M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Rewards for Obedience
26 “You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them, for I am the Lord your God.(A) 2 You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.(B)
3 “If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully,(C) 4 I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall overlap the vintage, and the vintage shall overlap the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full and live securely in your land.(D) 6 And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land.(E) 7 You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8 Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.(F) 9 I will look with favor upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will maintain my covenant with you.(G) 10 You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new.(H) 11 I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you.(I) 12 I[a] will be your God, and you shall be my people.(J) 13 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.
Penalties for Disobedience
14 “But if you will not obey me and do not observe all these commandments,(K) 15 if you spurn my statutes and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments and you break my covenant, 16 I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you, consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.(L) 17 I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you.(M) 18 And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins. 19 I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper.(N) 20 Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.(O)
21 “If you continue hostile to me and will not obey me, I will continue to plague you sevenfold for your sins. 22 I will let loose wild animals against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock; they shall make you few in number, and your roads shall be deserted.(P)
23 “If in spite of these punishments you have not turned back to me but continue hostile to me,(Q) 24 then I, too, will continue hostile to you: I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins.(R) 25 I will bring the sword against you, executing vengeance for the covenant, and if you withdraw into your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into enemy hands.(S) 26 When I cut off your supply of bread,[b] ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven, and they shall dole out your bread by weight, and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied.(T)
27 “But if, despite this, you disobey me and continue hostile to me, 28 I will continue hostile to you in fury; I in turn will punish you myself sevenfold for your sins. 29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.(U) 30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars; I will heap your carcasses on the carcasses of your idols. I will abhor you.(V) 31 I will lay your cities waste, will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors.(W) 32 I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to settle in it shall be appalled at it.(X) 33 And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword against you; your land shall be a desolation and your cities a waste.(Y)
34 “Then the land shall enjoy[c] its Sabbath years as long as it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land shall rest and enjoy[d] its Sabbath years.(Z) 35 As long as it lies desolate, it shall have the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were living on it. 36 And as for those of you who survive, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall though no one pursues.(AA) 37 They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though no one pursues, and you shall have no power to stand against your enemies.(AB) 38 You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall devour you.(AC) 39 And those of you who survive shall languish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; they shall also languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors.(AD)
40 “But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors—their treachery against me and also their continued hostility to me,(AE) 41 so that I in turn was hostile to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if, then, their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity,(AF) 42 then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.(AG) 43 For the land shall be deserted by them and enjoy[e] its Sabbath years by lying desolate without them, while they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they dared to spurn my ordinances, and they abhorred my statutes.(AH) 44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them or abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God,(AI) 45 but I will remember in their favor the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, to be their God: I am the Lord.”(AJ)
46 These are the statutes and ordinances and laws that the Lord established between himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through Moses.(AK)
Psalm 33
The Greatness and Goodness of God
1 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous.
Praise befits the upright.(A)
2 Praise the Lord with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.(B)
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.(C)
4 For the word of the Lord is upright,
and all his work is done in faithfulness.(D)
5 He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.(E)
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made
and all their host by the breath of his mouth.(F)
7 He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle;
he put the deeps in storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him,(G)
9 for he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.(H)
10 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.(I)
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the thoughts of his heart to all generations.(J)
12 Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.(K)
13 The Lord looks down from heaven;
he sees all humankind.(L)
14 From where he sits enthroned he watches
all the inhabitants of the earth—
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.(M)
16 A king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.(N)
17 The war horse is a vain hope for victory,
and by its great might it cannot save.(O)
18 Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,(P)
19 to deliver their soul from death
and to keep them alive in famine.(Q)
20 Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and shield.
21 Our heart is glad in him
because we trust in his holy name.(R)
22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.
Take Life as It Comes
9 All this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hate one does not know. Everything that confronts them 2 is vanity,[a] since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil,[b] to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath.(A) 3 This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of humans are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.(B) 4 But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost.(C) 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.(D)
7 Go, eat your bread with enjoyment and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has long ago approved what you do.(E) 8 Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head.(F) 9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun,[c] because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.(G) 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.(H)
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, but time and chance happen to them all.(I) 12 For no one can anticipate one’s time. Like fish taken in a cruel net or like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.(J)
Wisdom Superior to Folly
13 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. 14 There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. 15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man.(K) 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded.”(L)
Salutation
1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that is in accordance with godliness, 2 in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began(A)— 3 in due time he revealed his word through the proclamation with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior,(B)
4 To Titus, my true child[a] in the faith we share:
Grace[b] and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.(C)
Titus in Crete
5 I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you:(D) 6 someone who is blameless, married only once,[c] whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious.(E) 7 For a bishop,[d] as God’s steward, must be blameless; he must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for gain,(F) 8 but he must be hospitable,[e] a lover of goodness, self-controlled, upright, devout, and restrained, 9 holding tightly to the trustworthy word of the teaching, so that he may be able both to exhort with sound instruction and to refute those who contradict it.
10 There are also many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision;(G) 11 they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach.(H) 12 It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said,
“Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.”
13 That testimony is true. For this reason rebuke them sharply, so that they may become sound in the faith,(I) 14 not paying attention to Jewish myths or to commandments of those who reject the truth.(J) 15 To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted.(K) 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their actions; they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.(L)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.