M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Chapter 25
Year of the Sabbath.[a] 1 The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel saying to them: When you come into the land that I am giving you, the land is to keep a Sabbath to the Lord. 3 You shall sow the fields for six years and you shall prune the vineyard and harvest its fruit for six years, 4 but the seventh year will be a Sabbath of rest to the Lord. It is a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. 5 You shall not harvest whatever grows on its own, nor shall you gather the grapes of your undressed vines. It is a year of rest for the land. 6 During this Sabbath the land will provide food for you, for you and your servant, and your maid, and your hired hand, and your alien who dwells with you, 7 and for your cattle and your animals in the land. All of your produce will be for food.
The Year of Jubilee.[b] 8 “You shall count seven Sabbaths of years for yourselves, seven times seven years, and your span of seven times seven years will be forty-nine years. 9 You shall blow the trumpet of the Jubilee on the tenth day of the seventh month, on the Day of Atonement you shall blow the trumpet throughout the land. 10 You shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the whole land to all of its inhabitants. It will be a Jubilee for you. Each of you shall return to his own property, and each shall return to his own clan. 11 The fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee for you. You shall not sow nor reap. You shall not reap what grows on its own, and you shall not gather grapes from the undressed vines. 12 It is a Jubilee and it is to be holy for you. You shall eat only what comes directly from the fields.
13 “In the Jubilee Year you shall return each man to his property. 14 If you sell some merchandise to your neighbor, or you buy something from your neighbor, you shall not take advantage of one another. 15 You shall buy from your neighbor based on the number of years since the Jubilee. He is to sell to you based on the number of years left for harvesting crops. 16 If the number of years left is greater, you shall increase the price paid, but if the number of years is smaller, then you shall decrease the price paid, for it is the number of harvests that he is selling you. 17 You shall not wrong one another, for you shall fear your God. I am the Lord, your God.
18 “You shall observe my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them in order to live securely in the land. 19 The land shall yield its fruit, and you shall eat your fill, and dwell in the land securely. 20 If you should say, ‘What will we eat the seventh year, for we are not sowing nor are we gathering our increase,’ 21 then I will send my blessing upon you in the sixth year so that the crops are abundant enough for three years. 22 You shall sow in the eighth year, but you shall still be eating old fruit until the ninth year. You shall be eating old fruit until its fruit comes in.
23 Redemption of the Land.[c]“The land will not be permanently sold, for the land belongs to me and you are my aliens and tenants. 24 In all the land that you possess, you shall provide a redemption for the land. 25 If your brother becomes impoverished and sells part of his property, then his next of kin shall come and redeem it. He shall redeem what his brother has sold.[d] 26 If there is no one else to redeem it and the man himself can redeem it, 27 then let him calculate the number of years since the sale, and let him pay for the remaining years to the man to whom he sold it, so that he can return to his property. 28 But if he is not able to get it back, then what he sold shall remain in the possession of the one who bought it until the Jubilee Year. It shall revert to him in the Jubilee, so that he can return to his property.
29 “If a man sells his home in a walled city, then he can redeem it any time within one year. He can redeem it for a year from the time he sold it. 30 But if he has not redeemed it within the period of one year, then the house within the walled city shall belong to the person who bought it forever, from one generation to the next. It shall not revert during the Jubilee Year. 31 Houses in villages that have no walls around them shall be treated just like fields in the countryside. They can be redeemed, and they shall revert in the Jubilee Year. 32 This does not apply to the cities of the Levites, for the Levites can redeem their possessions, their houses in the cities, at any time. 33 Whenever a person buys a house in the city from the Levites, what was sold will revert in the Jubilee Year, for the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel. 34 But the fields at the edge of the city cannot be sold, for that is their perpetual possession.
35 “If a brother becomes poor and is unable to support himself, then you shall help him, letting him live with you as though he were a guest or a lodger. 36 Do not practice usury or ask for interest, but fear God, letting your brother live with you. 37 You shall not charge interest if you lend him money, nor offer him food for profit. 38 I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God.
39 “If your brother becomes poor and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve you as a slave. 40 Treat him as a hired servant or a guest. He is to serve you only until the Jubilee Year.[e] 41 He shall then leave you, he and his children, and he shall return to his own family and return to the property owned by his fathers. 42 For you are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. You are not to be sold as slaves 43 or treated harshly. Fear your God.
44 “You can have pagan male and female slaves from the nations around you. You can buy them, male and female slaves. 45 Furthermore, you can buy the children of the aliens living in your land, even those who were born in your land. They shall be your property. 46 Your children shall inherit them after you die, for your slaves are property to be inherited forever. But you shall not treat your brethren, the children of Israel, with this type of harshness.
47 “If an alien or foreigner has grown rich and one of your brethren becomes poor and sells himself to the alien or foreigner living in your midst or to a member of that foreigner’s family, 48 that person can be redeemed. One of his relatives can redeem him. 49 His uncle or his cousin or any of his relatives can redeem him, or if he is able, he can redeem himself. 50 He should reckon the time from when he bought him until the Jubilee Year with the buyer. The price of redemption will be based upon the number of years and the amount a hired servant would be paid. 51 If there are still a number of years, then he will pay a larger share of the price for which he was bought. 52 If only a few years remain until the Jubilee Year, he will calculate the redemption that he will give him according to that number of years. 53 He is to be treated like a hired servant that one would employ a year at a time. You are not to treat him harshly. 54 Even if he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he will be freed during the Jubilee Year, he and his children with him. 55 The children of Israel are my servants.[f] They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God.
