M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Chapter 26[a]
Rewards of Obedience. 1 “Do not make idols or carved images. Do not set up stone images in your land before which you bow down. I am the Lord, your God. 2 Observe my Sabbaths and stand in awe before my sanctuary. I am the Lord. 3 Follow my statutes and keep my commandments and obey them.[b] 4 Then I will give you rain in its proper season and the yield of the land shall increase and the trees of the field shall bear their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall continue even until your grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall continue until the time for planting. You shall eat your fill of your bread, and dwell securely in your land. 6 I will grant peace in the land. You shall lie down, fearing nothing. I will rid the land of savage beasts, and the sword will not pass through your land. 7 You shall pursue your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you ten thousand, and you shall put them to flight. Your enemies shall fall by the sword before you. 9 I will look with favor upon you, and make you fruitful, and cause you to multiply, and establish my covenant with you. 10 You shall still be eating the old harvest and shall have to clean out the old because of the new. 11 I will establish my tabernacle among you, and my soul will not reject you. 12 [c]I will walk in your midst and I will be your God and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord, your God, who brought you forth from the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be their slaves. I have broken the bonds of your yoke and brought you out with your heads held high.
14 Consequences of Disobedience.“But if you do not listen to me and do not keep these commandments 15 and if you despise my statutes and hate my ordinances, failing to observe my commandments and breaking my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will visit terror upon you, and consumption and fever that will destroy your eyesight and break your hearts. You shall plant your seeds in vain, and your enemies shall eat it. 17 I will set my face against you so that you are slain by your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee even though no one is pursuing you.
18 “Then, if you still do not obey me, I will punish you seven times as much for your sins. 19 I shall break down your stubborn pride. I shall make your skies like iron and your earth like brass. 20 Your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.
21 “If you continue to be hostile to me and will not obey me, I will bring plagues upon you, seven times greater than your sins. 22 I will also send wild animals into your midst. They shall carry off your children and cut down your cattle. They shall cause your numbers to decrease and your highways shall become desolate. 23 If you do not accept my correction through these things and you walk in opposition to me, 24 then I will also walk in opposition to you and I will punish you seven times more than your sins. 25 I will bring a sword upon you that will execute vengeance for my covenant. When you are gathered together in your cities, I will send a plague upon you and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 When I have cut off your supply of bread, then ten women shall bake bread in the same oven. They shall deliver your measure of bread. You shall eat it, but not be satisfied.
27 “But if after all of this you still will not obey me but walk in opposition to me, 28 then I will walk in opposition to you in my fury. I will punish you seven times more than your sins. 29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your idols. I will cast your bodies upon the remains of your idols, and I will loathe you. 31 I will lay your cities waste and bring desolation upon your sanctuaries. I will not delight in your fragrant aromas. 32 I will lay waste the land, and your enemies will dwell there. 33 I will scatter you among the pagans and pull out my sword against you. Your land shall be desolate and your cities shall be laid waste. 34 The land shall be pleased with its Sabbaths while it is desolate and you are dwelling in the land of your enemies. The land shall then rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 It shall rest as long as it lies desolate, because it did not rest during your Sabbaths when you dwelt in it.
36 “As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so timid in the land of their enemies that the sound of a blowing leaf will put them to flight. They shall flee as though fleeing from a sword. They shall fall down when no one is chasing them. 37 They shall fall all over one another as if before a sword, even though no one is chasing them. You shall not have the strength to stand before your enemies. 38 You shall die among the pagans, the land of your enemies will devour you.
39 “Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in the land of their enemies, and also because of the iniquity of their fathers. They shall pine away with them. 40 [d]If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, the trespasses that they committed against me, and that they acted in opposition to me, 41 so that I walked in opposition to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies, if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled and they accept the punishment for their sins, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham. These I will remember, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will have been abandoned by them, and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate when they are no longer there. They shall accept the punishment for their iniquity, for they despised my ordinances and their souls loathed my statutes. 44 Yet in spite of all of that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I loathe them, utterly destroying them, and thus breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord, their God. 45 For their sake I will remember the covenant I made with their ancestors whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the pagans so that I might be their God. I am the Lord.”
46 These are the statutes and the ordinances and the laws that the Lord established through Moses between himself and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai.
Psalm 33[a]
Praise of God’s Providence
1 Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Give thanks to the Lord on the harp;
offer praise to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;[b]
play skillfully on the strings with joyful shouts.
4 [c]For the word of the Lord is true,
and he is faithful in everything he does.
5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is filled with his kindness.
6 The heavens were made by the word[d] of the Lord,
and all their host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea as in a bowl;[e]
he places the deep in storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world revere him.[f]
9 [g]For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
10 The Lord thwarts the plans of nations
and frustrates the designs of peoples.
