of the Jordan River, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Jordan Valley. They are near Gilgal town, where the oak trees of Moreh are.

³¹ Soon you will go across the Jordan River. You will take for yourselves the land that the Lord your God is giving to you. It will belong to you as your home. ³² When you are there, be careful to obey his laws and his teaching that I am giving to you today.

Worship God and obey him^[a]

Sing a new song!^[e]

Hezekiah's mistake

39 At that time, Baladan's son, Merodach-Baladan, was the king of Babylon. Merodach-Baladan sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah. He had heard the news that Hezekiah had been ill, but he was now better. ² Hezekiah was happy to meet the officers who came from the king of Babylon. Hezekiah showed them the places where he stored his valuable things. He showed them all his silver and gold things, his spices and very valuable olive oil. He also showed them all his weapons. Hezekiah showed them all his valuable things. There was nothing in his palace or in his whole kingdom that he did not show to the king of Babylon's officers.

³ Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah. Isaiah asked the king, ‘What did those men say? Where did they come from?’ Hezekiah replied, ‘They came to me from Babylon, far away.’ ⁴ Isaiah asked, ‘What did they see in your palace?’ Hezekiah said, ‘They saw everything that is in my palace. I showed all my valuable things to them.’

⁵ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Listen to this message from the Lord Almighty:

⁶ “Understand this! One day, soldiers from Babylon will carry away all your valuable things. Everything that you and your ancestors have stored here until now will go to Babylon. They will leave nothing here. ⁷ Some of your own descendants will also go to Babylon. Soldiers from Babylon will take them away from here. Your descendants will become eunuchs in the king of Babylon's palace.” That is what the Lord says. ’

⁸ Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The Lord's message that you have spoken to me is good.’

But he was thinking, ‘While I am still alive, people will live safely without any trouble.’

The fifth trumpet

9 The fifth angel made a sound with his trumpet. Then I saw a star that had fallen down from the sky to the earth. Someone gave a key to that star. The key could open the entrance to the deep hole.^{[a] 2} When the star opened the entrance, smoke came up out of the hole. It was like the smoke from a very big hot fire. The smoke caused the sun and the sky to become dark.

³ Then locusts came out of the smoke and they came down on the earth. They received power to cause great pain, like the power of scorpions. ⁴ They knew that they must not do anything bad to the grass on the earth. They must not attack any plant or any tree. They could only attack people who did not have God's seal on the front of their heads. ⁵ The locusts did not have authority to kill those people. But they could cause them very bad pain for five months. Their pain was like the great pain from a scorpion when it hurts someone. ⁶ During that time of great pain, people will want to kill themselves. They will want to die, but they will not find any way to die.

⁷ The locusts were like horses that were ready to fight in a war. They wore something on their heads that seemed to be gold crowns. Their faces looked like human faces. ⁸ Their hair was like women's hair. Their teeth were like lions' teeth. ⁹ They had shields over the front of their bodies, like shields made from iron. Their wings made a very loud noise. The sound was like many horses that are pulling chariots into a battle. ¹⁰ They had poison in their tails, like scorpions. They had power to attack people with their tails and to cause them pain for five months. ¹¹ The king that ruled them was the angel of the deep hole. His name is ‘Abaddon’ in the Hebrew language. In the Greek language his name is ‘Apollyon’.^[b]

¹² The first great trouble has now finished. But after all these things, there are two more great troubles still to come.

The sixth trumpet

¹³ Then the sixth angel made a sound with his trumpet. I heard a voice that spoke to him from the four corners of the gold altar. This altar is near to God himself. ¹⁴ The voice said to the sixth angel, ‘There are four angels at the great Euphrates river. Someone has tied them so that they cannot move. You must go and undo them!’ ¹⁵ So the four angels now became free. God had kept them ready for that special time, for that hour, in that day, in that month, in that year. They were now ready to kill a third of people everywhere. ¹⁶ I heard how many soldiers there were in their great army. There were 200 million soldiers who rode on horses.

¹⁷ In my vision, I saw the soldiers and their horses. The soldiers had shields over the front of their bodies. The shields had many colours. They were bright red like fire, bright blue, and yellow like sulphur. The horses' heads looked like lions' heads. Fire, smoke and sulphur came out of their mouths. ¹⁸ The fire, the smoke and the sulphur killed people. These three dangerous things killed a third of people everywhere. ¹⁹ The horses had great power in their mouths and in their tails. Their tails were like snakes, with heads that could hurt people very much.

²⁰ But all the people that the fire, the smoke and the sulphur did not kill continued to do bad things. They did not change how they lived. They worshipped things that they had made for themselves. They worshipped demons and idols that they made from gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood. Those idols cannot see anything or hear anything. They cannot walk anywhere. But the people continued to worship them. ²¹ They were not sorry that they murdered other people. They were not sorry that they used magic to hurt people. They continued to have sex with people in wrong ways. They continued to rob other people. They did not want to change the way that they lived.^[c]