Psalm 32[a]
The Joy of Being Forgiven
1 Of David. A maskil.[b]
[c]Blessed is the one whose offense is forgiven,
whose sin is erased.
2 Blessed is the one to whom the Lord charges no guilt
and in whose spirit there is no guile.
3 As long as I remained silent,[d]
my body wasted away
as the result of my groaning throughout the day.
4 For day and night
your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength withered steadily
as though consumed by the summer heat.[e] Selah
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I made no attempt to conceal my guilt.
I said, “I will confess my offenses[f] to the Lord,”
and you removed the guilt of my sin. Selah
6 Therefore, let everyone who is faithful pray to you
where you may be found.[g]
Even if great floods threaten,
they will never reach him.
7 You are a place of refuge for me;
you preserve me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.[h] Selah
8 I will instruct you
and guide you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you
and keep my eyes upon you.
9 Do not behave without understanding
like a horse or a mule;
if its temper is not curbed with bit and bridle,
it will not come near you.
10 The wicked has a multitude of troubles,
but the man who trusts in the Lord
is surrounded by kindness.[i]
11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous;
shout for joy, all you upright of heart.[j]
Chapter 8
The Smile of a Wise Man[a]
1 Who is like the wise man?
Who else knows how to interpret things?
A man’s wisdom lights up his face,
softening the hardness of his countenance.
When Man Dominates Man.[b] 2 Obey the command of the king because of your sacred oath, 3 and do not be hasty to ignore it. Do not support him in some evil scheme, for he does whatever he pleases. 4 Since his word is sovereign, who can say to him, “What are you doing?”
5 Whoever obeys a command will come to no harm,
and the wise mind will know the time and the way.
6 For there is a time and a way for everything,
although a man’s troubles are a great affliction.
7 For he is ignorant of what the future holds,
inasmuch as no one will make known to him what is in store.
8 No one has it in his power
to restrain the wind from blowing
or to forestall the day of death.
No one can escape the perils of war,
nor can wickedness preserve those who engage in it.
9 All this I have observed as I carefully concentrated my mind on everything that is done under the sun, while one person tyrannizes another and causes suffering.
10 The Desire To Do Evil. Meanwhile I have observed the wicked being carried to their graves. They used to approach and enter the holy place, and they were praised in the city for having done such things. This also is vanity.[c]
11 Because the sentence for committing an evil act is not carried out quickly, people’s hearts are prone to act wickedly. 12 Even though the sinner does wrong a hundred times and continues to live, I am confident that things will go well for those who fear God because of their fear of him. 13 However, things will not go well with the wicked, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow, because they do not stand in fear before God.
14 What Constitutes Happiness.[d] Another vanity that takes place on earth is that sometimes righteous people are treated as though they had acted in an evil way, and wicked people are treated as though they had lived righteous lives. This too, I say, is vanity. 15 Therefore, I commend enjoyment, since there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. This is his reward for his toil during the days of life that God grants him under the sun.
How To Know?
16 The Claims of a Wise Man. Having pursued my goal to acquire wisdom and to observe the tasks undertaken on earth by man, whose eyes do not find rest either by day or by night, 17 I came to the realization that man is unable to discover all God’s work[e] that is done under the sun. However great an effort a man exerts in this search, he will never succeed. A wise man may claim to know, but he is in no way able to do so.
Chapter 4
The Preaching of a Man of God[a]
The Charge To Preach. 1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead,[b] and by his appearing and his kingdom, I charge you: 2 preach the message; be persistent in doing so, whether in season or out of season; convince, reprove, and encourage, but with great patience and instruction.
The Need for Preaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not accept sound doctrine, but they will follow their own desires and accumulate teachers who will preach to their itching ears. 4 They will shut their ears to the truth and be captivated by myths. 5 As for you, always be sober. Endure hardships, do the work of preaching the gospel, and carry out your ministry to the fullest extent.[c]
The Triumphs of a Man of God[d]
Reward for Fidelity. 6 As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time has come for my departure. 7 I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. 8 Now waiting for me is the crown[e] of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day—and not only to me, but to all those who have eagerly longed for his appearance.
Comfort in Trial. 9 Make every effort to come to me as soon as possible. 10 Because of his love of worldly pursuits, Demas[f] has deserted me and gone off to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus has left for Dalmatia. 11 No one but Luke[g] is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he has been helpful to me in my ministry.
12 I have sent Tychicus[h] to Ephesus. 13 When you come, bring along with you the cloak[i] that I left with Carpus in Troas, and also the scrolls, particularly the parchments.
14 Alexander the coppersmith[j] has done me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for his deeds. 15 Be on guard yourself against him, for he has been strongly opposed to our teaching.
16 At the first hearing of my case, no one came to court to support me. Every one of them deserted me. May it not be held against them! 17 But the Lord stood at my side[k] and gave me strength so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.
Thus was I rescued from the lion’s jaws. 18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.[l]
Conclusion[m]
19 Final Greetings. Greet Prisca and Aquila,[n] and the household of Onesiphorus. 20 Erastus[o] remained in Corinth, while I left Trophimus ill in Miletus. 21 Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brethren.[p]
22 Farewell. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with all of you.[q]
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