M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
29 Then King David turned to the entire assembly and said: “My son Solomon, whom God has chosen to be the next king of Israel, is still young and inexperienced, and the work ahead of him is enormous; for the temple he will build is not just another building—it is for the Lord God himself! 2 Using every resource at my command, I have gathered as much as I could for building it—enough gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and great quantities of onyx, other precious stones, costly jewels, and marble. 3 And now, because of my devotion to the Temple of God, I am giving all of my own private treasures to aid in the construction. This is in addition to the building materials I have already collected. 4-5 These personal contributions consist of millions of dollars of gold from Ophir and huge amounts of silver to be used for overlaying the walls of the buildings. It will also be used for the articles made of gold and silver and for the artistic decorations. Now then, who will follow my example? Who will give himself and all that he has to the Lord?”
6-7 Then the clan leaders, the heads of the tribes, the army officers, and the administrative officers of the king pledged huge sums of gold, silver, and foreign currency, also 675 tons of bronze and 3,750 tons of iron. 8 They also contributed great amounts of jewelry, which were deposited at the Temple treasury with Jehiel (a descendant of Gershom). 9 Everyone was excited and happy for this opportunity of service, and King David was moved with deep joy.
10 While still in the presence of the whole assembly, David expressed his praises to the Lord: “O Lord God of our father Israel, praise your name for ever and ever! 11 Yours is the mighty power and glory and victory and majesty. Everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. 12 Riches and honor come from you alone, and you are the ruler of all mankind; your hand controls power and might, and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength. 13 O our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name, 14 but who am I and who are my people that we should be permitted to give anything to you? Everything we have has come from you, and we only give you what is yours already! 15 For we are here for but a moment, strangers in the land as our fathers were before us; our days on earth are like a shadow, gone so soon, without a trace. 16 O Lord our God, all of this material that we have gathered to build a temple for your holy name comes from you! It all belongs to you! 17 I know, my God, that you test men to see if they are good; for you enjoy good men. I have done all this with good motives, and I have watched your people offer their gifts willingly and joyously.
18 “O Lord, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Israel! Make your people always want to obey you, and see to it that their love for you never changes. 19 Give my son Solomon a good heart toward God, so that he will want to obey you in the smallest detail and will look forward eagerly to finishing the building of your Temple, for which I have made all of these preparations.”
20 Then David said to all the people, “Give praise to the Lord your God!” And they did, bowing low before the Lord and the king.
21 The next day they brought a thousand young bulls, a thousand rams, and a thousand lambs as burnt offerings to the Lord; they also offered drink offerings and many other sacrifices on behalf of all Israel. 22 Then they feasted and drank before the Lord with great joy.
And again[a] they crowned King David’s son Solomon as their king. They anointed him before the Lord as their leader, and they anointed Zadok as their priest. 23 So God appointed Solomon to take the throne of his father David; and he prospered greatly, and all Israel obeyed him. 24 The national leaders, the army officers, and his brothers all pledged their allegiance to King Solomon. 25 And the Lord gave him great popularity with all the people of Israel, and he amassed even greater wealth and honor than his father.
26-27 David was king of the land of Israel for forty years; seven of them during his reign in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem. 28 He died at an old age, wealthy and honored; and his son Solomon reigned in his place. 29 Detailed biographies of King David have been written in the history of Samuel the prophet, in the history written by Nathan the prophet, and in the history written by the prophet Gad. 30 These accounts tell of his reign and of his might and all that happened to him and to Israel and to the kings of the nearby nations.
3 1-2 This is my second letter to you, dear brothers, and in both of them I have tried to remind you—if you will let me—about facts you already know: facts you learned from the holy prophets and from us apostles who brought you the words of our Lord and Savior.
3 First, I want to remind you that in the last days there will come scoffers who will do every wrong they can think of and laugh at the truth. 4 This will be their line of argument: “So Jesus promised to come back, did he? Then where is he? He’ll never come! Why, as far back as anyone can remember, everything has remained exactly as it was since the first day of creation.”
5-6 They deliberately forget this fact: that God did destroy the world with a mighty flood long after he had made the heavens by the word of his command and had used the waters to form the earth and surround it. 7 And God has commanded that the earth and the heavens be stored away for a great bonfire at the judgment day, when all ungodly men will perish.
8 But don’t forget this, dear friends, that a day or a thousand years from now is like tomorrow to the Lord. 9 He isn’t really being slow about his promised return, even though it sometimes seems that way. But he is waiting, for the good reason that he is not willing that any should perish, and he is giving more time for sinners to repent. 10 The day of the Lord is surely coming, as unexpectedly as a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the heavenly bodies will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be burned up.
11 And so since everything around us is going to melt away, what holy, godly lives we should be living! 12 You should look forward to that day and hurry it along—the day when God will set the heavens on fire, and the heavenly bodies will melt and disappear in flames. 13 But we are looking forward to God’s promise of new heavens and a new earth afterwards, where there will be only goodness.[a]
14 Dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen and for him to come, try hard to live without sinning; and be at peace with everyone so that he will be pleased with you when he returns.