11 But the plan of the Lord remains forever,
the designs of his heart for all generations.
12 [h]Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.[i]
13 [j]The Lord gazes down from heaven
and beholds the entire human race.
14 From his royal throne
he watches all who dwell on the earth.
15 He who has fashioned the hearts of them all
observes everything they do.
16 A king is not saved by a large army,
nor is a warrior delivered by great strength.
17 A horse offers false hope for victory;
despite its power it cannot save.
18 [k]But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
on those who trust in his kindness,
19 to deliver them from death
and to preserve their lives in time of famine.
20 [l]Our soul waits in hope for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
21 Our hearts rejoice in him
because we trust in his holy name.
22 O Lord, let your kindness rest upon us,
for we have placed our hope in you.
Chapter 9
Love, Hatred, and Death.[a] 1 To all this I have applied my mind, and I came to this conclusion: the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. As to whether they will earn love or hatred, we have no way of knowing. 2 Everything that confronts them is futile, inasmuch as the same fate comes to all, to the upright, and the wicked, to the good and the bad, to the clean and the unclean, to those who offer sacrifice and those who do not.
As it is with the good person,
so is it with the sinner;
as it is with the one who takes an oath,
so is it with the one who is fearful of doing so.
3 The worst evil of all the things that happen under the sun is this: that the same fate befalls everyone. Moreover, the hearts of men are filled with evil; madness is in their hearts throughout their lives, and afterward they descend to the dead. 4 However, the one who is counted among the living still has hope. It is preferable to be a living dog rather than a dead lion.
5 The living realize that they will die,
whereas the dead know nothing whatever.
They will have no further reward,
and even the memory of them will be obliterated.
6 For them all love and hatred and jealousy
have already perished.
Never again will they have any share
in anything that is done under the sun.
Eat, Drink, and Love.[b] 7 Go forth, then. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God long ago approved what you do. 8 At all times dress in white garments and always anoint your head with oil.
9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love throughout all the days of your allotted span of life that have been given to you under the sun, because that is your lot while you live and labor here under the sun. 10 Whatever task your hand finds to do, expend all your efforts on it, for you will find no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom in the netherworld to which you are going.
11 Destiny and Life. Another thing I have observed here under the sun:
The race is not won by the swift,
nor the battle by the brave.
Food does not belong to the wise,
nor wealth to the intelligent,
nor success to the skillful.
Rather, time and chance govern all alike.
12 For no one is able to anticipate the time of disaster:
Like fish caught in a treacherous net,
and like birds caught in a snare,
so people are trapped
when misfortune suddenly falls upon them.
13 War and Peace.[c] I have also seen the following example of wisdom under the sun, and I find it of great significance.
14 There was a small town with very few inhabitants. A great king advanced against it and surrounded it while building great siege-works. 15 In the town there lived a man who, though poor, was wise, and by his wisdom he delivered the town. Yet no one remembered this poor man afterward. 16 Therefore, I said, “Wisdom is better than power.” Yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words go unheeded.
A Wise Man in the City of Fools[d]
17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded
than the shouts of a ruler of fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
but one mistake can undo a great deal of good.
Salutation[a]
Chapter 1
Address. 1 Paul, a servant of God[b] and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to further the faith of those whom God has chosen and their knowledge of religious truth, 2 with its hope of eternal life that God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and who now at his appointed time has revealed his word through the proclamation with which I was entrusted by the command of God our Savior, 4 to Titus, my loyal child in the faith we share:[c] grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.[d]
Church Organization
A Bishop Must Be Blameless.[e] 5 The reason I left you behind in Crete was so that you could finish up the work that remained to be done and appoint presbyters in every town as I directed you. 6 Each man must be blameless and the husband of only one wife, with children who are believers and free from any suspicion of licentious or rebellious behavior.
7 For in his role as God’s steward a bishop[f] must be blameless. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or prone to drunkenness or violent or avaricious. 8 Rather, he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled. 9 In addition, he must hold firmly to the authentic message he has been taught, so that he may be able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.
10 For the Pure All Things Are Pure.[g] For there are also many rebellious people, especially among the Jewish converts,[h] who deceive others with their empty talk. 11 It is essential to silence them, since they are ruining whole households by teaching for dishonest gain what it is not right to teach. 12 It was one of their very own prophets, a man from Crete, who said,
“Cretans have always been liars, vicious beasts, and lazy gluttons.”
13 This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply so that they may be restored to a sound faith, 14 rather than paying attention to Jewish myths or to the commandments of those who turn away from the truth.
15 To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are corrupt and without faith nothing is pure.[i] Their very minds and their consciences have been corrupted. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds. They are detestable and disobedient, totally unfit for any good work.
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