15-16 And remember why he is waiting. He is giving us time to get his message of salvation out to others. Our wise and beloved brother Paul has talked about these same things in many of his letters. Some of his comments are not easy to understand, and there are people who are deliberately stupid, and always demand some unusual interpretation—they have twisted his letters around to mean something quite different from what he meant, just as they do the other parts of the Scripture—and the result is disaster for them.
17 I am warning you ahead of time, dear brothers, so that you can watch out and not be carried away by the mistakes of these wicked men, lest you yourselves become mixed up too. 18 But grow in spiritual strength and become better acquainted with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be all glory and splendid honor, both now and forevermore. Good-bye.
Peter
6 Listen to what the Lord is saying to his people:
“Stand up and state your case against me. Let the mountains and hills be called to witness your complaint.
2 “And now, O mountains, listen to the Lord’s complaint! For he has a case against his people Israel! He will prosecute them to the full. 3 O my people, what have I done that makes you turn away from me? Tell me why your patience is exhausted! Answer me! 4 For I brought you out of Egypt and cut your chains of slavery. I gave you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to help you.
5 “Don’t you remember, O my people, how Balak, king of Moab, tried to destroy you through the curse of Balaam, son of Beor, but I made him bless you instead? That is the kindness I showed you again and again. Have you no memory at all of what happened at Acacia and Gilgal and how I blessed you there?”
6 “How can we make up to you for what we’ve done?” you ask. “Shall we bow before the Lord with offerings of yearling calves?”
Oh no! 7 For if you offered him thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of olive oil—would that please him? Would he be satisfied? If you sacrificed your oldest child, would that make him glad? Then would he forgive your sins? Of course not!
8 No, he has told you what he wants, and this is all it is: to be fair, just, merciful, and to walk humbly with your God.
9 The Lord’s voice calls out to all Jerusalem—listen to the Lord if you are wise! “The armies of destruction are coming; the Lord is sending them. 10 For your sins are very great—is there to be no end of getting rich by cheating? The homes of the wicked are full of ungodly treasures and lying scales. 11 Shall I say ‘Good!’ to all your merchants with their bags of false, deceitful weights? How could God be just while saying that? 12 Your rich men are wealthy through extortion and violence; your citizens are so used to lying that their tongues can’t tell the truth!
13 “Therefore I will wound you! I will make your hearts miserable for all your sins. 14 You will eat but never have enough; hunger pangs and emptiness will still remain. And though you try and try to save your money, it will come to nothing at the end, and what little you succeed in storing up I’ll give to those who conquer you![a] 15 You will plant crops but not harvest them; you will press out the oil from the olives and not get enough to anoint yourself! You will trample the grapes but get no juice to make your wine.
16 “The only commands you keep are those of Omri; the only example you follow is that of Ahab! Therefore, I will make an awesome example of you—I will destroy you. I will make you the laughingstock of the world; all who see you will snicker and sneer!”
15 Dishonest tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus’ sermons; 2 but this caused complaints from the Jewish religious leaders and the experts on Jewish law because he was associating with such despicable people—even eating with them!
3-4 So Jesus used this illustration: “If you had a hundred sheep and one of them strayed away and was lost in the wilderness, wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine others to go and search for the lost one until you found it? 5 And then you would joyfully carry it home on your shoulders. 6 When you arrived you would call together your friends and neighbors to rejoice with you because your lost sheep was found.
7 “Well, in the same way heaven will be happier over one lost sinner who returns to God than over ninety-nine others who haven’t strayed away!
8 “Or take another illustration: A woman has ten valuable silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and look in every corner of the house and sweep every nook and cranny until she finds it? 9 And then won’t she call in her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her? 10 In the same way there is joy in the presence of the angels of God when one sinner repents.”
11 To further illustrate the point, he told them this story: “A man had two sons. 12 When the younger told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting until you die!’ his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.
13 “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there wasted all his money on parties and prostitutes. 14 About the time his money was gone a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. 15 He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. 16 The boy became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the swine looked good to him. And no one gave him anything.
17 “When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired men have food enough and to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger! 18 I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, 19 and am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired man.”’
20 “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long distance away, his father saw him coming, and was filled with loving pity and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
21 “His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and you, and am not worthy of being called your son—’
22 “But his father said to the slaves, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. And a jeweled ring for his finger; and shoes! 23 And kill the calf we have in the fattening pen. We must celebrate with a feast, 24 for this son of mine was dead and has returned to life. He was lost and is found.’ So the party began.
25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working; when he returned home, he heard dance music coming from the house, 26 and he asked one of the servants what was going on.
27 “‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the calf we were fattening and has prepared a great feast to celebrate his coming home again unharmed.’
28 “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, 29 but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve worked hard for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to; and in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30 Yet when this son of yours comes back after spending your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the finest calf we have on the place.’
31 “‘Look, dear son,’ his father said to him, ‘you and I are very close, and everything I have is yours. 32 But it is right to celebrate. For he is your brother; and he was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!’”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.